"This article will show: first, that mixing profit with the core governmental function of incarceration leads to damaging consequences for prisoners, employees (of both private and public prisons), and the public at large while benefiting a small group of executives and shareholders; second, that the implementation of for-profit incarceration in the United States hampers access to justice, particularly for already marginalized groups; and third, that the serious constitutional concerns noted by Professor Robbins have been borne out, and they now deserve consideration by the United States Supreme Court."
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Showing posts with label private prisons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label private prisons. Show all posts
Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration: U.S. Growth in Private Prisons
"The War on Drugs and harsher sentencing policies, including mandatory minimum sentences, fueled a rapid expansion in the nation’s prison population beginning in the 1980s. The resulting burden on the public sector led to the modern emergence of for-profit private prisons in many states and at the federal level....
This report provides a portrait of private prisons as a component of the American corrections landscape and assesses its impact on mass incarceration....
Political influence has been instrumental in determining the growth of for-profit private prisons and continues today in various ways. If overall prison populations continue the current trend of modest decline, the privatization debate will likely intensify as opportunities for the prison industry dry up and corrections companies seek profit in other areas of criminal justice services and immigration detention."
"The War on Drugs and harsher sentencing policies, including mandatory minimum sentences, fueled a rapid expansion in the nation’s prison population beginning in the 1980s. The resulting burden on the public sector led to the modern emergence of for-profit private prisons in many states and at the federal level....
This report provides a portrait of private prisons as a component of the American corrections landscape and assesses its impact on mass incarceration....
Political influence has been instrumental in determining the growth of for-profit private prisons and continues today in various ways. If overall prison populations continue the current trend of modest decline, the privatization debate will likely intensify as opportunities for the prison industry dry up and corrections companies seek profit in other areas of criminal justice services and immigration detention."
Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Monitoring of Contract Prisons
"Privately run federal prisons are more dangerous than those managed by the Bureau of Prisons and need more oversight, according to a new report from the Justice Department’s watchdog.
These so-called 'contract prisons' are largely low-security facilities, typically holding undocumented male immigrants convicted of federal crimes with less than 7.5 years left on their sentence. They hold more than 22,000 inmates, about 12 percent of the total federal prison population. They are run by three companies: Corrections Corporation of America; GEO Group, Inc.; and Management and Training Corporation.
Privately run facilities 'incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable BOP institutions,' according to the report, released Thursday by the Justice Department’s Inspector General. The DOJ’s internal watchdog said the Bureau of Prisons “'needs to improve how it monitors contract prisons in several areas.'”
View the Report
Another Perspective: Don't End Federal Private Prisons
"Privately run federal prisons are more dangerous than those managed by the Bureau of Prisons and need more oversight, according to a new report from the Justice Department’s watchdog.
These so-called 'contract prisons' are largely low-security facilities, typically holding undocumented male immigrants convicted of federal crimes with less than 7.5 years left on their sentence. They hold more than 22,000 inmates, about 12 percent of the total federal prison population. They are run by three companies: Corrections Corporation of America; GEO Group, Inc.; and Management and Training Corporation.
Privately run facilities 'incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable BOP institutions,' according to the report, released Thursday by the Justice Department’s Inspector General. The DOJ’s internal watchdog said the Bureau of Prisons “'needs to improve how it monitors contract prisons in several areas.'”
View the Report
Another Perspective: Don't End Federal Private Prisons
From Captive to Captor: A Journalist's Journey from Prisoner to Prison Guard
"Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer has spent much of his career reporting on criminal justice. For years he’d been frustrated by the secretive nature of the American private prison industry. Tired of old-fashioned document-hunting, he tried an unconventional approach. He went undercover, spending four months as a prison guard at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana."
View the Full Story
"Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer has spent much of his career reporting on criminal justice. For years he’d been frustrated by the secretive nature of the American private prison industry. Tired of old-fashioned document-hunting, he tried an unconventional approach. He went undercover, spending four months as a prison guard at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana."
