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  • Bob Phillips

    The Second Chance Act is key. Lately I’ve been working with (against?) the “behavioral health system”. Compared to the bandits with LCSWs who profiteer from the suffering of the mentally ill and the homeless, the prison-industrial-complex is benign. And that’s going to be the model for how “community based corrections” gets delivered.
    From the first line of the linked press release: “Attorney General Eric Holder today announced $58 million in Second Chance Act grant funding to reduce recidivism, provide reentry services, conduct research and evaluate the impact of reentry programs.”
    I wish I couldn’t tell you that the handwriting is on the wall, but if you want to see what community based corrections is going to be just look at your nearest residential behavioral health system.
    They are grant writing fools, though.

    • KayWhitlock

      @Bob Phillips Bob, grim as it is, your take on this is invaluable.  Thank you.  Second Chance was a Bush-era program in its design, so we might think about that.  Holder/Obama inherited it – and to challenge how it operates and who/what it actually funds (almost all grantees are states, except for some Indigenous nations/tribes).   
       
      It’s going to take a lot of deep work on our part to challenge the way these things are rolling  forward. 
       
      Again, thanks for your insight.  To be followed up.

      • @KayWhitlock  @Bob Phillips how much of this funding goes to “faith-based” i wonder?

    • @Bob Phillips I call it The Medical Industrial Complex
       
      another profit-driven behemoth

  • Thank you for this fantastic breakdown Kay. And, if we ever meet in person, will you show me how to run a shell game? I’ve always wondered how it works…

    • @Vikki hey vikki — i want to know too :)
       
      in all seriousness, let’s continue to brainstorm as to how we can expose and thwart this  “fake” reform”  and replace it with the real deal
       
      thanks as always

    • KayWhitlock

      @Vikki Hey, Vikki!  Yeah, I’ll try to remember.  Never actually ran one, but those guys sure were good at it!  And they did teach me.  So I’ll start brushing up. 
       
      Thank you so much for your kind comments.

  • Bob Phillips

    Great job, Kay. The image is one that will stay with me a long time, a shell game. And that, of course, is exactly what it is, a shell game. Distract the suckers with the patter while the possibility of “winning” gets pocketed.
    You give Chuckie Cheese and his Prison Fellowship a lot more credit than I do. Among other things they induce prison officials to play favorites with their “marks” in the prison population. “Marks” because they seduce bored-to-death convicts to attend their functions so they can take the inflated numbers back to funding sources with a “look at how many conversions we’re making” line of crap to keep the money flowing. They’re not making converts (not a bad thing from my pov), they’re tallying up bored and lonely folks who’re desperate for any sort of change in their routine. And they know. Chuckie told me so himself when they pulled their scam at ISP when I was there.
    The suckers are whoever they can get to put up the money, benighted church people or oppressed taxpayers, makes no difference. Chuckie was a con man until the day hedied.

    • @Bob Phillips hey Bob — yes colson was the real star of this wasn’t he??
       
      Eternal Vigilance as they say :(

      • Bob Phillips

        @nancy a heitzeg
         I suppose there’s an argument to be made that convicting Colson and sending him to prison was the worst of all possible outcomes.
        What he did in the Watergate scandal was the least of his “obstruction of justice.”

    • KayWhitlock

      @Bob Phillips Hi, Bob.  Great to see you.  You’ve seen a good shell game, right?  Nothing quite like it, is there?
       
      I’m being generous about Prison Fellowship because there are volunteers involved who really think of this only as a religious mission.   But I’ll only be generous to a point.  I never trusted Colson for one hot minute.  And singlehandedly, I personally believe that Prison Fellowship is narrowing, not expanding, the ideas of restorative justice. 
       
      I agree that Colson was a con artist from beginning to end.

  • KayWhitlock

    I couldn’t help thinking about this as I think about the new wave of post-prison profiteering that awaits…
     
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3xXQcoDV_U

    • @KayWhitlock Thank you do much for this crucial piece Kay — it is an essential foundation for examining so-called “reforms”
       
      The right never rests — never fails to miss a profit

      • KayWhitlock

        @nancy a heitzeg It’s going to get seriously complicated.  It will be very important for us to keep on this story and keep documenting more details about what’s hidden in the Right’s proposals.

        • @KayWhitlock and difficult to dispute since we are “getting what we want”
           
          well no — the costs are too great — the outcome will ultimately be the same
           
          and oh Not a Word on Race