Thread: U.S. Prisoners Build Patriot Missiles for 23 cents an hour

BRIEFING: For-Profit Prisons

By Russ Baker on May 1, 2012
Crime is going down in America, but more Americans than ever are in prison—and more and more money is being spent and made turning this country into a giant armed camp.

At WhoWhatWhy, we know you’re busy. So we’re going to give you the key points here in bullet form (links in box at bottom):

-America’s system of detaining and monitoring “criminals” impacts more people than ever before. Including those who are either in some form of incarceration or in the parole and probation process, you’re looking at an affected population of….six million. One out of every 100 Americans is behind bars now. And every year, about 13 million Americans spend some time in jail for at least a brief spell.

-State legislators faced with dwindling revenues are eager to offload inmates to “cheap” private facilities

-The private prison industry grew 350 percent over the past fifteen years.

- Two private companies – Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group– dominate the private prison industry. The biggest company, Corrections Corporation of America, is offering to buy prisons from states as long as they can promise an adequate supply of prisoners to make the deal worthwhile.

-Studies show that private facilities perform badly compared to public ones on almost every metric—prevention of intra-prison violence, jail conditions, rehabilitation efforts—except reducing state budgets and adding to the corporate bottom line.

To keep their gravy train rolling, private prison companies need a few things from state and local government:

1) Lots of people arrested and convicted (often of essentially victimless crimes) and given long sentences. This most heavily impacts young black males—about one in nine of whom is in prison, many for using or selling marijuana, or, to a lesser degree, harder drugs. (Although whites have comparable drug use rates, their prosecution rates are dramatically lower.)

2) Opposition to the decriminalization of drug use, which would cut sharply into prison industry profits. (As a result, it ain’t going to happen.)

3) The continued criminalization and detention of undocumented foreigners.
With serious crime rates dropping, the US has fewer and fewer of the hardest-core (mostly male) criminals who were once prime targets for incarceration. To replace them, the private prison industry needs more young people, more women and (thanks to the immigration snatch game) more children as fodder for detention facilities.

The privatization of prisons is yet another instance of how small-government advocates are driving more and more of our lives into the hands of companies whose only objective is to turn a profit – without concern for larger social consequences.

When public services like incarceration are handled as cheaply as possible, terrifying outcomes can result, including, in this case, unnecessary harm to minor offenders, the hardening of minor offenders into serious criminals, and calls for still more draconian law enforcement and punishment protocols, whose main justification is to keep those for-profit prisons filled.

How bad can it get? A private detention company in Pennsylvania bribed two judges to order youths imprisoned

BRIEFING: For-Profit Prisons - WhoWhatWhy | WhoWhatWhy

Guantanamo firm's UK police bid for £1.5bn police privatisation scheme

• Critics say deal could see private firms playing a role in work traditionally done by officers

By Jack Doyle
PUBLISHED: 18:34 EST, 3 May 2012 | UPDATED: 18:34 EST, 3 May 2012
Comments (19)

A U.S. company which helped to build the Guantanamo Bay detention centre is bidding for a role in a £1.5billion police privatisation scheme.

The West Midlands and Surrey forces are considering bids to run ‘back office’ functions more efficiently in the private sector.

Yesterday it emerged KBR, a former subsidiary of the Halliburton group, is bidding for the work. However, sources said the company was considered an outsider.


KBR, which helped build parts of Guantanamo Bay such as Camp 6 at U.S. Naval Base (above) is bidding for a role in the UK police scheme


Critics say the deal would see private firms playing a role in work traditionally carried out by police officers, such as crime investigation and responding to the public.

Police representatives said the public wanted police officers and not employees of a ‘major international conglomerate’.

Halliburton, an oil company based in Houston, Texas, was run by Dick Cheney before he became US vice president in 2000.

More...

• Sold-off prison vans 'could be used in escapes', Ministry of Justice warns
• Final Parliament Square war protester's tent is removed by police after six-year vigil as High Court lifts injunction
• Former Met officer from unit that protects Royal Family arrested over illegal payments to police

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, KBR won a series of contracts from the Pentagon for logistical support and base-building.

The two companies are now separate and a KBR spokesman said it had introduced a ‘completely new management team’.

