4A •
COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • JANUARY 16, 2019
O PINION
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Who benefi ts most from more prisons?
In an interview on NPR last
May, Homeland Security Sec-
retary Kirstjen Nielsen com-
pared the Trump administra-
tion’s “Zero Tolerance” policy
to the same policy experienced
by incarcerated Americans ev-
ery day in this country who are
separated from their children.
“If you break the law, you
will be prosecuted. It’s no dif-
ferent than what we do every
day in every part of the United
States when an adult commits
a crime,” Nielsen said. “We’re
following that same policy at
our borders.”
And she’s absolutely correct.
In fact, we have a long his-
tory of state-sanctioned family
separation that continues as a
widespread practice today —
particularly in our justice sys-
tem, where approximately 2.7
million children have a parent
behind bars.
And the fastest growing
group of prisoners?
Women.
According to a report by
the Prison Fellowship, there
has been a 14-fold increase of
women in prison since 1970,
and 80 percent of them are
single mothers.
Whether guilty or innocent,
men and women oft en spend
weeks, months and sometimes
years in prison awaiting trial
for non-violent crimes, losing
their jobs, homes and custody
Refugee Service (LIRS) and
Women’s Refugee Commis-
sion (WRC), between October
2013 and September 2014, the
U.S. government apprehanded
68,334 children accompanied
by a parent at the southwest
border — a 361 percent in-
crease since the previous year.
Keep in mind that more
than half of all the children
From the Managing Editor’s Desk
Ned Hickson
of their children before they’ve
even had a chance to plead
their case.
Th e fact is, the current “law
and order” approach isn’t new
either. It was echoed by Presi-
dent Nixon in the late 1960s, as
well as Presidents Reagan and
Clinton and their attempts to
combat the drug war by creat-
ing massive prison expansions
to keep up with the demands
of higher incarceration rates.
In addition to prisons, in
2014 the U.S. government
massively expanded its de-
tention centers for immigrant
families.
According to reports from
the Lutheran Immigration and
who entered into family deten-
tion facilities in that time were
six years old or younger.
And that was before the
“Zero Tolerance” posture tak-
en by past Attorney Gener-
al Jeff Sessions, which com-
pounded the problem by
demanding enforcement with-
out the necessary resources to
do so humanely.
But this is not a problem
that is unique to the Trump
administration, although its
poor handling of it has made it
uniquely terrible.
When the Obama adminis-
tration began detaining fam-
ilies in large facilities back in
2014, for-profi t correctional
corporation GEO Group an-
swered the call with the Karnes
Detention Center in Texas,
which recently broke ground
at that site in order to double
its capacity.
Another detention cen-
ter was opened by Correc-
tion Corporation of America
(CCA) in 2015 that holds 819
mothers and 1,000 children in
a lock-down style facility.
Both GEO Group and CCA
have had facilities closed in the
past (Artesia Detention Center
and Hutto Detention center,
respectively) due to allega-
tions of abuse and poor living
conditions — only to re-open
somewhere else with a govern-
ment contract.
While I think we all agree
that our borders should nev-
er be a revolving door, par-
ticularly in an era with the
constant threats of global ter-
rorism and illegal drugs, one
must ask who stands to benefi t
most from an ever-expanding
system of prisons and deten-
tion centers.
And whether tax dollars giv-
en to corporate prisons and
detention centers is money
well spent, or money spent to
pretend that all is well.
Send letters to:
nhickson@cgsentinel.com or cmay@cgsentinel.com
HOW TO CONTACT YOUR REPS
Oregon state
representatives
Oregon federal
representatives
• Sen. Floyd Prozanski
District 4 State Senator
PO Box 11511
Eugene, Ore. 97440
Phone: 541-342-2447
Email : sen.fl oydprozanski@
state.or.us
• Rep. Cedric Hayden
Republican District 7 State
Representative
900 Court St. NE
Salem, Ore. 97301
Phone: 503-986-1407
Website: www.leg.state.or.
us/hayden
Email: rep.cedrichayden@
state.or.us
• Rep. Peter DeFazio
(House of Representatives)
405 East 8th Ave.
#2030
Eugene, Ore. 97401
Email: defazio.house.gov/
contact/email-peter
Phone: 541-465-6732
• Sen. Ron Wyden
405 East 8th Ave., Suite 2020
Eugene, Ore. 97401
Email: wyden.senate.gov
Phone: (541) 431-0229
• Sen. Jeff Merkley
Email: merkley.senate.gov
Phone: 541-465-6750
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