In this final installment marking the 30th Anniversary of Corrections Corporation of America, we bring you a list of the bodies left in the wake of CCA’s relentless pursuit of profits.

Compiled by our friend and colleague, Alex Friedman of Prison Legal News and the Human Rights Defense Center, here are the deaths in custody (prisoners) and in the line of duty (staff) in CCA facilities from 1987 to the present. These names are the most vivid testament to the fact that 30 years of imprisonin...

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AFSC, along with our friends at Grassroots Leadership and the Public Safety and Justice Campaign, is participating in a week of coordinated actions to mark the 30th Anniversary of Corrections Corporation of America. We believe that 30 years of profiting from incarceration is nothing to celebrate.

As part of these coordinated actions, we’ve put together a little video birthday card for CCA. Check it out:

Birthday message to CCA

Today, at 4:00 at the Federal Court Building at Congress and Gr...

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This year, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is celebrating 30 years of profiting from incarceration. CCA was one of the pioneers in for-profit prison management, and today is the world’s largest private prison company.

A publicly-traded company, in 2010, CCA saw record revenue of $1.67 billion, up $46 million from 2009.

Here in Arizona, CCA operates 6 facilities, holding prisoners from Arizona, California, Vermont, and Hawaii as well as federal prisoners. CCA is one of the main benefic...

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On April 20, 2013, the Arizona Project sponsored a one-day round trip from the Phoenix area to the Mexican border.  Ron Ludders, Chairman of Arizona Project, was the trip leader and guide.

The first stop was to a drug smuggling drop-point near Casa Grande described at this link.  At another stop, barely 3 miles from the border, the tour group heard from Pastor Dale Stoner of the Assembly of God church.  Following Pastor Dale, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels spoke informally to the tour gr...

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On April 20, 2013, the Arizona Project sponsored a one-day round trip from the Phoenix area to the Mexican border.  Ron Ludders, Chairman of Arizona Project, was the trip leader and guide.

The first stop was to a drug smuggling drop-point near Casa Grande described at this link.  Another stop was at an Assembly of God Church, Miracle Valley, just three miles north of the Mexican border, where we heard from Pastor Dale Stoner.

In the 7-minute video below, Pastor Dale gives his first-hand view o...

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On April 20, 2013, the Arizona Project sponsored a one-day round trip from the Phoenix area to the Mexican border.  Ron Ludders, Chairman of Arizona Project, was the trip leader and guide.

The first stop on the trip was a drug drop-point less than 8 miles southwest of Casa Grande (Latitude 32.8229 degs, Longitude -111.8605 degs) and approximately 80 miles north of the Mexican border.

In the 7-minute video below, Ludders walks the desert alongside a wooded area where “mules” have dro...

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(Sorry for the lack of posts all last week. Just needed a break.)

I came across this interesting press release from the North Carolina Democratic Party about their current Republican Governor Pat McCrory.

McCrory: Moderate No More

RALEIGH, NC—NYT Poll Analyst and data guru, Nate Silver, is out with some damning figures that erase the façade of Pat McCrory as a moderate Governor of North Carolina. Silver’s data blows McCrory’s cover as a moderate and shows him to be to the right of Tea Par...

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In the most general of terms, a conflict of interest is “a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgment or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest.”

In Arizona, there really are no rules governing legislative conflict of interest statutes.  Essentially, as long as at least 10 people benefit from a piece of legislation, there is no conflict of interest.  Should allegations of conflicts of interest arise, there’s really ...

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The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to support Governor Brewer’s Medicaid expansion proposal.  Who voted “no?”  The two Republican members.

Thank you Supervisors Miller and Carroll.

http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/health/pima-county-supervisors-give—-nod-for-medicaid-expansion/article_9d973f82-a16a-11e2-8ef3-0019bb2963f4.html

What: Press Conference & Rally – Restoring Freedom – Arizonans Against the Expansion of Obamacare

When: Thursday, 4/25 @ 11:00 a.m.

Where: AZ State Capitol (1700 West Washington)

To learn more about this event or to RSVP, please visit Facebook

Read (watch) more here.

Republican state Rep. Ethan Orr and Democratic state Rep. Victoria Steele (both of Tucson’s District 9) stopped by AZ Illustrated Politics to bring viewers up to speed on the legislative session. Arizona Capitol Times reporter Hank Stephenson joined the panel to discuss Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposal to expand Medicaid to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, as well as the latest on the st...

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The Maricopa County Integrated Health Systems Board of Directors is currently meeting in closed-door Executive Session to discuss the current legal challenge and protest filed by Magellan and United RHBA against MMIC (Mercy Maricopa Integrated Care), MIHS CEO Betsey Bayless, and Maricopa County Special Health Care District.  The current agenda shows a 30-minute spot dedicated to discussion of this subject, all of which will be exempt from records requests and exempt from public inspection.

It ...

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By AZ State Senator Brenda Barton

Recently I have been asked by many for my thoughts on the governor’s Medicaid expansion proposal. This is a complex issue and there isn’t a simplistic or short form answer. It is my hope that your newspaper will print my thoughts to you without editorializing or editing because this is an extremely important decision and will have significant impacts on the lives of the residents of Arizona and Legislative District 6.

Until a week ago, any comments I could h...

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Arizona Republicans are opposed to expanding medicaid. The poll clearly reveals that Republicans are not only opposed, but also that Republicans in support of expansion are in jeopardy come election time.

Governor Brewer is in full campaign mode, criss-crossing the state attempting to convince Republicans that implementing Obamacare is the “will” of the voters. It is not.

“[a]mong Republican primary voters in the six legislative districts a majority, or 53% are less likely to r...

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The preferred narrative of the pundit/consultant/business establishment types in Arizona about the root of our current political woes, as I’ve described here numerous times, goes like this: Arizona was long a bastion of bipartisan collegiality and cooperation until just a few years ago, when Clean Elections and hyper-partisan primaries ushered into office a bunch of disagreeable unwashed ruffians with extreme views. On both sides! The obvious solution, therefore, is to do whatever it takes...

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Last Friday Governor Jan Brewer sided with Democrats and the hospital industry when she vetoed SB1115, a Republican-sponsored health transparency bill.  Republicans championed the bill they claim would have required health care providers to make public a list of costs for their 25 most commonly provided services, and would have required health care facilities to make publicly available their prices for their 50 most common outpatient service codes and group codes.  Supporters claim the refor...

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The recent mental health contract awarded by the state to Maricopa County Integrated Health System or MIHS is raising eyebrows. MIHS, a government funded and owned entity, is on the cusp of receiving a 3-year contract that is potentially worth $3 billion dollars.

Any $3 billion dollar deal should be viewed as suspect by watchdog groups and taxpayers, but what makes this deal special is that MIHS is a government owned, property tax levying entity bidding against private providers.  In fact, MIHS...

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