Andrew Pringle, UK president of KBR, insisted the firm had ‘no interest in “privatising” the roles of frontline police officers’.

But Julie Nesbit, of the Police Federation, said: ‘This is the latest move that seems to be designed to make the police more and more remote from the public we serve.
Shadow policing minister David Hanson said 'The public don’t want to see core policing provided for profit by big companies.'


‘We believe simply that if you call a cop, you should get a cop, not a security guard, not a uniformed civilian nor an employee of a major international conglomerate.
‘We believe it’s what the public expect and believe that there should be a public debate before parts of the police service are sold off to the highest bidder.’

Forces are looking to the private sector to help them save money. Home Office funding for the police will fall 20 per cent by 2015. But ministers insist forces can maintain the frontline by making efficiency savings.

Lincolnshire Police Authority has signed a contract with private security firm G4S to build and help run a police station.

Cleveland Police Authority has a ten-year contract worth £175million with French firm Steria for computing, call handling, finance and other services.

KBR, which describes itself as an engineering and construction company, has already won Ministry of Defence contracts.

A spokesman said: ‘Like many other companies facing the public sector, KBR is interested in the West Midlands and Surrey Police business transformation and service delivery partnership opportunity.’

Shadow policing minister David Hanson said: ‘The public don’t want to see core policing provided for profit by big companies. The Government is pushing the police too far into contracting out and they should rule out private contracts for these roles.’

Guantanamo firm's UK police bid for £1.5bn police privatisation scheme | Mail Online

America's Top Prison Corporation: A Study in Predatory Capitalism and Cronyism


Dina Rasor
Truthout
Thu, 03 May 2012 23:08 CDT


Last week I wrote about the private prison company The GEO Group and how allowing private businesses to operate prisons can affect our justice system, our laws and the fate of our prison population. This week, I will tackle the largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and its unprecedented proposal to buy prisons from money-strapped states, as well as how CCA has gamed the system with trips through the revolving door, self-dealing and influence peddling.

Just to set the stage as to how large the prison population is in the United States: our prison population is the highest in the world; one out of 100 US residents are in prison. This number has grown dramatically since 1990, due to tighter crime laws and longer sentences. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "Between 1970 and 2005, the number of people incarcerated in the United States grew by 700 percent. Today, the United States incarcerates approximately 2.3 million people."

The private prison population has also been exploding. From the ACLU:

Even compared to this breathtaking rate of overall growth in incarceration, the rate of expansion of for-profit imprisonment far outpaced the field, accounting for a disproportionate increase in the number of people locked up. In 1980, private adult prisons did not exist on American soil, but by 1990 private prison companies had established a firm foothold, boasting 67 for-profit facilities and an average daily population of roughly 7,000 prisoners. During the next twenty years (from 1990 to 2009) the number of people incarcerated in private prisons increased by more than 1600%, growing from approximately 7,000 to approximately 129,000 inmates.

The largest private prison company, CCA, realized that this was going to be a lucrative market and decided to take their marketing and private takeover strategy one step further. In January of this year, they sent a letter to 48 states, many of them strapped for cash, and offered to buy the state prisons and enter a 20-year-plus contract with the states to house their prisoners. This was done under the persistent ruse that private prisons can be run cheaper than state prisons, even though most of the studies prove otherwise.

CCA has a $250 million fund ready to buy prisons from desperate or conservative states who are trying to find anything in the short term to ease their cash flow or privatize as much of the state's functions as possible before the next election.

The Huffington Post received in February a copy of the letter that CCA sent to these 48 states. CCA lays out the stark terms by which the states can get short-term money by selling their prisons:

We want to build on that success and provide our existing or prospective government partners with access to the same opportunity as they manage challenging corrections budgets. Interested parties would execute the sale to CCA and enter into a long-term management contract of 20 years or more.

Physical requirements for facilities that would be eligible for purchase by the fund would include:

• A minimum rated occupancy of 1,000 beds;
• A structure age of no more than 25 years;
• A designation that the structure is suitable for immediate occupation or is alreadyoccupied by an inmate population; and
• An assurance by the agency partner that the agency has sufficient inmatepopulation to maintain a minimum 90 percent occupancy rate over the term of the contract.

