How Scott Walker Built a Career Sending Wisconsin Inmates to Private Prisons

[n2doc]

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is perhaps best known for dramatically weakening public and private unions in his state—something that has propelled him to the top of the 2016 Republican presidential field.

Over Walker’s long career in state politics, he also accomplished another transformation: increasing Wisconsin’s incarceration rate while making sure private companies had a larger role managing those prisoners.

He rarely talks about it anymore, but Walker’s efforts as a young legislator didn’t just change the Wisconsin criminal justice system—they helped fill Walker’s campaign coffers with money from private prison operators as he ascended from the state legislature to the governor’s mansion.

During his nine years in the state house, from 1993 to 2002, Walker often campaigned as a tough-on-crime Republican who promised new efforts “to protect our families, our senior citizens and our property.”

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http://www.thenation.com/article/199369/how-scott-walker-built-career-sending-wisconsin-inmates-private-prisons#

[riversedge]

1. Walker openly credited the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for Truth-in-Sentencing’s su

Walker is Alec all the way.......


Walker pushed dozens of proposals in the state house to lengthen criminal penalties, for everything from perjury to privacy invasion to intoxicated boating. In just the 1997–98 legislative session, Walker authored or co-sponsored twenty-seven different bills that either expanded the definition of crimes, increased mandatory minimums for offenders, or curbed the possibility of parole.

Walker’s biggest victory in this area was the state’s “Truth-in-Sentencing” legislation, which ended parole opportunities for many categories of prisoners, and increased prison time for others. “The time has come to keep violent criminals in prison for their full terms,” Walker said in 1996 as he advocated for the bill. Later, as chair of the state assembly’s Committee on Corrections and the Courts in 1998, Walker shepherded the legislation into state law.

At the time, Walker openly credited the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for Truth-in-Sentencing’s success

. “Clearly ALEC had proposed model legislation,” Walker told American RadioWorks in 2002. “And probably more important than just the model legislation, [ALEC] had actually put together reports and such that showed the benefits of truth-in-sentencing and showed the successes in other states. And those sorts of statistics were very helpful to us when we pushed it through, when we passed the final legislation.”.....

[riversedge]

2. Read this carefully--Walker creates a problem--then benefits ....

Walker pushed the Truth in sentencing law in WI... Then..

....CCA was also a major contributor to Scott Walker’s political career. During Walker’s decade in the State Assembly, just fifteen people gave the maximum contribution to his campaigns. Two worked for CCA, including then-CEO Doc Crants and then-board member Henri Wedell, who owns $25 million in CCA stock. Both men live in Tennessee, not Wisconsin. Over the course of Walker’s political career, CCA executives have contributed more than $7,500 to his campaigns.

Though Walker later conceded that CCA stood to benefit from Truth-in-Sentencing, he shrugged off any notion of pay-for-play. “Often times that’s your greatest challenge, as a legislator, is trying to weed through what everybody’s hidden agenda is, and figure out who’s giving you credible information and in many cases playing one interest off of another to try and figure out what the truth is,” Walker said. “More information to me is better.”


Then because of Prison overcrowding....(another reason for him to hate unions)!!


After Truth-in-Sentencing passed and Wisconsin began alleviating its overcrowded prisons by shipping inmates to out-of-state prisons run by CCA, Walker still wanted to open private prisons in Wisconsin.

“We are sending thousands of inmates to public and private facilities in other states,” Walker said in December 1998. “It only makes sense that we allow a private firm to build and operate an accredited facility in our own state. The jobs and taxes that come from a prison should stay in our own state.” In the following legislative session, he proposed at least three separate bills to privatize prisons in the state. ..........

(these privatizations failed because of Democrats. Tommy Thompson opposed also--- and union opposition)

[riversedge]

3. Then Walker flip flops!!...."by 2010, Walker disavowed his earlier support for private prisons."

Umm... last year he gave the correction officers a 1 % raise. after years of mandatory days off and no raises for years. Also took away their unions in 2011. This year he froze all merit raises (that went to folks who sucked up to supervisors). I have relatives who work as correction officers. they are demoralized.


....Despite his significant achievements in pushing more incarceration and more privatization of prison services in Wisconsin—surely among the top achievements of his early career—Walker never boasts about it these days.

In fact, by 2010, Walker disavowed his earlier support for private prisons. “We’re not going to outsource correctional officers…because that’s obviously a vital public safety issue that should be done by public sector employees,” he said during a radio interview, sounding markedly different from state representative Walker.

When the host pressed him on his past support for privatization, Walker said it was simply a “safety issue” due to prison overcrowding. He did not mention his legislation increasing prison sentences, his opposition to new public prisons or the contributions he received from executives at CCA.

[riversedge]

4. Thanks for finding and posting this very informative article..

[Scuba]

5. Kick. Thanks n2doc and riversedge.

[yourout]

6. How having private prisons does not scream "Fascism" to everyone is beyond me.

[midnight]

7. I wonder about that too...

[Blue Owl]

8. Deeply disturbing, on many levels

n/t