Debate in Mississippi shows how even local governments make money on mass incarceration
On Thursday, The Huffington Post reported that local officials across Mississippi have grown deeply concerned about revenue losses stemming from a recent decline in the prison population. On Friday, Marshall Fisher, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, fired back.
When the state’s prisons became overcrowded in the late 1990s, officials had turned to local governments to take some of those inmates off their hands. Now the prison population has shrunk as the result of sentencing and drug policy reforms, so the Department of Corrections has begun transferring prisoners back to state facilities. That leaves local jails without the revenue — the state provided a per diem — and free labor provided by the prisoners.
George County Supervisor Henry Cochran told HuffPost that the counties had taken the prisoner deal in the past because it was a win-win for taxpayers: Prisoners performed jobs like garbage collection, which saved taxpayers money, and the prison itself provided jobs to local residents.
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“Those citizens may want to question the wisdom of the officials in their respective counties who based budgets on inmate populations that cannot always be guaranteed,” Fisher said. “While I sympathize with the citizens of the affected counties, the Mississippi Department of Corrections cannot continue to pay counties above contract requirements when it has space to house the inmates. I have an agency to run. Public safety is paramount to MDOC’s mission, not subsidizing counties’ budgets.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mississippi-prisons-budget-marshall-fisher_us_57112e8fe4b06f35cb6f8173?
So basically this shows another reason why it is difficult to get the government to enact prison, drugs, and sentencing reforms. A lot of local governments are taking advantage of free labor and enjoying free money from the state to house the state inmate. If they reform the system, many local governments will lose revenue and taxes will go up.
Mass incarceration has become the new slave labor in the United States.