So, the state that surrenders their prisons to this arrangement would have to guarantee a 90 percent rate, even if the crime rate drops or there are fewer prisoners because mandatory sentences or three-strike laws are changed, or even if there is a drop in crime due to the decriminalization of certain drugs.

CCA realizes that the prison population may shrink due to a falling crime rate and warns of that problem in their 2010 annual report:

The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior. Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation with electronic monitoring who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates or resources dedicated to prevent and enforce crime could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.

If this language sounds familiar, it is very similar to the language that The GEO Group put in their annual report, which I quoted in last week's article. Like GEO, CCA knows that it may lose market share if our society gets better and we stop imprisoning so many of our citizens.

But the enterprising CCA believes that it has found a way to panic states to sell their prisons in these desperate fiscal times and then lease them back to the states while maintaining a monopoly for 20 years. The old management contracts that private prison companies have with state-owned prisons can be re-competed, but with this ownership arrangement, CCA would be in the driver's seat, and the states would not have the choice to opt out of CCA prisons unless they built new prisons.

According to The Huffington Post, CCA had a company earnings call last year to explain how, despite these dire fiscal times, the company could make money:

"We continue to believe we are very well-positioned in a market that, despite the economic pressures faced by our customers, has provided healthy financial performance,"Corrections Corporation chief executive Damon Hininger said in the company earnings call last November. "Indeed, it is because of these pressures, which lead to severe capital constraints and the need to avoid increasing their pension liabilities, that we believe our value proposition to customers is getting stronger."

CCA based this new marketing strategy on the success it had with Ohio. Late last year, the state of Ohio agreed to sell their Lake Erie Correctional Facility to CCA for around $72 million and even promised to pay CCA for a 90 percent inmate rate even if the inmate population drops below 90 percent. Perhaps CCA's sales pitch had a more favorable audience in Ohio because the current head of Ohio's Department of Corrections, Gary C. Mohr, was formerly a managing director at CCA. Now Ohio will have to honor a contract of 20 years or more and be on the hook to pay CCA for a 90 percent inmate rate, even if crime goes down and they can't fill the prisons. CCA now has a monopoly on that prison.

Based on my knowledge of government contractors and the promises of saving money through privatization, Ohio will not come out on the good side of this deal. CCA has to make a profit, and they will find a way to do it. What will Ohio be able to do about it? Build a new public prison and cancel a contract with CCA that most likely will have a large cancellation fee? Unlikely. One can only hope that cooler heads will prevail in other states and they will not panic and get locked into a 20-year mess with this company.

CCA has also been a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the free market nonprofit that has been making cookie-cutter laws to advance many conservative social and political goals. Although CCA left the council in 2010, according to The Arizona Republic: "for the past few decades, a CCA executive has been a member of the council's [task force that] produced more than 85 model bills and resolutions that required tougher criminal sentencing, expanded immigration enforcement and promoted prison privatization.... CCA's senior director of business development was the private sector chair of the task force in the mid to late 90's when it produced a series of model bills promoting tough-on-crime measures that would send more people to prison for a longer time."

If CCA is successful in buying prisons in other states, those ALEC-based bills should help ensure a 90 percent prison rate for years to come.

Many CCA officials have gone through the revolving door between CCA and state and federal government positions to ensure that the company has influence in all levels of government. Alex Friedmann of the Private Corrections Institute has kept a list of CCA officials who have have kept the revolving door spinning occupying positions of influence within and outside of government.

Here is a list that Friedmann compiled for this column:

• CCA's general counsel, Gustavus A. Puryear IV, was nominated by President Bush for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge in the Middle District of Tennessee, where CCA is headquartered and where numerous lawsuits against the company are filed. Friedmann coordinated a successful opposition campaign that stopped his nomination. Some notable CCA officials who came from the public sector:
  
  
• Board chairman and former CEO John D. Ferguson is a former Tennessee Commissioner of Finance and Administration.
• Board member Donna M. Alvarado was a deputy assistant to the US Secretary of Defense, counsel for the US Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Policy, and staff member of the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.
• Board member Dennis DeConcini is a former US senator from Arizona.
  
