Leading the movement to fight back against the private prison industry, New Hampshire rejected all bids last month to house private prisons in the state, and passed a bill in the House to prohibit the private facilities that profit from incarceration. But the bill died in the Senate Thursday along party lines, with opponents saying they wanted to retain the flexibility to contract with private facilities in the future. The New Hampshire Union Leader reports:

Supporters of the bill said private prisons often maximize profits at the expense of prisoners who are separated from their families. They said private prisons focus on driving costs down while paying scant attention to rehabilitating inmates, which the state has an incentive to do to keep them out of corrections system once they are released.

But opponents say the state should not tie its hands and it needs the flexibility in the future, particularly in an emergency if a prison burned.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Sen. Chuck Morse, R-Salem, said there are no contracts on the horizon for using private prisons or turning the state’s prison system over to a private company to manage.

The bill is not needed, he said, adding that the discussion began two years ago when former Gov. John Lynch proposed looking into prison privatization.

Opponents also said they wanted to have the option to use private prisons in the event of an emergency, even though the bill contained a provision that explicitly allowed the state to transfer inmates to a private facility in an emergency. New Hampshire’s new governor has been vocal in her opposition to private prisons, and under her leadership, the state recently rejected every proposal to site private prisons in the state, citing their insufficient understanding of court-mandated standards of inmate care. A legislative change, however, would have prevented new proposals from being solicited and considered next year.

Private prisons have a perverse incentive to lobby for imprisonment in a country that already has the world’s highest rate of incarceration. In 2012, both GEO Group and Management & Training Corp. contributed to the campaigns of Republican state officials whose agency commissioned studies of private prison proposals. And Corrections Corporation of America had in the past contributed to the campaigns of then-Gov. John Lynch, who had solicited the private prison bids. As of April 2012, all three private prison firms had at least two lobbyists in the state.

NH State Rep. Stella Tremblay (R)

Several days after suggesting the Boston Bombing was perpetrated by the U.S. government, New Hampshire State Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-NH) doubled down on the claim Tuesday. In an interview on the radio show of anti-government conspiracy theorist Pete Santilli, Tremblay opined that since photos of a victim who lost his legs did not appear to show him “in shock” or “screaming in agony,” the attack must have been staged.

Citing Alex Jones and his conspiracy theory site Infowars, Tremblay notes that while she once believed 9/11 was a real attack by terrorists, 9/11 “truthers” have opened her eyes. This attack too, she argues, was a “Black Ops” attack staged — apparently unconvincingly — by the federal government:

TREMBLY: And the more I looked at this, in my heart, something told me there’s something wrong here. You just have to look at that backpack and you can see. If there’s an explosion, the backpack is blown to smithereens. There’s nothing left. What was it doing just laying there? Then, my first gut reaction seeing the horror of that person that had their legs blown off… you know, with the bone sticking out? And he was not in shock. I looked and I thought there’s something… I don’t know what’s wrong, but it seems surreal to me. I talked to my sister, who’s not into politics at all, and she said, “Yea, I saw the same thing.” He was not in shock. He was not in pain. If I had had those type of injuries, I’d be screaming in agony.

Listen to the interview (HT: Miscellany Blue):

A two-term member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Tremblay has sponsored unsuccessful legislation to require state candidates to disclose whether they support their party’s official platform and all personal affiliations and to make New Hampshire recognize a never ratified constitutional amendment that would have stripped citizenship from any American who accepts, claims, receives, or retains any title of nobility or honor or any present, pension, office or emolument, without Congressional permission, “from any Emperor, King, Prince or foreign power.”

According to the Huffington Post, Tremblay also previously sent an email to House colleagues with a doctored video purporting to show President Obama admitting he was not born in the United States (she herself was born in Italy) and once falsely told a legislative committee that President Woodrow Wilson (who died in 1924) had been a supporter of Adolf Hitler.

New Hampshire State Rep. Peter Hansen (R) sparked a firestorm in the state house after he sent a recent email to an internal house listserv that referred to women as “vaginas.” Hansen was defending the state’s “stand your ground” bill, which one lawmaker had challenged with stories about how retreating from a confrontational situation is more effective than escalating it with weapons. Hansen managed to offend both sides of the aisle in a mangled argument claiming children and “vaginas” need to be able to defend themselves:

There were two critical ingredients missing in the illustrious stories purporting to demonstrate the practical side of retreat. Not that retreat may not be possible mind you. What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels of Amsterdam? Why children and vagina’s [sic] of course. While the tales relate the actions of a solitary male the outcome cannot relate to similar situations where children and women and mothers are the potential victims. The presence of one or both ingredients demands that a potential totally different outcome might have prevailed and that is the factor which I believe was dismissed in the HB 135 debate and vote.