View the Full Story
A Shocking Glimpse Inside America's Privatized Detention Facilities for Immigrants
"The opening of Maribel Zelaya’s letter was bleak.
'I cannot bear this punishment any longer,' she began. 'I’m dying of desperation, of this injustice, of this cruelty. We are immigrants, not criminals. To treat us like this, it’s as if they must not have hearts, as if we weren’t human. They treat us like dogs.'
Zelaya was fed up. For more than six months, the 29-year-old asylum seeker had been locked inside the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, an immigrant detention facility in rural Texas. The building, formerly a medium security prison, is a bleak concrete complex surrounded by a wall of chain link fence. Zelaya found the conditions inside the center disturbing; her health began to deteriorate and she fell into a deep depression. At the end of October, she released a searing letter in Spanish describing life inside Hutto, the nation’s only all-women’s detention center.
Like so many of the women at Hutto, Zelaya — whose attorney asked that her full name not be used to protect her safety — was fleeing abuse and a city held hostage by gang violence. But she soon became disillusioned with the grim reality of detention, and decided to stop eating in protest. 'I am glad to participate in this hunger strike,' she wrote. 'It’s an insult, I came here to find shelter but what I got instead is punishment.'”
"The opening of Maribel Zelaya’s letter was bleak.
'I cannot bear this punishment any longer,' she began. 'I’m dying of desperation, of this injustice, of this cruelty. We are immigrants, not criminals. To treat us like this, it’s as if they must not have hearts, as if we weren’t human. They treat us like dogs.'
Zelaya was fed up. For more than six months, the 29-year-old asylum seeker had been locked inside the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, an immigrant detention facility in rural Texas. The building, formerly a medium security prison, is a bleak concrete complex surrounded by a wall of chain link fence. Zelaya found the conditions inside the center disturbing; her health began to deteriorate and she fell into a deep depression. At the end of October, she released a searing letter in Spanish describing life inside Hutto, the nation’s only all-women’s detention center.
Like so many of the women at Hutto, Zelaya — whose attorney asked that her full name not be used to protect her safety — was fleeing abuse and a city held hostage by gang violence. But she soon became disillusioned with the grim reality of detention, and decided to stop eating in protest. 'I am glad to participate in this hunger strike,' she wrote. 'It’s an insult, I came here to find shelter but what I got instead is punishment.'”
Meet The Companies That Just Promised To Pull 60 Million Dollars From Private Prisons
Three investment groups announced this week that they will divest
from the two major private prison corporations that constitute a massive
share of America’s prison-industrial complex.
Scopia Capital, DSM, and Amica Mutual Insurance have all pledged to remove their collective investments of about $60,000,000 from the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group — the two prison companies that own 75 percent of the nation’s private prisons. The decision to divest comes on the heels of pressure from Color Of Change, a racial and economic justice advocacy group that ran a campaign asking a total 150 companies to stop investing in the private prison industry.
Read on...
Scopia Capital, DSM, and Amica Mutual Insurance have all pledged to remove their collective investments of about $60,000,000 from the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group — the two prison companies that own 75 percent of the nation’s private prisons. The decision to divest comes on the heels of pressure from Color Of Change, a racial and economic justice advocacy group that ran a campaign asking a total 150 companies to stop investing in the private prison industry.
Read on...
Arizona Lawmaker Slips $900K Into Budget For Private Prison Company
One of the world’s largest private prison corporations already has a
$45 million contract with the state of Arizona. But without amending
that contract with GEO Group, Inc., a lawmaker financially tied to the
prison firm inserted almost another $1 million into the state budget for
it.
The House approved the budget with the $900,000 allocation to GEO, a multinational corporation based in Boca Raton, Fla. Yet after a spate of phone calls and emails, the Senate Appropriations Committee removed the funding from its version of the bill, the Arizona Republic reports.