• Board member Thurgood Marshall Jr. was cabinet secretary to President Clinton and director of legislative affairs and deputy counsel to Vice President Al Gore.
• Chief Development Officer Tony L. Grande is a former Tennessee commissioner of economic and community Development.
• Chief corrections officer Harley G. Lappin is a former director of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) (he resigned from the BOP shortly after being arrested for driving under the influence).
• Vice President of Facility operations Unit 3 Steven Conry is a former New York Department of Corrections warden and assistant divisional chief.
• Vice President of Partnership Development Natasha Metcalf is a former commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Human Services.
• Senior Vice President J. Michael Quinlan is a former director of the BOP. (He was sued by a BOP employee who claimed Quinlan had sexually harassed him in a hotel room; the case settled confidentially).
• Vice President of Partnership relations Brad Regens, served as director of fiscal policy for the Arizona House of Representatives.
• Vice President of Health Services Herb Spiwak served as regional administrator for the California Department of Corrections.
• Vice President of Facility Operations Unit 1 Ron Thompson spent 31 years with the BOP, including as an assistant director.
• Vice President of Partnership Relations Bart VerHulst is a former chief of staff for former US senator Bill Frist from Tennessee.

The most disappointing name to see on this list is that of Thurgood Marshall Jr., son of the iconic Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. According to his biography on the CCA web site, Marshall has joined other groups that promote social justice. "He serves on the American Bar Association Election Law Committee and serves as a board member of the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, the National Womens Law Center and the Supreme Court Historical Society, and serves on the Ethics Oversight Committee of the United States Olympic Committee." However, Marshall is also a partner in the DC law firm of Bingham McCutchen LLP, advising government contractors, "with communications, political and legal strategies" (read: lobbying and influence peddling).

Considering that his father's work on the Supreme Court concentrated on civil rights and the rights of criminals, it is ironic that Marshall is making good money on the board of directors of the largest private prison company in America. I contacted Marshall to hear his reasons for serving on the board of this company in light of its history of poor treatment of prisoners, but he referred me to CCA's public relations manager, who informed me that Marshall was not available for an interview. For many examples of CCA's abuse of prisoners and of how it cuts corners to increase profits, see the ACLU's Banking on Bondage report and the Private Corrections Institute's web site.

CCA has also garnered success by throwing around plenty of lobbying money in the past few years to help its private-prison concept get a toehold around the country. According to The Arizona Republic:

CCA has spent about $17.6 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies over the past decade, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the effect of money on U.S. politics. The agencies include the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, which contract with private operators such as CCA for immigration-detention centers.

So, is anyone making a dent in CCA's blitz on privatizing as many prisons as possible, or in its notorious lack of care and abuse of its prisoners? Many groups such as the ACLU have been doing reports and urging reform, but Friedmann, who is with Prison Legal News as well as the Private Corrections Institute, is making a bold stand next week at CCA's board meeting in Nashville.

Friedmann, who served ten years in prison and was released in 1999, spent six of those years in a CCA-run prison, so he has firsthand knowledge (albeit with a bias) of CCA's mode of operations. Since his release, he has amassed an impressive amount of information on all private prison companies, but has decided to make a stand on CCA. When I interviewed him for this column, he told me his bold plan to try to make CCA accountable to their stockholders. In his words:

In 2010, I purchased additional shares that gave me a $2,000 stake in the company and held the shares for one year, which qualified me to introduce a shareholder resolution. I did so for the first time in November 2011. My resolution would require CCA to issue biannual reports concerning its efforts to reduce prisoner rape and sexual abuse at its facilities, as well as data for all such incidents during each reporting period.

The resolution is currently pending and will be considered at CCA's annual meeting on May 10 in Nashville, Tennessee, where I reside. CCA filed an objection with the SEC to have the resolution excluded; I retained pro bono counsel to respond, and the SEC ruled in my favor earlier this year.

CCA then included a lengthy objection in their proxy statement urging shareholders to vote against my resolution. I drafted a formal solicitation statement in support of the resolution, filed it with the SEC, and, using SEC rules, required CCA to distribute my statement to around 4,600 shareholders (at my expense).

