Sad End to a Sad Story

Just wanted to give a quick update to a story that's fallen a bit by the wayside; the still vacant private prison in Hardin, Montana.  After being constructed on speculation by Corplan Corrections, the facility sat vacant for years after Corplan failed to help the town secure a contract to fill it.  Various proposals came up for the facility, including using it for a reality TV show, but it remained empty for years, eventually costing Hardin nearly $10,000 per month in utilities just to keep it from falling apart.  A career con man tried to purchase the facility through a company known as the American Private Police Force, but that deal fell through as well.  The director of the group that purchased the facility lost his job after it defaulted on its bond payments.

Now it turns out the facility will likely be returned to the bondholders who financed it.  Basically, this would allow for the city to get the facility and its maintenance off its hands (and budget, for that matter), and the bondholders would be able to pursue contracts to fill it.  But given the track record of failure, I think that's not likely to happen.

UPDATE: It's now official: the jail, valued at $26 million, has been returned to the bondholders.

Fodder for the Conspiracy Theorists

Just a quick link here to an interesting column discussing Corplan Corrections and its leader, James Parkey.  Corplan has constructed numerous immigration detention centers and prisons across the country, working most often with CCA.  They have built a lost of facilities on municipal bonds, and have often left small towns to foot the bill for the construction after they fail to help secure a contract to bring in prisoners - the most famous case is that of Hardin, Montana, which I've written about extensively.

But this article discusses how Corplan has been building many detention centers around the country, though not in response to a particular need for beds.  The author argues, somewhat convincingly, that these beds are being constructed to give the government the ability to detain political dissidents in the case of a "national emergency."  Basically, the government is building prisons to be able to silence political dissent when shit hits the fan.

That's some creepy stuff.

Failing to Deliver

There are two stories I wanted to highlight today, both of which deal with the failure of the private prison industry to deliver on its promises of economic stimulus.  Private prisons are often pitched to small towns and rural communities as vehicles of economic growth, with promises of tax revenues and jobs.  Unfortunately though, many of these prisons are built on the speculation that they'll be filled (meaning no contract to house prisoners is in place before many of these prisons are built), but the contracts don't always come through as planned.  For a great example of how this happens, see the example set by Hardin, Montana, which was conned by Corplan Corrections and still has a jail that sits empty, 5 years after it was built.

So the first article comes from the small town of Littlefield, TX.  A small town desperate for economic stimulus, Littlefield financed the construction of a private prison for nearly $11 million dollars.  After the prison was built in 2000, the GEO Group was hired to run it.  In the shocker of the century, the facility was plagued with violence, assaults, and escapes to the degree that Idaho, the state whose prisoners comprised the largest segment of the population, decided to pull all its prisoners from the facility.  Shortly thereafter, the GEO Group backed out of operating the facility.  The town however was still on the hook because it had financed the facility, and is now facing a bill of $65,000 per month.  Unfortunately, "Littlefield is not alone. Several other Texas towns that build prisons to be run by private companies have found the prisons to be financial drains."  Littlefield actually auctioned off the prison a few days ago, to an undisclosed buyer, but the damage has been done to the city's bond rating.

The other article comes from our friends up north, where British Columbia lawmakers are debating where they should place a new private prison.  Of course, the town is hoping for some stimulus from the prison in terms of revenue and jobs.  While this has not yet turned into a money pit like Hardin and Littlefield, the article goes on to describe how BC is looking to save money by privatizing, and discusses all the great economic benefits of bringing a prison.  But what really caught my eye is a quote they pulled from the Economist, hardly the left-wing rag, which discusses the nature of privatized corrections and how the savings achieved in terms of dollars and cents may not be worth the toll privatization takes on humans who experience it.  The Economist said, "It is 'hard to see the expansion of a forprofit industry with a permanent interest in putting ever more people in cages as consistent with either efficiency or justice.'"

Why Frank Smith and I Hate Corplan Corrections

James Parkey is the director of Corplan Corrections, a shadowy firm that builds private prisons on speculation that they'll be awarded contracts to house prisoners, then after construction runs out of town, fleecing desperate small communities across America. Jails they have built sit empty sometimes for years after construction, and counties often end up defaulting on the bonds they issued to build the facility, while Corplan makes out like bandits. Numerous facilities built by Corplan remain unfilled across the country, costing small towns literally hundreds of millions of dollars as they often wind up selling these buildings for pennies on the dollar of what they were built for, after years of sitting dormant.

The title link is to an awesome Letter to the Editor by a guy named Frank Smith, who details much of the long, sordid history of Corplan Corrections and the unfortunate towns that were scammed by James Parkey and his cronies.

Keeping It In the Family

An awesome article from the Texas Observer on how one influential Texas family has lobbied for Corplan Corrections for years, systematically destroying the finances of desperate small towns all across the country.

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid

The mayor of Hardin, Montana is warning commissioners in Benson, AZ to be wary of a new immigration detention facility being pitched to them by Corplan Corrections, the shady company affiliated with CCA that builds private detention facilities. I've written briefly about Corplan before, but they're basically the ones who come into a small rural area with a sales pitch of creating a ton of new jobs and tax revenue by building a private prison. Of course, things rarely if ever pan out exactly as they would want people to believe, as a few of their facilites still remain empty (thus drawing no money and actually costing towns hundreds of thousands of dollars to operate), and most fail to live up to correctional standards. So I am calling on you as well, Benson, Arizona, to be very careful about who you do business with, and to reject this proposal from Corplan. it will not end well if you let them build.

Why I Hate Corplan Corrections Today

Corplan Corrections is a company that works with CCA, GEO, and other private prison firms to fleece smaller towns into building prisons they can’t afford, which end up becoming huge economic drains. Corplan is sort of the front company that proposes and builds private prisons for the big operators, then disappears from town as soon as their bond payments come through. The link is to a great article on their shady business model, and how they’ve managed to pull fast ones on small towns all over the country.

Interesting Development in the Hardin Case

It turns out the drama with the APPF and Hardin Jail wasn’t the first time the town had been duped in the private prison market. The facility was built by a company called Corpland Corrections, which appears to be little more than a fraud perpetrated on small communities in dire need of economic stimulus. In one instance, four of the people involved in the awarding of a contract to the company were convicted in a corruption probe. The company comes in to build prisons but rarely if ever fulfills its promises of providing long-term revenue for a town or county (because they don’t operate the prisons or secure a contract for someone else to do so). I’ve seen a few stories on this in the past few days, and I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear about the company.

More here:
http://newmexicoindependent.com/39009/private-prison-developer-behind-montana-fiasco-involved-in-construction-of-nm-private-prisons