Rep. John Kavanagh (R), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, included extra funding in the budget despite no support from the state’s Department of Corrections, which contracts with GEO. Pivotal Policy Consulting, the lobbying firm that represents GEO, requested the favor. GEO is the top financial contributor for Kavanagh, whose past work includes championing racial profiling in Arizona and criminalizing transgender people.
Read on....
The House approved the budget with the $900,000 allocation to GEO, a multinational corporation based in Boca Raton, Fla. Yet after a spate of phone calls and emails, the Senate Appropriations Committee removed the funding from its version of the bill, the Arizona Republic reports.
Rep. John Kavanagh (R), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, included extra funding in the budget despite no support from the state’s Department of Corrections, which contracts with GEO. Pivotal Policy Consulting, the lobbying firm that represents GEO, requested the favor. GEO is the top financial contributor for Kavanagh, whose past work includes championing racial profiling in Arizona and criminalizing transgender people.
Read on....
Private Prison Company Allegedly Put 73-Year-Old Grandmother In Solitary Confinement For 34 Days
Carol Lester, a 73-year-old grandmother serving time in New Mexico
Women’s Correctional Facility in Grants, is suing Corrections
Corporation of America, one of the largest private prison companies in
the world, and Corizon, Inc, a private prison health care company, for
denying her medical care and keeping her in solitary confinement for
over a month.
Lester’s lawsuit, filed in late November, charges that the warden deliberately put her in solitary confinement because she complained to lawmakers and Department of Corrections officials that she and other women were being denied medical care.
Lester plead guilty to embezzling money from her employer to feed a gambling addiction in 2010. Soon after beginning her three-year sentence, the lawsuit charges that the privately run prison stopped giving her the prescribed medication she had been taking for thyroid cancer and gave her a new medication that made her sick. Lester started fainting on a regular basis, and medical staff told her she may have a serious heart condition. However, they did not send her to a specialist or a hospital, and her health deteriorated rapidly.
Read on....
Lester’s lawsuit, filed in late November, charges that the warden deliberately put her in solitary confinement because she complained to lawmakers and Department of Corrections officials that she and other women were being denied medical care.
Lester plead guilty to embezzling money from her employer to feed a gambling addiction in 2010. Soon after beginning her three-year sentence, the lawsuit charges that the privately run prison stopped giving her the prescribed medication she had been taking for thyroid cancer and gave her a new medication that made her sick. Lester started fainting on a regular basis, and medical staff told her she may have a serious heart condition. However, they did not send her to a specialist or a hospital, and her health deteriorated rapidly.
Read on....
For-Profit Prisons Are Big Winners Of California's Overcrowding Crisis
When America's largest private prison company opened a 2,000-bed
facility in a barren stretch of the Mojave Desert in southeastern
California in 1997, there was no guarantee that any inmates would ever
reside there.
California's exceptionally powerful prison guard union was waging a fierce campaign against private prison companies, telling voters that the facilities were poorly run and that the industry would take away union jobs. "Public safety should not be for profit," Don Novey, president of the prison guard union, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.
Still, David Myers, the president of Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville-based giant of the for-profit prison industry, believed his company's decision to build a prison in that remote corner of the state would eventually pay off.
"If we build it, they will come," he predicted.
Read on...
California's exceptionally powerful prison guard union was waging a fierce campaign against private prison companies, telling voters that the facilities were poorly run and that the industry would take away union jobs. "Public safety should not be for profit," Don Novey, president of the prison guard union, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.
Still, David Myers, the president of Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville-based giant of the for-profit prison industry, believed his company's decision to build a prison in that remote corner of the state would eventually pay off.
"If we build it, they will come," he predicted.
Read on...
6 Reasons Privatization Often Ends in Disaster
Private systems are focused on making profits for a few
well-positioned people. Public systems, when sufficiently supported by
taxes, work for everyone in a generally equitable manner.
The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn't work.
The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top
The federal Medicare Administrator made $170,000 in 2010. The president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas made over ten times as much in 2012. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made almost 300 timesas much in one year, $48 million, most of it from company stock.