Meanwhile, I began contacting organizations involved in socially responsible investing, as well as proxy advisory services (Glass Lewis, ISS Governance, etcetera) and institutional CCA shareholders that own over 200,000 shares - such as Wells Fargo, General Electric, Vanguard, Lazard, etcetera. The reception from corporations that own CCA stock has mostly been chilly.

Recently, ISS and another advisory firm, ProxyTell, issued recommendations to vote for my resolution, while Glass-Lewis recommended against. CCA has taken the unusual step of issuing a supplemental proxy statement, again urging shareholders to vote against the resolution.

The entire CCA board of directors, including Marshall, have advised the stockholders to vote against Friedmann's resolution before the annual meeting on May 10.

The Guardian, a British-based newspaper, picked up on Friedmann's battle to force this resolution at the annual meeting and outlined CCA's history of problems of sexual abuse in their prisons.

Friedmann is trying to make a dent in CCA's overwhelming influence and power. He is heading a petition at Change.org to urge CCA's stockholders and management to pass his resolution to help curb rape and sexual abuse at CCA prisons.

CCA and the other private prison companies have made a great effort to lobby and influence beleaguered state governments to increase the number of private prisons in this country. Next week, I will examine how these companies are working on and with the federal government on another potential growth area for the prison population - immigrants who are imprisoned while waiting for deportation. CCA, The GEO Group and other private prison companies are working that system to gain even more of a private-prison foothold in the lucrative sector of federal immigrant detention facilities. I will also explore possible suggestions for reining in the private prison industry from preying on our state and federal governments and our prisoners.

If you are interested in learning more about Friedmann's petition effort, you can view the petition here.

America's Top Prison Corporation: A Study in Predatory Capitalism and Cronyism -- Society's Child -- Sott.net

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

World's Prison Capital is Also #1 in For-Profit Prisons

Joe Wright

The world's prison capital is not the United States, per capita, although it leads the world for its overall prison population. One state far outdoes America itself and incarcerates nearly double the national average.

First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's. (Source)

The U.S. prison business has become the essence of predatory corporatism: it privatizes profits and socializes losses. This combination has led to a situation where correctional facilities have very little incentive to correct the behavior of those who reside within their walls, but every incentive to ensure that new bodies arrive as fast as possible, and keep them in a state of indentured servitude.

Naturally, this is exactly what is happening in Louisiana, as the vast majority of inmates are not housed in state-run prisons, but in those owned by private corporations. The social fallout has been profound.

Corrections Corporation of America has led the charge toward creating a sound business model for those who would profit from crime and punishment since it won the first private prison contract from Tennessee in 1984. CCA has expanded nicely, recently submitting letters to 48 states with an offer to buy their prisons: "In exchange ... for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full." (Source)

America already holds 25% of the world's prison population, with the number of these prisoners held in private prisons rising dramatically over the past 10 years from 2,000 housed in 5 private prisons, to more than 60,000 housed in 100. It is a number expected to rise to 360,000 prisoners over the next decade. (Source) Moreover, as the economy declines, there has even been a revival in debtors prisons, formally abolished in the early 1800s. Perhaps more troubling is the heightened criminalization of children for behavior which previously was considered merely a nuisance, not something worthy of handcuffs and the big house.

A human product clearly has been created and fostered by a system which values the worth of potential inmates as greater than their worth as free human beings. This has led to a captive population that can be put to work creating goods for a multitude of industries for as little as 25 cents per hour, effectively creating a growing resurgence in open slavery; all while a misinformed majority believe that more people under lock and key translates to safer neighborhoods, towns and cities.

The above trends all have converged in Louisiana, and yet have dispelled the myth that more prisoners leads to more safety for the wider society at large. In a comprehensive article for the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Cindy Chang writes:

In the past two decades, Louisiana's prison population has doubled, costing taxpayers billions while New Orleans continues to lead the nation in homicides.

This is the exact type of incongruent outcome that has been noted across the board even economically, where the supposed cost-saving measures of a streamlined private enterprise should theoretically trump bloated state government bureaucracy. However, this is only to assume that we are looking at a real free-market system. What we see instead is collusion between state governments that respond to the lobbying efforts of a prison industry dominated by select mega corporations.

