© www.businessinsider.comStates pay private prisons per inmate and, by contract, have to pay for empty beds.
Senator Bernie Sanders has pledged if elected president, he'd
end the practice of contracting with private corrections companies to operate federal prisons set aside for non-citizens, a campaign spokesperson told
The Nation. The statement came in response to an investigation by Seth Freed Wessler, published in the Feb. 15 edition of
The Nation magazine. Wessler uncovered
negligent medical care that likely contributed to the deaths of dozens of immigrants inside a little-known sector of the federal prison system. Hillary Clinton's campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but has previously said more she'd end private contracting for immigrant detention broadly.
In September,
Sanders introduced a bill called the Justice Is Not for Sale Act to ban government contracts with private prison companies at the federal, state, and local level within three years. "[Sanders] talked about how we need to stop those contracts period, and not just for immigrant detention centers, but
for prisons overall," Erika Andiola, a campaign strategist for the Sanders campaign, told
The Nation. "He's just not okay having contracts with private prisons at all."
"And he's not afraid to say this, because he's never gotten money from private prisons in the past," Andiola said, in a jab at
Hillary Clinton, who pledged to stop accepting money from private prison companies last October only after protests and criticism from immigration activists.
Comment: And Israelis wonder why there is so much animosity directed against them by Palestinians.
See also: Israel 1948: The Dawayima massacre and 'barbarism by an educated and cultured people'