A private corporation in Tennessee wants to erect a prison in Hinsdale, New Hampshire that would lock about 1,600 people in cages. Hinsdale borders Brattleboro and the Massachusetts town of Northfield. The company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and other private prison corporations, lobby for harsher drug laws so more people will be sent to prison for possession of marijuana, prostitution, and other “crimes.”

Michael Darcy, a Hinsdale select board member, said to the Keene Sentinel newspaper of the plan, “They (CCA) want to partner with the people as much as they want to be a good neighbor. There’s job potential, tax revenue and the facility would be completely self-contained.”

Corrections Corporation of America officials have been lobbying the Hinsdale select board and the state legislature.

Last year, the company’s CEO, Damon Hininger, was paid $3.7 million. That’s according to:

www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/CEO-Pay-and-the-99

“A hundred years ago, private prisons were a familiar feature of American life, with disastrous consequences,” said Ken Silverstein. He’s an editor of Harper’s magazine. “Prisoners were farmed out as slave labor. They were routinely beaten and abused, fed slop, and kept in horribly overcrowded cells. Conditions were so wretched that, by the end of the nineteenth century, private prisons were outlawed in most states.”

Because of corporate cost-cutting, people kept in private prisons are probably more likely to commit violent crimes when they get out, he said.

www.CUREnational.org is fighting the Hinsdale prison plan, Gordon Bock told the Valley Post. He’s a spokesman for the group’s Vermont chapter. www.seiu1984.org is also fighting the plan.

A spokesman for Corrections Corporation of America didn’t immediately respond to a phone message and e-mail seeking comment.

Related articles are at:

www.ValleyPost.org/node/451

and

www.ValleyPost.org/node/671