For Immediate Release
June 10, 2014
CONTACT:
Morgan Miller, ACLU of Mississippi, 601-354-3408, mmiller@aclu-ms.org
Alexandra Ringe, ACLU National, 212.549.2582, media@aclu.org
Mississippi Has Little-Known For-Profit Prison for Immigrants; ACLU Investigation of Such Prisons Reveals Abuse, Inhumane Conditions
Report Shows Federal Bureau of Prisons Incentivizes Mistreatment, Shields Immigrant Prisons from Scrutiny
JACKSON, Miss – Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, MS, is one of the 13 little-known CAR (Criminal Alien Requirement) prisons for immigrants in the United States. For the new report Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison Industry, the ACLU and the ACLU of Texas have investigated one CAR prison in Texas run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the same private prison company that operates Adams County Correctional Center. The report reveals inhumane conditions and egregious mistreatment of immigrants in prisons that enrich the for-profit prison industry at tremendous costs to taxpayers.
“Mississippi has the second-highest incarceration rate in the nation – ranking behind only Louisiana, according to the Department of Justice. Criminalizing immigration means making it a part of a system that is already overburdened by a mass incarceration crisis and plagued by for-profit companies turning our tax dollars into revenue” said Jennifer Riley-Collins. “The abuse and mistreatment of prisoners in the Adams County facility lead to a riot in 2012. The facility holds nearly 2,500 inmates most of them convicted for being in the country illegally after deportation. These immigration cases should be handled by civil immigration authorities not the criminal justice system.”
The culmination of a four-year investigation, the report shows how the federal Bureau of Prisons incentivizes private prison companies to keep CAR prisons overcrowded and understaffed. The companies provide scant medical care that is often administered incorrectly, if delivered at all. At the CCA operated prison in Concho County, Texas, the 1,550 prisoners are reportedly packed so tightly that their beds spill out into the hallways.
As Carl Takei, Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, explained, “The shameful conditions inside CAR prisons come from the government’s decision to allow the suffering inside these for-profit prisons. For instance, 10% of the bed space in CAR prisons is reserved for extreme isolation—nearly double the rate in normal federal prisons. I spoke to prisoners who spent weeks in isolation cells after being sent there upon intake—simply arriving at prison was the reason why they were locked in a cell and fed through a slot for 23 hours a day.”
CAR prisons hold non-citizens who have been convicted of crimes in the U.S., mostly for immigration offenses (such as unlawfully reentering the country).
Read the report: www.aclu.org/CARabuse
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