Prison Reform Bill [On the President's Desk]

[Marokai Backbeat]

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Sponsor: Senator Franzl

Written by Lt. Governor Ebowed.

[Marokai Backbeat]

This bill has my support. Private prisons are an abomination to the justice system.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Hamilton: we all know that you despise Senator RowanBrandon.  We get it, okay?  I have asked you very politely to keep your personal attacks off of the Senate floor.  Now, I am telling you: CEASE AND DESIST.  Not because I hold any particular affection for the Senator, but because you are disrupting Senate business.

I echo these statements. Hamilton, if you have nothing constructive to add, please shut up.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I'll do a little research to justify my opinions on this bill and rewrite it to accommodate the GM's concerns before the night's over.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I apologize for completely forgetting to write my amendment here, I'll get to it very soon. I got a little too involved in the debate with Jas in the other thread.

[Marokai Backbeat]

My proposed amendment:

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There's a disturbing practice going on in our prisons today, and it's, basically, slave labor. Businesses (and private prisons) employ inmates at pennies on the dollar to carry out jobs that any other business would have to pay a fair wage for. Even though these are inmates, they're still human beings, and it provides, perversely, a literal feeding ground for cheap labor.

And the problem is, they have to work, or they'll face additional prison time, lose privileges, and generally get treated like shit, all because they don't want to be slave labor for a slave's pay.

We've basically made prisons a business, and private prisons capitalize on the fact that we've had outrageous policies towards criminals and incarceration. I think we need to eliminate the profit motive from our justice system in any way possible, and get rid of any incentive that may exist towards imprisoning more people. I do not believe the justice system is a business.

As for the numbers, the United States spend about 60 billion on incarceration. Even if we inflate the GM's numbers to 10% of the prison system being private, that's still only about 6 billion. This bill slightly overcompensates for that if we assume that all of these private prisons would collapse without government funding, which is highly unlikely, but nevertheless we should prepare for the closing of facilities by building new ones, and compensate for the over-capacity of current prisons, as well as the hiring of more inspectors and additional investigations into problem prisons.

However, I would like to contest Purple's numbers because the Pacific has a radically different prison system than the rest of the country, and we have many less victimless crimes here, such as our drug policies. So I would take Purple's numbers about incarceration with the fact in mind that it's probably less serious than it's made out to be. Not meant to criticize Purple or anything, but this is one instance where copying stats from the US isn't appropriate.

Anyway, let the debate commence.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I support Marokai's amendment.

Senators have 24 hours to object to the amendment.

[Marokai Backbeat]

This bill has now been amended. Debate continues.

I won't object to the amendment.

I think though that section 3 may warrant some further consideration. Random inspections are fine, as, of course, are inspections on foot of abnormal reporting figures, but I suspect a provision like section 3 could lead to under-reporting of the sorts of incidents to be concerned about.

How so?

[Marokai Backbeat]

I'd just like it stated that Badger apparently has had some prison reform issues held in private and might contact me about them (or post here, who knows) so I'll give this some time. If nothing comes of it, a final vote will be opened.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Alright, first of all I'd like to state that I agree with Swedish that we should ban private prisons, and I also know that Badger privately had some ideas with the bill. So, given that the end of the session always has debate trail off, I'm going to open up a final vote on this now and we can get to further changes if necessary in further legislation next session.

I hereby open up a final vote on the following bill. Please vote Aye, Nay, or Abstain.

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Aye.

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This is why I don't like doing business in between session.

Senators, get in here and vote.

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4 Ayes, 1 Nay. This vote is still ongoing, lads.

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5 Ayes, 1 Nay, this bill is currently passing and Senators have 24 hours to change their votes.

(Remember, following the court, Rowan isn't a Senator anymore, so he doesn't count towards the total.)

[Marokai Backbeat]

Nay ftr

That's a little surprising. How come you voted nay?

[Marokai Backbeat]

I would hope Lief doesn't veto something when business in the Senate is anemic at best.

I'll never quite understand why this body can't do anything in separate bills.

[Marokai Backbeat]

This is a great bill that alot of time was put into to make sure it was fair and dealt with it's problems. We can reduce funding by a handful-billion and perhaps even outright ban private prisons after a time, but this is a great bill.

And thank you, BK, for signing it.