Today is CCA's 30th Anniversary

I apologize for falling silent for the past few months.  Life caught up with me.  Anyway, don't think I've stopped hating on private prisons - far from it.  I just haven't really had the time to write.

But I can't let a day like today go by without some mention.  Today, CCA turns 30.  That means for three decades we as a nation (beginning with Tennessee (thanks a lot, Tennessee)) have been bullishly pursuing a failed experiment in which we turn over society's most vulnerable members to private companies, who systematically fail to live up to their contractual standards, let alone any notion of human decency, in how they operate their facilities.  In the process, millions of lives have been impacted, with all but a very few exceptions (the corporate brass) being worse for the wear.

We've sold our morality to the lowest bidder, repeatedly, to the tune of BILLIONS of taxpayer (i.e. my and your) dollars every year.  Meanwhile, these companies earn hundreds of millions of dollars (again, our money) in profit annually. But even THAT wasn't enough, because now CCA and the GEO Group are reincorporating as something called Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), which, in a nutshell, is a legal maneuver that will allow them to largely avoid paying taxes.

So CCA, GEO Group, MTC, and everyone else who takes my money to abuse and mistreat people, on the thirtieth anniversary of your despicable existence, here's a heart-felt

Fuck You.

from me to you.

GEO Group Acquires Another Company

Looks like the GEO Group wasn't satisfied with its previous expansion, when it purchased the third-largest company in the country, Cornell, which significantly increased its capacity.  They just acquired another company, called Municipal Corrections Finance, L.P., which adds another 10,000 beds across 11 facilities to its total capacity

GEO Group's Favorable Treatment in NM

Just a quick link here to an article discussing ways New Mexico can reform its criminal justice system to reduce recidivism and costs.  Among the proposals is a request that the state re-work its contract with the GEO Group to reduce payments to the company after staffing levels were reduced at the Hobbs prison.  The state still pays the GEO Group the same amount they did when the staffing levels were higher, a differential of nearly $2 million that the state is now just paying to the GEO Group as profit.  You may also recall that the GEO Group was hit with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines by the state last year for repeated failure to maintain staffing levels; so the actual levels of staff are probably even lower than the already-reduced number New Mexico is overpaying for.

MTC Takes Over Where the GEO Group Left Off

After the state of Mississippi announced it was not renewing its contract with the GEO Group (or that the GEO Group bailed on the state, depending on how you see it) following a litany of abuse and mismanagement issues at the prisons it ran for the state, the Department of Corrections needed to bring in another company to operate the private facilities formerly run by them.  Apparently, the state did not consider just hiring additional corrections staff and taking control of the prisons itself.

Into the picture now comes MTC, or Management and Training Corporation, the third-largest private prison operator in the U.S. MTC most recently made headlines as the company in charge of the Kingman prison in Arizona, from which 3 felons (2 convicted murderers) escaped, fled across the country, killed an elderly couple, and stirred up a multi-state manhunt.  Shortly thereafter, an audit found the facility had numerous security flaws that the prisoners exploited in their escape.  This was part of what prompted many advocates to call for a statewide audit of private prisons that found the facilities to cost more than government-operated prisons.  Then Republicans in the state legislature passed a bill to prohibit future audits. Of course.

So this is the company that Mississippi has apparently seen fit to give responsibility for prisoners in the former GEO Group facilities.  MTC will operate 3 prisons for the state; Walnut Grove, East Mississippi CF, and Marshall County CF, while CCA will continue to operate an additional 2 facilities (one of which just suffered a riot).  But many people, including this author, are skeptical that there will be any signifncant improvement at the prisons.  Hopefully, Mississippi will have learned from at least some of its mistakes with the GEO Group, such as not having an enforcement mechanism in the contract to ensure adequate staffing levels.

Meanwhile, it looks like the GEO Group is seeking to expand northward into Canada since its reputation has taken such a hit here, and MTC is focusing their sights on our continental brethren as well.  I just hope the Canadians learn from our mistakes.

Prisons, Privatization, Patronage

Just a quick link to a fantastic article by Paul Krugman in the NYT covering the private prison industry.  Enjoy!

2 New Wrongful Death Cases in Texas

Both CCA and the GEO Group are facing backlash over the alleged wrongful deaths of prisoners in their care in Texas.  The family of a prisoner at the Central Texas DF has sued the GEO Group for negligence in allowing their son to commit suicide, two days after he was removed from suicide watch.  Then, at the Dawson State Jail in Dallas, a 30-year-old female prisoner less than two months before her anticipated release date.  She apparently died of pneumonia after the medical staff at the facility failed to treat it.  CCA doesn't provide medical care to prisoners at the facility, but leaked internal documents suggests CCA supervisors at the facility failed to follow protocol when they didn't call for medical attention sooner.  The chief of security recommended firing a shift supervisor, but the warden at the facility declined to do so and couldn't identify any need for further training of his COs.

