Saturday, March 31, 2007

Video beckons California inmates to Tennessee

Thousands of California inmates are getting a daily pitch on the finer side of what prison life could be like in Tennessee.

The video they're watching touts a private Tennessee prison's larger and cleaner jail cells; 79 TV channels, including ESPN; views of peaceful cow pastures; and inmates in the "Dorm of the Week," staying up all night, watching a movie and eating cheeseburgers or pizza.

The video's stars are some of the 80 California inmates who transferred to Corrections Corporation of America's West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason last fall in what was the Golden State's first export of prisoners to ease overcrowding. Their taped testimonials are being used in an attempt to entice some of their former jail mates to follow them to the promised land of prisons.

"You're not a number here," one inmate says of the Mason prison. "You come here, it's personalized. It's please, thank you, sirs, you got — I mean you really feel like not so much — I wouldn't say equal, but you feel like a human being in here."

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