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From
the DataCenter's Criminal Justice
Program, Spring/Summer 2002:
"Criminalizing Immigrants"
The Fortune Society recently published a DataCenter
article entitled "Criminalizing Immigrants," in
its Spring 2002 issue of Fortune News on immigrant
detention.
Staffed primarily by former prisoners, The Fortune
Society is a not-for-profit community-based organization dedicated
to educating the public about prisons, criminal justice issues,
and the root causes of crime. The Fortune Society also helps
former prisoners and at-risk youth break the cycle of crime
and incarceration through a broad range of services. Fortune
News is distributed to inmates and as well as to people
on the outside.
"Criminalizing Immigrants" reviews
the U.S. government's effort to create a separate class of
prisoners based on immigration status and the growing campaign
against a proposed buildup of immigrant prisons. The article
looks at how the Federal Bureau of Prisons stepped in to save
the ailing private prison industry, opening up bids for private
prisons to "detain" the increasing numbers of non-citizens
criminalized by the Immigration Reform and the Anti-Terrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Acts of 1996. The open bids (called
Criminal Alien Requirements, or C.A.R.) have helped prison
companies like Corrections Corporation of America and Cornell
Corporation pocket millions of dollars off federal contracts.
The article also covers community-based efforts
to fight back against the C.A.R., which the Federal Bureau
of Prisons has used to request 10,500 new prison beds for
immigrants. In a recent victory, the Federal Bureau of Prisons
dropped its C.A.R. III proposal.
Read "Criminalizing
Immigrants," or download
Fortune News, Spring 2002 (PDF file).
For
further information, contact The
Fortune Society.
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