In part because of such inequities in compensation, our private health care system is the most expensive system in the developed world. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Two of the documented examples: an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, for which a private insurance company was willing to pay $2,000.
Read on...
The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn't work.
The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top
The federal Medicare Administrator made $170,000 in 2010. The president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas made over ten times as much in 2012. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made almost 300 timesas much in one year, $48 million, most of it from company stock.
In part because of such inequities in compensation, our private health care system is the most expensive system in the developed world. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Two of the documented examples: an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, for which a private insurance company was willing to pay $2,000.
Read on...
Locking Up Millions of Americans Isn't Just About Punishing the Underclass, It's About Raking in the Dough
The murder of a teenage boy by an armed vigilante, George Zimmerman, is
only one crime set within a legal and penal system that has criminalized
poverty.
Debbie Bourne, 45, was at her apartment in the Liberty Village
housing projects in Plainfield, N.J., on the afternoon of April 30 when
police banged on the door and pushed their way inside. The officers
ordered her, her daughter, 14, and her son, 22, who suffers from autism,
to sit down and not move and then began ransacking the home. Bourne’s
husband, from whom she was estranged and who was in the process of
moving out, was the target of the police, who suspected him of dealing
cocaine. As it turned out, the raid would cast a deep shadow over the
lives of three innocents—Bourne and her children.
The murder of a teenage boy by an armed vigilante, George Zimmerman, is only one crime set within a legal and penal system that has criminalized poverty. Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jails and prisons, however, they each can generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year. This use of the bodies of the poor to make money for corporations fuels the system of neoslavery that defines our prison system.
Prisoners often work inside jails and prisons for nothing or at most earn a dollar an hour. The court system has been gutted to deny the poor adequate legal representation. Draconian drug laws send nonviolent offenders to jail for staggering periods of time. Our prisons routinely use solitary confinement, forms of humiliation and physical abuse to keep prisoners broken and compliant, methods that international human rights organizations have long defined as torture. Individuals and corporations that profit from prisons in the United States perpetuate a form of neoslavery. The ongoing hunger strike by inmates in the California prison system is a slave revolt, one that we must encourage and support. The fate of the poor under our corporate state will, if we remain indifferent and passive, become our own fate. This is why on Wednesday I will join prison rights activists, including Cornel West and Michael Moore, in a one-day fast in solidarity with the hunger strike in the California prison system.
Read on....
The murder of a teenage boy by an armed vigilante, George Zimmerman, is only one crime set within a legal and penal system that has criminalized poverty. Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jails and prisons, however, they each can generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year. This use of the bodies of the poor to make money for corporations fuels the system of neoslavery that defines our prison system.
Prisoners often work inside jails and prisons for nothing or at most earn a dollar an hour. The court system has been gutted to deny the poor adequate legal representation. Draconian drug laws send nonviolent offenders to jail for staggering periods of time. Our prisons routinely use solitary confinement, forms of humiliation and physical abuse to keep prisoners broken and compliant, methods that international human rights organizations have long defined as torture. Individuals and corporations that profit from prisons in the United States perpetuate a form of neoslavery. The ongoing hunger strike by inmates in the California prison system is a slave revolt, one that we must encourage and support. The fate of the poor under our corporate state will, if we remain indifferent and passive, become our own fate. This is why on Wednesday I will join prison rights activists, including Cornel West and Michael Moore, in a one-day fast in solidarity with the hunger strike in the California prison system.
Read on....
Private Prisons Expect To Profit From Immigration Reform
The Senate’s immigration reform bill could provide a boon to private prison companies, the Wall Street Journal reports, increasing the federal prison population “by 14,000 inmates annually” at a cost of $1.6 billion over 10 years.
The legislation invests billions in border security technology, doubles the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents, and authorizes funds “to triple the number of prosecutions of people violating immigration laws along a portion of the U.S. border in Arizona.” “The total additional costs to detain, prosecute, and incarcerate offenders would total $3.1 billion over the 2014–2023 period,” the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Industry officials had been cautious of the legislation’s impacts on the prison business, as reform would decriminalize the estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants. But analysts predict that additional spending on border security would almost definitely “boost revenue at privately operated prisons” with private contractors snagging 80 percent of additional inmates.
