The profiteers have turned public jails into private cash cows for themselves. Privatizing prisons has motivated some judges (investors) to fill them to capacity with many nonviolent inmates serving unreasonably long sentences. Because of this privatized cash-cow, the taxpayers now pay more per bed for prisoners than before, and don’t get me started on their colossal failure, exorbitant expense, prisoner abuse and continuous corruption.
Now the profiteers want to do the exact same thing with the mental health crisis centers, guaranteeing failure by cutting 75 percent of their funding. Just watch how popular the Baker Act will become with these same investor-judges as they scramble at break-neck speed to fill the privatized cash-cow mental crisis centers with any people they can at $1,200 a bed, instead of the public crisis centers’ $300 a bed cost. Besides the continuous abuse of taxpayer funds, many of the truly sick will get thrown to the curb, and guess who’s problem they become? Not the profiteers behind their gated communities, living the big life off taxpayer-paid profits while we the people work like slaves and have to clean up their greed-driven messes!
Jude Smallwood, The Acreage
