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Private prison companies like CCA and The Geo Group approach cash-strapped states and offer to save them money by buying their prisons. However, evidence that private prisons save money is mixed at best. States pay a daily fee for each prisoner housed in a private prisons, and corporations set a number of beds (usually no less than 1,000) and an occupancy rate (usually around 90 percent) that states must meet or pay a fine for each empty bed. It is unbelievable that such deals are legal since they give states an incentive, other than crime, to keep people in prison.
*The Geo Group spent $2.5 million on lobbying in the last 8 years and $2.9 million in political contributions between 2003 and 2012. They help to write laws that create more prisoners.
1773 - “Phillis Wheatley's 'Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral' Published” "Phillis Wheatley, the first professional African-American woman poet, became the first African-American woman whose writings were published with the printing of this volume. The book was published by Archibald Bell, the leading bookseller and printer London at the time, who required proof that Wheatley had written the poems herself. The volume of poems, 39 in all, broke barriers for African-American writers, as it was illegal in several of the states in the U.S. for a slave to learn how to read or write."