Read on....
The legislation invests billions in border security technology, doubles the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents, and authorizes funds “to triple the number of prosecutions of people violating immigration laws along a portion of the U.S. border in Arizona.” “The total additional costs to detain, prosecute, and incarcerate offenders would total $3.1 billion over the 2014–2023 period,” the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Industry officials had been cautious of the legislation’s impacts on the prison business, as reform would decriminalize the estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants. But analysts predict that additional spending on border security would almost definitely “boost revenue at privately operated prisons” with private contractors snagging 80 percent of additional inmates.
Read on....
Private Prison Executive Isn’t Telling The Truth About GEO’s Record Of Juvenile Abuse
In the wake of the announcement
that Florida Atlantic University would name its football stadium after
private prison corporation GEO Group for a hefty price, an executive at
the company is disseminating false and misleading information about the
firm’s practices and documented abuses at its facilities.
In both a statement to reporters and an op-ed, GEO Vice President for Corporate Relations Pablo Paez has falsely claimed that horrific abuses at a GEO juvenile detention facility in Mississippi described by the Department of Justice as “systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls” occurred before GEO took control of the prison, even though both DOJ and court documents clearly show otherwise. ACLU National Prison Project Staff Attorney Carl Takei explains in a column:
Last week, [Paez] e-mailed a statement to reporters decrying the news coverage as “unfair,” particularly with regard to Walnut Grove. He wrote:
In both a statement to reporters and an op-ed, GEO Vice President for Corporate Relations Pablo Paez has falsely claimed that horrific abuses at a GEO juvenile detention facility in Mississippi described by the Department of Justice as “systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls” occurred before GEO took control of the prison, even though both DOJ and court documents clearly show otherwise. ACLU National Prison Project Staff Attorney Carl Takei explains in a column:
Last week, [Paez] e-mailed a statement to reporters decrying the news coverage as “unfair,” particularly with regard to Walnut Grove. He wrote:
“For instance, a number of media reports
cite problems at a facility formerly operated by GEO in Mississippi, the
Walnut Grove Correctional Facility, quoting a report by the Department
of Justice issued in November 2010. What those media reports fail to
disclose is that our company only assumed management of the facility in
late August 2010, and the findings related to problems that preceded
GEO’s involvement at the facility, when it was operated by [a] different
private operator.”
Students Occupy University President’s Office To Protest Naming Stadium After Private Prison Company
Last week, the administration of Florida Atlantic University raised eyebrows when officials announced
that they had sold the naming rights to the school’s new football
stadium to the GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison
company.
And students aren’t taking the deal lying down. On Monday afternoon, dozens of activists staged a sit-in inside university President Mary Jo Saunders’ office demanding FAU revoke their agreement with GEO Group. After two hours, Saunders agreed to schedule a public meeting with the university community, according to the Palm Beach Post:
After some negotiations, Saunders emerged from her office for a brief meeting with the protesters, who have accused the GEO Group of human rights violations at its facilities, some of which are in Florida.
Read on...
And students aren’t taking the deal lying down. On Monday afternoon, dozens of activists staged a sit-in inside university President Mary Jo Saunders’ office demanding FAU revoke their agreement with GEO Group. After two hours, Saunders agreed to schedule a public meeting with the university community, according to the Palm Beach Post:
After some negotiations, Saunders emerged from her office for a brief meeting with the protesters, who have accused the GEO Group of human rights violations at its facilities, some of which are in Florida.
Read on...
Private Prison Executive Says Lying To A Federal Agency Is Just Fine
A high-level executive at the nation’s second-largest private prison corporation
testified under oath that it would not be wrong to give false testimony
to a federal agency, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
according to a video recently posted on YouTube.
