Wednesday, May 16, 2012

GEO Group Makes Another Bold Move

The GEO Group just purchased another smaller private prison company, Municipal Corrections Finance L.P.  This comes a little more than two years after they announced the purchase of the third-largest company, Cornell Corrections, to try to increase their market share and bed capacity.  The new deal gives the company ownership of 11 additional facilities with10,000 beds, and further solidifies the company's position as the number 2 private incarcerator in the country.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous29 May, 2012

    What's wrong with making money off incarceration? If the government can't do it for a cheaper cost let them do it. Not only do the do it for cheaper, they actually strive to treat inmates and detainees better than a state or federal facility. You base your info on assumption that geo is bad. stuff does happen, lawsuits but so sane shit happens with government facilities. So why don't you get mad at them?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks for reading and commenting! As far as I've seen, the private industry in fact can cost just as much, if not more than the government. It's so successful at getting contracts despite this fact, because they use literally millions of taxpayer dollars to lobby the government, aside from the work they've done to increase criminal sentences across the board. The sentences the industry helped to write and get passed have led to our country having far and away the most prisoners in the world - 1 million more people than are in prison in China.

      And you claim that I base my information on assumption, which I take issue with. I've been researching and writing about the industry for nearly 5 years; the nearly 800 posts on this blog are testament to how much I've read and seen about the industry. So no, this is no assumption I'm working under. I am however curious as to how you have determined the industry "strive(s) to treat inmates and detainees better than a state or federal (government)." The industry strives for profit. They are beholden to the interests of shareholders and executives. Governments are bound by the constitution and public faith to treat prisoners with at least a modicum of decency, and have no inherent profit motive that could derail that responsibility.

      That being said, I do get angry at governments quite often for the ways in which they impose criminal justice sanctions on individuals, in a variety of circumstances. I just happen to especially hate the fact that some companies earn literally hundreds of millions of dollars per year in profit, of taxpayer dollars no less, by locking people up, especially given the industry's, to be quite honest, dramatically shitty track record.

      Delete