June 23, 2011
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association regularly makes seven-figure contributions both to political candidates and to ballot initiative campaigns, nearly all of it with the goal of preventing any decline in the state’s bulging prison population. As Senior Editor Tim Cavanaugh explains, not only has the prison guards union benefitted from the Golden State’s prison boom, it has been a key player in the expansion. From lobbying against Proposition 5, which would have reduced sentences and parole times for nonviolent drug offenders, to supporting the state’s iron web of sentencing laws and its stringent “three strikes” regime, the prison guards union has helped California’s prison-industrial complex to grow and thrive.
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