The states write the legislation that paves the way for more criminals to be guaranteed lengthier stays within prison walls where corporate profits can be reaped for shareholders. It is the worst of both worlds.

And for those who care about the treatment and rehabilitation of the inmates who are set for release back into society, the belief that private industry can do a better job is a belief that also falls flat. Despite state-run prisons being generally short-staffed, overcrowded, and underfunded, Louisiana's per-day value on its human commodity within the private prison model is $24.39 - far lower than its state-run counterpart. A focus on maximizing profits has led to a bare-bones, near concentration-camp existence where cost cutting is paramount. This has tremendous social implications, as private prison inmates are mostly serving non-life terms for mostly non-violent offenses, whereas state prison inmates are the most violent, often serving life terms:

In a cruel irony, those who could benefit most are unable to better themselves, while men who will die in prison proudly show off fistfuls of educational certificates.

(...)

Their facilities are cramped and airless compared with the spacious grounds of state prisons, where inmates walk along outdoor breezeways and stay busy with jobs or classes.

In addition to the above, the history that Chang documents of how Louisiana became the world's prison capital through the expansion of the for-profit prison network perfectly illustrates the corporatist mindset:

In the early 1990s, when the incarceration rate was half what it is now, Louisiana was at a crossroads. Under a federal court order to reduce overcrowding, the state had two choices: Lock up fewer people or build more prisons.

It achieved the latter, not with new state prisons -- there was no money for that -- but by encouraging sheriffs to foot the construction bills in return for future profits. The financial incentives were so sweet, and the corrections jobs so sought after, that new prisons sprouted up all over rural Louisiana.

The national prison population was expanding at a rapid clip. Louisiana's grew even faster. There was no need to rein in the growth by keeping sentencing laws in line with those of other states or by putting minor offenders in alternative programs. The new sheriffs' beds were ready and waiting. Overcrowding became a thing of the past, even as the inmate population multiplied rapidly.

As we see the nation's prison populations swell, and observe the concurrent swelling of corporate prison bottom lines, we must look at the ramifications to judge if this is a model worth supporting.

With the highest percentage of its citizens locked up in a for-profit system, Louisiana should be a safe, economically prosperous state if this model is effective in aggressively removing all of the bad elements that threaten society. What we see, however, is the exact opposite: Louisiana is one of the most poverty stricken, uneducated, and dangerous states in the union. The next generation is effectively punished as well by having one or both parents locked away, while the funding needed to potentially break the cycle is diverted toward building more lockups:

Louisiana spends about $663 million a year to feed, house, secure and provide medical care to 40,000 inmates. Nearly a third of that money -- $182 million -- goes to for-profit prisons, whether run by sheriffs or private companies.

'Clearly, the more that Louisiana invests in large-scale incarceration, the less money is available for everything from preschools to community policing that could help to reduce the prison population,' said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a national criminal justice reform group.

A nation that still purports to be the Land of the Free simply cannot continue to say that slogan with a straight face when it has literally invested in slavery. A predatory system -- even if some believe it only preys on other predators -- can only lead to a ruined social landscape like that of Louisiana; a state which should be more properly viewed as a canary in the coal mine for what lies in wait for the rest of America should it fully embrace the monetary value of a prison society.

You can find Cindy Chang's must-read article with additional graphics here:

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/05/louisiana_is_the_worlds_prison.html


Activist Post: World's Prison Capital is Also #1 in For-Profit Prisons

Related: http://www.alipac.us/f19/coup-2012-e...2/#post1286636

Bttt

Related: http://www.alipac.us/f19/obama-admin...agenda-259951/

Happy Independence Day from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation! (Photo: A female inmate works on an American flag while working in the Prison Industries Authority Fabrics program at the Central California Women's Facility on Thursday, April 5, 2012 in Chowchilla, Calif. Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle / SF)

Made in USA by Prison Labor!!!

Bleeding Cash GREEDY CORPORATIS...TS are counting on, and taking advantage of folks' apathy & disdains for prisoners & for "illegal" immigrants to overlook the fact that jobs traditionally performed by skilled workers are taken away from them to be outsourced to cheap prison labor.