The testimony came in a case alleging that GEO Group Senior Vice
President of Project Development Thomas Wierdsma threatened to use his
position at GEO to have his then daughter-in-law’s immigration status investigated by ICE if she spoke out about domestic abuse.
Read on...
ATTORNEY: You would agree it would be wrong to give false testimony against somebody, correct?Watch it:
WIERDSMA: Um [long pause]. Yes.
ATTORNEY: Similarly, would it be wrong to give false testimony to a federal agency?
WIERDSMA: No, not at all. Happens all the time.
Read on...
How lawmakers and lobbyists keep a lock on the private prison business
Private prison corporations say they don't lobby on custodial policy. They seem to find legislators with views aligned anyway
Early in August, the Associated Press reported that America's three largest private prison companies, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group, Inc and Management and Training Corp spent in the region of $45m over the past 10 years in lobbying state and federal governments. During the same period, these companies saw their profits soar as they scored more government contracts.
During the same period, various pieces of legislation got passed ensuring that immigrant detention, in particular, would remain a lucrative growth market. The companies get defensive, however, if anyone attempts to draw a connection between their lobbying efforts and their booming businesses. But whatever the purpose of the lobbying, the very fact that these companies, which perform a public service using taxpayer funds, are first and foremost profit-making entities highlights the flawed incentivisation of the private prison model and its growing presence in the American criminal justice system.
I'll get to the lobbying in a moment, but first let's have a look at that flawed incentive. Thanks to mandatory sentencing laws and the "war on drugs", the prison population has exploded over the past 30 years – to the point where it has become an untenable burden on state budgets. As a result, many state lawmakers have begun to look at ways to reduce their prison populations. This is good for society, as needlessly locking people up for excessive periods for nonviolent crimes has proven to be counter-productive and cost-prohibitive – not to mention inhumane.
Read on....
Early in August, the Associated Press reported that America's three largest private prison companies, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group, Inc and Management and Training Corp spent in the region of $45m over the past 10 years in lobbying state and federal governments. During the same period, these companies saw their profits soar as they scored more government contracts.
During the same period, various pieces of legislation got passed ensuring that immigrant detention, in particular, would remain a lucrative growth market. The companies get defensive, however, if anyone attempts to draw a connection between their lobbying efforts and their booming businesses. But whatever the purpose of the lobbying, the very fact that these companies, which perform a public service using taxpayer funds, are first and foremost profit-making entities highlights the flawed incentivisation of the private prison model and its growing presence in the American criminal justice system.
I'll get to the lobbying in a moment, but first let's have a look at that flawed incentive. Thanks to mandatory sentencing laws and the "war on drugs", the prison population has exploded over the past 30 years – to the point where it has become an untenable burden on state budgets. As a result, many state lawmakers have begun to look at ways to reduce their prison populations. This is good for society, as needlessly locking people up for excessive periods for nonviolent crimes has proven to be counter-productive and cost-prohibitive – not to mention inhumane.
Read on....
Private Prisons Cost Arizona $3.5 Million More Per Year Than State-Run Prisons
Private prisons, touted as a cost-efficient alternative to state-run
penitentiaries, are not living up to their promises in at least one
state. A new study
of Arizona’s private prisons finds that the state is actually losing
money — $3.5 million a year — by turning their inmates over to
for-profit corporations.
According to the Tucson Citizen’s analysis of Arizona’s three oldest private prison contracts, the rate to hold one prisoner for one night has increased 13.9% since the contracts were awarded. Compared to the cost of state-run prisons, Arizona overpaid for its private prison beds by $10 million between 2008 and 2010.
The cost of these private prison contracts was no surprise to the legislators who awarded them. In an earlier investigation, the Citizen discovered the Legislature was well aware how expensive the private prisons were and simply circumvented a law requiring corporations to show cost savings before receiving a contract. In 2012, the Legislature repealed the requirement entirely — as well as a requirement that the state conduct a review comparing the quality of private and public prisons.
After removing any incentive to maintain facilities, the Legislature made things even easier for these corporations by guaranteeing their prisons will always be 100 percent occupied:
Read on...
