To the editor:

Once again, Governor Bob Riley has decided to spend much-needed and scarce Alabama dollars to send Alabama prisoners to a private for-profit prison in Louisiana.

He did this with women prisoners shortly after he was elected, and now is sending them men just as he is raising money for his reelection campaign. After the women were returned to Alabama, we were forced to continue to pay for the empty cells in Louisiana, since Riley had leased them for an extended time.

The lobbyists for the corporate prison system give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican party and its candidates. Could this be the reason that Riley has reinvented the horror of the convict lease system of the years of segregation?

Under the convict lease system during segregation, the Alabama prison system leased convicts to corporations to use as forced labor. Getting the forced prison labor for almost nothing, the corporations made millions. When forced labor was desired by the corporations, the police just arrested more black people and the courts convicted them.

Now during campaign season, Riley is again leasing prisoners to a private corporation. I cannot believe that this is to relieve overcrowding, as he claims. It is just another form of convict lease and comes at a time that cannot avoid being seen as lining the pockets of Republican campaign chests, starting with his own.

The Rev. Jack Zylman
Southside, Birmingham

Tags: Letters to the Editor

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