Prisoners are exploited by corporations, paid more or less 40 cts/hour, more often less than more, sometimes paid nothing at all, in lieu of the minimum $7.50/hour that corporations would have to pay to law abiding citizens. The difference, quite clearly, contributes to major corporate profits, while folks outside walls are still unemployed and continue to lose their jobs.

When you consider the major corporations that employ prison labor (furniture factories, Microsoft, Boing, IBM, Starbuck, Victoria secret, BP, Sodexo, medical supplies, road signs, military supplies, etc.) you quickly realize that moving jobs back to mainstream America would surely help diminish unemployment figures!!!

So, the higher the incarceration rates, the more outsourcing of jobs to prisons, the higher the unemployment rate, and the more dramatic the race to the bottom for skilled workers.

In the end, here is how the bleeding of the people's cash occurs: 1) incarceration costs paid with our tax money (translated into profits for private prisons and corporations) + 2) unemployment benefits also paid with our tax money for people, whose jobs were outsourced to prisons.

I also believe that the loss of women's rights and the criminalization of women's sexuality is related to for-profit incarceration. One day, a friend of mine raised the following issues on miscarriages, contraception, personhood, etc.: "How could an initiative be on multiple states agenda so suddenly - so out of the blue? What is being swept under the rug by the media?" That's when I understood the connection: The private prison industry is obviously lobbying for more customers! Which other industry or institution would benefit from criminalizing abortion and contraception, you think???

The rationale that some industry creates "jobs" in towns economically deprived, and is therefore justified is morally reprehensible. Hitler's death camps created a lot of civilian jobs also. A job based on locking folks up for economic gains has no justification. It's called human trafficking!!! Don't get fooled by the "it creates jobs" nonsense. Factories, instead of prisons, could also be built in such towns. Instead, factories are investing in prisons to exploit prison labor, instead of paying decent wages to free citizens outside of prisons.

A "job" that results in taking people's freedom away, just so someone can have a "job", a private prison turn a profit, and corporations exploit prison labor, is not a "job"---it's a violent assault on society.

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” Montesquieu

Remember! Germans did not want to know about their Concentration Camps, very much like today's Americans do not want to know about their own Labor Camps, or else they justify their existence for them to cultivate the illusion of a good conscience.

Quote: "In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted… and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie…. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously…even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds…" ~ A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. 1, ch. X

We are faced with a very serious situation, folks!!!

~Monique D'hooghe

Related: http://www.alipac.us/f19/private-pri...ml#post1292736

Buying Prisons Is Big Business For Corporate Slave Traders

Breaking News | April 26, 2012

(Glen Ford) The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, this month sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.

For the last two years, the number of inmates held in state prisons has declined slightly, largely because the states are short on money. Crime, of course, has declined dramatically in the last 20 years, but that has never dampened the states’ appetites for warehousing ever more Black and brown bodies, and the federal prison system is still growing. However, the Corrections Corporation of America believes the economic crisis has created an historic opportunity to become the landlord, as well as the manager, of a big chunk of the American prison gulag.


The attempted prison grab is also defensive in nature. If private companies can gain both ownership and management of enough prisons, they can set the prices without open-bid competition for prison services, creating a guaranteed cost-plus monopoly like that which exists between the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.

“If private companies are allowed to own the deeds to prisons, they are a big step closer to owning the people inside them.”

But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale. The Corrections Corporation of America’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission read very much like the documents of a slave-trader.

Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line.

Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.” The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.” At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

But, there is something even more horrifying than the moral turpitude of the prison capitalists. If private companies are allowed to own the deeds to prisons, they are a big step closer to owning the people inside them.

Many of the same politicians that created the system of mass Black incarceration over the past 40 years, would gladly hand over to private parties all responsibility for the human rights of inmates.

The question of inmates’ rights is hardly raised in the debate over prison privatization. This is a dialogue steeped in slavery and racial oppression. Just as the old slave markets were abolished, so must the Black American Gulag be dismantled – with no compensation to those who traffic in human beings.

Source

Buying Prisons Is A Big Business For Corporate Slave Traders :