According to the Tucson Citizen’s analysis of Arizona’s three oldest private prison contracts, the rate to hold one prisoner for one night has increased 13.9% since the contracts were awarded. Compared to the cost of state-run prisons, Arizona overpaid for its private prison beds by $10 million between 2008 and 2010.
The cost of these private prison contracts was no surprise to the legislators who awarded them. In an earlier investigation, the Citizen discovered the Legislature was well aware how expensive the private prisons were and simply circumvented a law requiring corporations to show cost savings before receiving a contract. In 2012, the Legislature repealed the requirement entirely — as well as a requirement that the state conduct a review comparing the quality of private and public prisons.
After removing any incentive to maintain facilities, the Legislature made things even easier for these corporations by guaranteeing their prisons will always be 100 percent occupied:
Read on...
Canada Studying Private Firms for Prisons as Budgets Fall
Canada is studying the use of
private companies to deliver some prison services as it cuts
spending and imposes tougher sentences on criminals, which may
benefit companies like GEO Group Inc. (GEO)
Correctional Service Canada, which oversees federal prisons, “may consider” partnerships with private firms to provide “basic institutional services such as cleaning and food preparation,” says a memo prepared for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews in advance of a May 14 meeting with Crispin Blunt, U.K. Minister of State for Prisons in London.
Officials in the department urged Toews to discuss Canada’s “interest in considering the privatization of penitentiary services on a limited basis,” according to the memo obtained by Bloomberg News under Canada’s freedom-of-information law.
Public Safety officials were lobbied by the GEO Group as the government was preparing legislation to introduce or lengthen mandatory sentences for some types of crime. The annual budget of Correctional Service Canada, which reports to Toews, will fall to C$2.86 billion ($2.81 billion) by the year beginning April 2014 from C$3.03 billion in the current fiscal year, according to agency planning documents.
Read on...
Correctional Service Canada, which oversees federal prisons, “may consider” partnerships with private firms to provide “basic institutional services such as cleaning and food preparation,” says a memo prepared for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews in advance of a May 14 meeting with Crispin Blunt, U.K. Minister of State for Prisons in London.
Officials in the department urged Toews to discuss Canada’s “interest in considering the privatization of penitentiary services on a limited basis,” according to the memo obtained by Bloomberg News under Canada’s freedom-of-information law.
Public Safety officials were lobbied by the GEO Group as the government was preparing legislation to introduce or lengthen mandatory sentences for some types of crime. The annual budget of Correctional Service Canada, which reports to Toews, will fall to C$2.86 billion ($2.81 billion) by the year beginning April 2014 from C$3.03 billion in the current fiscal year, according to agency planning documents.
Read on...
The Unbelievable Brutality Unleashed on Kids in For-Profit Prisons
Privatization of the youth prison industry handed soaring profits to
GEO, but a history of brutal injustice to its incarcerated youth and
their families.
Michael McIntosh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had come to visit his son at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility near Jackson, Miss., only to be turned away. His son wasn’t there.
Michael McIntosh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had come to visit his son at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility near Jackson, Miss., only to be turned away. His son wasn’t there.
“I said, ‘Well, where is he?’ They said, ‘We don’t know.’”
Thus
began a search for his son Mike that lasted more than six weeks.
Desperate for answers, he repeatedly called the prison and the
Mississippi Department of Corrections. “I was running out of options.
Nobody would give me an answer, from the warden all the way to the
commissioner.”
Finally, a nurse at the prison gave him a clue: Check the area hospitals.
After
more frantic phone calls, he found Mike in a hospital in Greenwood,
hours away. He was shocked at what he saw. His son could barely move,
let alone sit up. He couldn’t see or talk or use his right arm. “He’s
got this baseball-size knot on the back of his head,” McIntosh said.
“He’s got cuts all over him, bruises. He has stab wounds. The teeth in
the front are broken. He’s scared out of his mind. He doesn’t have a
clue where he’s at – or why.”
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