Alan Grayson: “This amendment is simple. It prohibits the Federal Bureau of Prisons from soliciting, offering, or awarding a…”

“This amendment is simple. It prohibits the Federal Bureau of Prisons from soliciting, offering, or awarding a contract--and by the way, I am talking about a new contract, not an existing contract--to a for-profit prison that guarantees the number of prisoners that will be housed there. I believe it is not only bad policy but fundamentally immoral to guarantee that our government will incarcerate a specific number of people so that a for-profit entity can guarantee its profit margin. Whether or not we agree on the main impetus for incarceration-- punishment, rehabilitation, or some combination of both--I would hope that we can all agree that a perverse conflict of interest, such as the one that this amendment addresses, should not be allowed to exist to be able to guarantee a profit on human bodies. This amendment seeks to eliminate any potential for a repeat of the ``kids for cash'' scandal that unfolded in 2008. In that instance, two judges from Pennsylvania accepted money from the builder of two private for-profit juvenile facilities in return for imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought before their courts. All told, those two individuals received $2.6 million in payments from the managers at that company. American citizens' freedom and the length of a convicted person's prison sentence should never be a line item on a business sheet.…”