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  1. #11
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    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 :
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  3. #13
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Private Prisons Cost Arizona $3.5 Million More Per Year Than State-Run Prisons

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    thinkprogress.org
    August 6, 2012

    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.


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    Private Prisons Cost Arizona $3.5 Million More Per Year Than State-Run Prisons :
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  4. #14
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    Factory owners: Federal prisoners stealing our business

    By Emily Jane Fox @CNNMoney
    August 14, 2012: 11:34 AM ET


    American Apparel Inc., which manufactures Army uniforms in Alabama, has laid off 150 workers as a result of going head-to-head with Unicor for government contracts.

    NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Just hearing the word Unicor is enough to make Kurt Wilson see red.

    Unicor is a government-run enterprise that employs over 13,000 inmates -- at wages as low as 23 cents an hour -- to make goods for the Pentagon and other federal agencies.

    With some exceptions, Unicor gets first dibs on federal contracts over private companies as long as its bid is comparable in price, quantity and delivery. In other words: If Unicor wants a contract, it gets it.

    And that makes Wilson and other small business owners angry.

    Wilson has been competing with Unicor for 20 years. He's an executive at American Apparel Inc., an Alabama company that makes military uniforms. (It is not affiliated with the international retailer of the same name.) He has gone head-to-head with Unicor on just about every product his company makes -- and said he has laid off 150 people over the years as a result.

    "We pay employees $9 on average," Wilson said. "They get full medical insurance, 401(k) plans and paid vacation. Yet we're competing against a federal program that doesn't pay any of that."

    Unicor, also known as Federal Prison Industries, is part of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. It has been preparing inmates for jobs after they get out since 1934.

    The program has 83 factories and makes goods in seven industries -- apparel being the biggest ticket. Unicor made over $900 million in revenue last year and faces more heat from businesses and lawmakers as the economy takes a toll on small manufacturers.

    Related: Can the U.S. handle a manufacturing comeback?

    In Olive Hill, Ky., apparel factory Ashland Sales and Service, Co. has been making windbreakers for the Air Force for 14 years, says Michael Mansh, who runs the factory. Last February, when he learned that Unicor was eyeing the contract, he reached out to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell.
    McConnell, one of the top Republicans on Capitol Hill, issued a public statement urging Unicor to back off. The next day, it did.

    With 100 employees, Mansh said Ashland is Olive Hill's largest employer. And he said losing the Air Force contract would have shut the factory down.

    "That's 100 people buying groceries. We use trucking companies in the town, buy parts and light bulbs there every day," he said. "That's all lost when prisons take away contracts."

    Unicor is not required to pay its workers minimum wage and instead pays inmates 23 cents to $1.15 an hour. It doesn't have health insurance costs. It also doesn't shell out federal, state or local taxes.

    Related: Fiscal cliff threatens small businesses

    Advocates for private sector companies are loudly campaigning for reform of Unicor's preferential status.

    Unemployment has been over 8% for nearly four years "and there's a federal program tanking our industry," said Kurt Courtney, director of government relations at the American Apparel and Footwear Association. "The only way for workers to get jobs back is to go to prison. There's got to be a better way to do this."

    In 2008, Congress amended the law to limit Unicor's advantage for certain kinds of Pentagon contracts. Now a bill in the House supported by 28 lawmakers from both parties would go further and require Unicor to compete across the board. The bill also provides alternative ways for training inmates, who would instead work for charities, religious organizations, local governments or school districts.

    "We know that in the recovery, many new jobs are coming out of small businesses," said Rep. Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican who introduced the bill. "It makes no sense to strangle them in the cradle."

    Huizenga expects a similar bill to be introduced in the Senate in the coming months.

    Unicor doesn't agree with the criticism. According to spokeswoman Julie Rozier, inmates working for Unicor are 24% less likely to reoffend and 14% more likely to be employed long-term upon release. She also noted that over 40% of Unicor's supplies were purchased from small businesses in 2011.

    She cited the unique costs associated with operating within a prison. For example, Unicor employs more supervisors than a private sector firm would, and security lockdowns disrupt production.

    Businesses aren't buying it. John Palatiello, president of the Business Coalition for Fair Competition, said his organization of businesses and taxpayer groups is sympathetic to Unicor's goals. But they shouldn't be accomplished at the expense of small businesses.

    "Who is being punished here?" he said. "The inmates who have committed a crime against society, or the employees of private companies who play by the rules?"
    To write a note to the editor about this article, click here.

    Factory owners: Federal prisoners stealing our business - Aug. 14, 2012

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  5. #15
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  6. #16
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  7. #17
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  8. #18
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  9. #19
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  10. #20
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