Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
[email protected] — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Private prisons back con center measure
Boca Raton outfit kicks in for homeless tax vote
Geo crew at U.S. Marshall's office downtown San Diego
So far short of sufficient cash to pay the seven-figure price of the average San Diego initiative drive, the group seeking to raise the city's hotel tax to fund a convention center expansion and accompanying homeless mitigation has tapped a controversial private prison operator to pick up the slack.
San Diego Day Reporting Center on Jefferson Street
GEO Group of Boca Raton, Florida gave $25,000 to Yes! For a Better San Diego on May 10, per a May 11 filing with the San Diego city clerk's office.
A national giant of the commercial incarceration business, GEO runs two facilities in San Diego, downtown's Western Regional Detention Center on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service, and the San Diego Day Reporting Center at 3211 Jefferson Street in the Midway district.
The latter, funded by the California Department of Corrections, provides "intensive supervision and reentry services to offenders transitioning back to the community," according to GEO's website.
"Participants report to the program and receive the ongoing treatment needed to help break cycles of criminal behavior. Classes include cognitive behavioral therapy; employment readiness and career development; life skills and parenting classes; anger management; drug and alcohol classes and more."
In the wake of last year's downtown homeless meltdown, some have argued that GEO-like tax-funded rehabs could be part of the solution, but the programs are costly and unpopular with prospective neighbors, requiring heavy lobbying of city officials to overcome resistance against permits.
The tax hike proposal being circulated by convention center advocates does not specify how the funds earmarked for the homeless would ultimately be deployed, leaving the matter for city politicos to sort out later.
But backers of the tax increase assert on their website that the measure would produce a generous amount of cash for social services.
"Over the first five years alone it will generate more than $140 million for new efforts to reduce homelessness and raise more than $2 billion to reduce homelessness over the life of the measure.
"This infusion of money will get people off the streets and into shelters. It will fund counseling and assistance to women, children, veterans and others who have no place to turn to today."
Elsewhere in the state, pushback against GEO-related privatization has come from social-service non-profits, who argue that the firm is part of a "treatment industrial complex" that has grown sharply under the Trump administration.
"Because these companies are paid per diem, per person, they have a motivation to do what we call 'net widening' - to get as many people under the boot of the system in the harshest form of control and surveillance, for the longest time," Dalit Baum of the American Friends Service Committee, told the East Bay Express in February.
The paper reported that GEO Reentry's three-year contract with the California correctional authority for San Diego, Los Angeles, and Orange counties, set to expire in 2020, totals $26 million.
Noted the Express: "Both GEO Group and its main competitor, CoreCivic, each donated $250,000 to Trump's inauguration festivities and spent more than $1 million in political giving during the 2016 presidential election."
Here's something you might be interested in.
Private prisons back con center measure
Boca Raton outfit kicks in for homeless tax vote
Private prisons back con center measure
Boca Raton outfit kicks in for homeless tax vote
Geo crew at U.S. Marshall's office downtown San Diego
So far short of sufficient cash to pay the seven-figure price of the average San Diego initiative drive, the group seeking to raise the city's hotel tax to fund a convention center expansion and accompanying homeless mitigation has tapped a controversial private prison operator to pick up the slack.
San Diego Day Reporting Center on Jefferson Street
GEO Group of Boca Raton, Florida gave $25,000 to Yes! For a Better San Diego on May 10, per a May 11 filing with the San Diego city clerk's office.
A national giant of the commercial incarceration business, GEO runs two facilities in San Diego, downtown's Western Regional Detention Center on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service, and the San Diego Day Reporting Center at 3211 Jefferson Street in the Midway district.
The latter, funded by the California Department of Corrections, provides "intensive supervision and reentry services to offenders transitioning back to the community," according to GEO's website.
"Participants report to the program and receive the ongoing treatment needed to help break cycles of criminal behavior. Classes include cognitive behavioral therapy; employment readiness and career development; life skills and parenting classes; anger management; drug and alcohol classes and more."
In the wake of last year's downtown homeless meltdown, some have argued that GEO-like tax-funded rehabs could be part of the solution, but the programs are costly and unpopular with prospective neighbors, requiring heavy lobbying of city officials to overcome resistance against permits.
The tax hike proposal being circulated by convention center advocates does not specify how the funds earmarked for the homeless would ultimately be deployed, leaving the matter for city politicos to sort out later.
But backers of the tax increase assert on their website that the measure would produce a generous amount of cash for social services.
"Over the first five years alone it will generate more than $140 million for new efforts to reduce homelessness and raise more than $2 billion to reduce homelessness over the life of the measure.
"This infusion of money will get people off the streets and into shelters. It will fund counseling and assistance to women, children, veterans and others who have no place to turn to today."
Elsewhere in the state, pushback against GEO-related privatization has come from social-service non-profits, who argue that the firm is part of a "treatment industrial complex" that has grown sharply under the Trump administration.
"Because these companies are paid per diem, per person, they have a motivation to do what we call 'net widening' - to get as many people under the boot of the system in the harshest form of control and surveillance, for the longest time," Dalit Baum of the American Friends Service Committee, told the East Bay Express in February.
The paper reported that GEO Reentry's three-year contract with the California correctional authority for San Diego, Los Angeles, and Orange counties, set to expire in 2020, totals $26 million.
Noted the Express: "Both GEO Group and its main competitor, CoreCivic, each donated $250,000 to Trump's inauguration festivities and spent more than $1 million in political giving during the 2016 presidential election."
Comments
Private prisons are staffed by low IQ, poorly trained, low wage/benefit, Walmart rejects. The inmate neglect and abuse is rampant and the staff turnover is high. Prisons should be staffed by highly trained well qualified people.
And those job applicants rejected by the private prisons go run for SD City Council. ;-)
That group photo is amusing. The woman at front center is actually smiling, or attempting to smile. The others? Nah! I"m fairly sure that none of them appreciate being called Walmart rejects. But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that prisons are not intended to be nice places or anything pleasant. It's punishment you know.
But as to the way these contractors manage to milk systems, there is plenty of room for scandals. If one of these outfits can find a way to get into the homeless sheltering game it will, and there's no assurance it will do any permanent good for the chronic homeless.
Well, construction companies are already in the "homeless sheltering game" as they make nice profits building such apartments. Like Atmosphere, at 4th & Beech downtown, and other new buildings.