Hansen quickly raised the ire of his colleagues. State Rep. Rick Watrous (D-NH) incredulously replied, “Are you really using ‘vaginas’ as a crude catch-all for women? Really?” Later, State Republican chair Jennifer Horn released a strongly worded statement denouncing Hansen: “Representative Hansen’s comments are crude, offensive and have no place in public discourse. There is no excuse for anybody to use such disrespectful language — especially an elected official. I strongly condemn his disrespectful and shameful remarks.”

NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire also blasted the dismissive comment, saying “Women are more than their reproductive organs…We deserve more than being referenced by our body parts.”

Hansen is surrounded by clear evidence of this. This year, New Hampshire became the only state with an entirely female Congressional delegation and a female governor. Both the Speaker of the House and the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s chief justice are also women.

Despite the backlash from all sides, Hansen has barely apologized. In an another email responding to the outcry, Hansen wrote, “Having a fairly well educated mind I do not need self appointed wardens to A: try to put words in my mouth for political gain and B: Turn a well founded strategy in communication into an insulting accusation, and finally if you find the noun vagina insulting or in some way offensive then perhaps a better exercise might be for you to re-examine your psyche.”

Later, he released a statement claiming he was taken out of context, saying “It was not, and is not, my intention to demean women at any time. It is apparent that the intent of my remarks has been misinterpreted, the true goal of the message lost and for that I apologize to those who took offense.”

The New Hampshire House of Representatives is on a criminal justice roll. Last week, legislators voted to prohibit private prisons. This week, they passed a bill to repeal the ALEC-sponsored Stand Your Ground law, which authorizes the unfettered use of deadly force in self-defense. The NRA-backed laws, also known as “Kill at Will,” gained notoriety after the tragic killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. Police cited Florida’s Stand Your Ground law as the reason for not initially arresting the suspect in that case. Reuters reports:

The National Rifle Association and gun rights supporters had campaigned to defeat the bill repealing the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law, arguing the change would embolden criminals and lead to greater violence against women.

The bill passed by a roll call vote of 189-184 after a heated debate. The proposed change may face tougher odds in the state Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans.

If repealed, the state would return to the so-called “castle doctrine” under which there is a duty to retreat from a threatening situation unless it occurs inside a person’s home. […]

New Hampshire passed a number of laws loosening control on gun usage in 2011, when Republicans commanded large majorities in both chambers. Since regaining control of the House, Democrats have sought to push back on some of these measures.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, a Florida committee to reform the bill stacked with lawmakers who first proposed the law did not recommend any substantive changes, in spite of empirical research finding these laws were associated with a significant increase in homicides. Some 21 states have laws establishing that there is no duty to retreat, and at least nine include language stating that one may “stand his or her ground,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The NRA has gone so far to offer insurance to cover the costs of a Stand Your Ground defense.

The New Hampshire House voted today to prohibit private prisons in the Granite State, countering progress the industry has made elsewhere around the country.

The New Hampshire Union Leader has more:

The House on Thursday voted to forbid the executive branch from privatizing the state prison system, saying that to do so would shirk the state’s constitutional responsibility to rehabilitate inmates.

The 197-136 roll call by the Democratic -controlled House sent House Bill 443 to the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim, 13-11 majority and the bill’s fate is uncertain, at best.

The legislation, while prohibiting prison privatization, allows the governor to enter into a temporary contract with a private provider during times of a “corrections emergency” with the approval of the Executive Council.

The move is an abrupt shift in New Hampshire, where just last year the legislature had considered a bill to send its entire male prison population to private prisons.

The problems with private prisons are too numerous to spell out in full, but here are a few highlights.

At its core, the entire private prison industry profits when people are imprisoned, meaning stricter drug and immigration laws produce larger profits. Private prison operators know this, and have spent more than $45 million on lobbying federal and state lawmakers over the past decade, including top Republicans influencing the immigration debate. Indeed, the CEO of one of the largest private prison groups, the Corrections Corporation of America, assured investors on a recent call that there would continue to be “strong demand” for prison cells, even after immigration reform. The industry stands to rake in $5.1 billion detaining immigrants alone.

Though conservatives regularly argue privatizing industries makes them leaner and more cost-effective, the opposite is true for prisons. In Arizona, for example, private prisons cost $3.5 million per year more than state-run prisons. In Florida, the state has started laying people off after privatizing prisoners’ health care. In addition, private prisons are riddled with violations, including emergency procedures and cleanliness.