Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Another Lawsuit from Saguaro

A Hawaiian prisoner who was housed at the Saguaro Correctional Facility (A CCA prison in Arizona) is suing CCA and a guard who sexually assaulted him while he was incarcerated on a drug possession offense. This is the same prison where two young men died of suspicious circumstances, the same one that has been run so poorly by CCA that the governor of Hawaii has vowed to bring all his prisoners home

4 comments:

  1. i don't understand why no one is taking any actions further with these local inmates asking for our or your help. what is your problem just waiting for another sex assult to happen huh

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  2. I don't quite understand what you're saying. I have not been contacted by any prisoners from Saguaro seeking assistance. Had I been, I would certainly have done everything in my power to help. I report on issues like this precisely because I want to end the abuses that occur inside private prisons. I feel that the general public is not often exposed to stories about private prisons, so I hope to increase the publicity of these sorts of things so that more people know what's going on, and therefore might be stirred to action. I abhor and detest everything about the private prison industry, mostly because I been touched by many people unfortunate enough to have served time in them.

    If there is something you, or any prisoner, needs help with, my email is accessible through the site and I encourage you to contact me. Though I'm only one person and not legally trained, I will always do my best to advise, assist, or direct anyone who needs help combatting the evils of the private prison industry.

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  3. I hope and pray to God that something will be done to correct the wrongs done by the many people involved that basically sit around all day, doing nothing to keep our inmates safe. What's the point of using our tax dollars to fund this so-called corporation if they can't even follow the rules and regulations that they themselves wrote on how they 'supposedly' run the prison(s). With all that money going into the business, why are they shorthanded of on-duty staff? They say that they did everything they deemed was plausible on handling the death of my ex-boyfriend... that's utter bull. Don't they have camera's on the inmates 24/7? Don't they have guards walking around to keep the inmates in check? I guess not. The corporation if F-d up. Seriously.

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  4. Hey Anon,

    thanks for commenting! the reason these companies are able to generate so much profit is precisely because their facilities are short-staffed. Staffing is far and away the most expensive part of a prison's budget, so in order to maximize profit, the companies look first to cutting staff. They leave vacant positions unfilled and hire fewer staff than government-run prisons, which aren't concerned with generating profits. staff also tend to have far less experience and training than in government-run facilities. As for cameras, they can only see/do so much; there will inevitable be "blind spots" in every facility, where prisoners and staff can get in trouble out of the view of cameras. This all combines to create the potential for a very dangerous situation, often resulting in the abuses you see in private prisons (and some government ones too).

    I don't think the problem is the corporations so much as the profit motive behind private incarceration. the drive to generate as much profit for shareholders as possible is what causes the execs at these companies to neglect human decency and compassion. I don't think they're inherently evil people; I just think they ignore a lot of problems for the sake of generating more money.

    The whole system is effed

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