Private prisons are a stupid, amoral idea. So how did we end up with them in the first place? For starters, the U.S. is the most prolific incarcerator on the planet. That is a fact & it is not new. #velshi
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President Biden signed an executive order phasing out the federal govt's use of privatized prisons. It instructs the Justice dept. NOT to renew contracts with privately-operated prisons; a policy that was first implemented under Obama, then reversed in 2017 by Trump. #velshi
Private prisons are a stupid, amoral idea. So how did we end up with them in the first place? For starters, the U.S. is the most prolific incarcerator on the planet. That is a fact & it is not new. #velshi
2018 figures show the U.S. ranks number one when it comes to the total number of incarcerated people. It has roughly 300,000 more people that have been sentenced to prison than China does... which has literally one billion more in population. #velshi
What about prisoners as a percentage of the population? America for the win, again, with the highest rate of incarceration in the world, a great deal higher than the next country on the list, El Salvador. #velshi
Our prison system became so overwhelmed, partly due to misguided federal initiatives like The War on Drugs in the 80s and the 1994 Crime Bill, that it was forced to outsource help. #velshi
Former Obama deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in 2016: "The federal prison population increased by almost 800 percent between 1980 and 2013, often at a far faster rate than the Bureau of Prisons could accommodate in their own facilities.“ #velshi
“… In an effort to manage the rising prison population, around 2006, the bureau (of Prisons) began contracting with privately operated correctional institutions to confine some federal inmates." #velshi
In 2017, U.S. private prisons incarcerated nearly 122,000 people, representing 8.2% of the total state and federal prison population. And private doesn’t mean cheaper or better. In fact, private prisons are more dangerous than government run prisons. #velshi
A damning report from the Justice Department's Inspector General released in 2016 found that federal private prisons were much more violent and a lot less secure than public, federally run facilities. #velshi
Last week I noted that there aren't two sides to some issues. This is one of them. Private prisons should not exist. In economics it's what we call a “perverse incentive.” #velshi
Private prisons thrive when there are lots of people incarcerated, which is the opposite of what society’s goals are. Some conservatives argue that anything the government can do, the private sector can do better. #velshi
More from Ali Velshi
More from Biden
"Ban" is a verb meaning to "officially or legally prohibit" something. If the Biden administration is not approving new fracking permits, how is that not "officially or legally prohibiting" new fracking permits?
The economy is bleeding, and the Biden administration's response is to cripple one of the few industries that has been consistently employing people throughout this crisis.
But, his allies in the media don't want him to take that PR hit, so they run cover and play word games. Biden's exact words were "We are not going to ban fracking. Period." The "Period." there would imply that ANY ban is off the table.
If you are going to prohibit via executive order - which is nothing more than a law passed outside of the normal legislative process - anything, you are "legally" prohibiting it. There are legal consequences to violating that regulation.
So yes, definitionally, Biden has "legally prohibited" fracking in some way, shape, or form, which is the opposite of his campaign statements.
In other words, he lied.
In the campaign, Biden said he would not approve new fracking permits on federal lands. But he would allow existing fracking to continue on federal property and existing and new fracking to continue on private land. .... https://t.co/EDVj7RQdFs
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) January 26, 2021
The economy is bleeding, and the Biden administration's response is to cripple one of the few industries that has been consistently employing people throughout this crisis.
But, his allies in the media don't want him to take that PR hit, so they run cover and play word games. Biden's exact words were "We are not going to ban fracking. Period." The "Period." there would imply that ANY ban is off the table.
If you are going to prohibit via executive order - which is nothing more than a law passed outside of the normal legislative process - anything, you are "legally" prohibiting it. There are legal consequences to violating that regulation.
So yes, definitionally, Biden has "legally prohibited" fracking in some way, shape, or form, which is the opposite of his campaign statements.
In other words, he lied.
