In a rally a few days ago, the distinguished gentleman from Vermont has said that he will be introducing legislation to ban private for profit prisons:

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is taking his criminal justice reform platform from the campaign trail to the Senate with a plan to introduce legislation outlawing private prisons when Congress returns from August recess.

Daily Kos first noted that at his Reno, Nevada, rally on Tuesday night, the Independent senator told a gathered crowd of 4,500 supporters that “when Congress reconvenes in September, I will be introducing legislation, which takes corporations out of profiteering from running jails.”

Sanders, who is opposed to building any new prisons, has long advocated against draconian sentencing laws, voting in favor of investments in alternative sentencing and telling the Nevada crowd that he also plans to tackle mandatory minimums for certain crimes:

We want to deal with minimum sentencing. Too many lives have been destroyed for non-violent issues. People that are sent to jail have police records. We have got to change that. Our job is to keep people out of jail, not in jail.

Our system of private gulags is deeply and ineluctably evil.

They serve to create a system where taxpayer money goes to increased incarceration by private companies, who then use political contributions to secure their rents.

It is thoroughly corrupt, and it needs to end now.