GEO Group Fined Over $100,000

OSHA has fined the GEO Group more than $100,000 for occupational hazards present in the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, one of the prisons it had operated for years before losing its contract with the state in the wake of some terrible abuses that took place in the juvenile detention center they also ran.  Some of the violations at EMCF included malfunctioning locks and staffing levels so low that guards had to conduct head counts of prisoners alone.

Profiting From the Immigration Crackdown

Yet another quick link to an article from HP here - this one to a very extensive and truly spectacular article by Chris Kirkham, discussing how the private prison industry has profited from the immigration crackdown and partnerships between federal and local law enforcement agencies.

Mental Health in Prisons and the GEO Group

By Jenny Landreth

The news that GEOCare, a private for-profit company, is hovering around the prisoner mental health honeypot in North Carolina is an extremely worrisome development. Mental health in prisons tends to fall at or near the very bottom of the list of priorities in prison management– and likewise in prison budgets– not least because a large percentage of the typical prison population suffer from mental health issue. This covers everything from anxiety and depression, to self-harm, insomnia, suicide attempts, psychosis, borderline personality disorder, uncontrollable anger and violent impulses associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and eating disorder. To be honest, if a prisoner is not suffering from some sort of despair related condition whilst incarcerated in the US prison system, they are doing remarkably well. Some prisoners are clearly more robust mentally than others, and it cannot be denied that these prisoners are likely to become the strongest of the population, sometimes to the point of bullying of vulnerable, mentally ill prisoners.

Tough Lives

Bullying of those with mental health issues is as common outside of prison walls as it is on the inside. Many criminals have suffered lives of appalling neglect, which has stunted their ability to feel anything approaching a normal response to others. When you think of these prisoners, think also of the little three year old child they once were, being abused, ignored, going hungry, being battered and shouted at. Any child being brought up in this sort of impoverished manner, often with parents who are poor and criminalised, will be seriously scarred by the experience, and will be developmentally and socially underdeveloped. Abused children often go on to be bullies themselves, in response to their own feelings of powerlessness. It’s not an excuse for such behaviour, but it goes a long way to explaining it. Beginning life with a poor home background is a huge disadvantage, and often the young teenagers who end up behind bars never had a chance at a better future. The thought of mental health services taking over the care of damaged and vulnerable prisoners – the bullies as well as the bullied, beggars belief. In the words of Dana Cope, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, "It just boggles my mind that folks think a for-profit private company with shareholders can perform a more efficient, better service at a cheaper rate than state employees." Quite so.

Forensic Psychiatry

Although GEOCare is circling mainly around the care of those prisoners who have committed serious mental health related crimes, such as murder, rape and violent assault, it won’t be long before they are pitching for wider mental health service provision.  In this business model, medical care programs become commodities and there is money to be made for shareholders. The state is considering the privatization of the whole of the prison health care system already. GEOCare is part of the GEO Group, which is the second-largest private prison company in the US. GEO Group has been charged on a number of occasions regarding the ill-treatment of prisoners and their own employees. They were fined $1.1 million in recent months by the state of New Mexico, for failing to adequately staff one of its prisons, putting the lives of staff and inmates at risk.

Fit to Run Prisons?

Questions must be asked about GEO Group’s fitness to run prisons, let alone a sophisticated forensic psychiatry service. Under the GEO Group’s management, a prison riot occurred in the New Castle Correctional Facility in Indiana in April 2007; eight prisoner deaths occurred at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Delaware County (STATE?), with subsequent lawsuits claiming negligence by GEO Group in the medical treatment and supervision of prisoners. The number of cases against the company, and presumably the attendant costs, led the GEO Group to pull out of the facility in 2008; that same year, Delaware County Jail (PA) was the site of the death of Sandy Morgan, a schizophrenic woman who died after not being given medication for a thyroid condition; in another 2008 incident Kenneth Keith Kallenbach also died after being denied medication for cystic fibrosis. Multiple cases of abuse and negligence were highlighted at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, including sexual abuse by staff, staff smuggling drugs in for inmates and the denial of medical treatment and education. The inmates’ ages ranged between 13 and 22 years of age. The list goes on and on. Now, GEO Group wants to take over the most complex form of mental health care for some of North Carolina’s most dangerous and disturbed criminals. The prospect is, frankly, terrifying both for the patients and the wider community.

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Jenny Landreth is a freelance writer from England who has written for a number of journals and textbooks on the issue of workers' rights often using pay per click services to advertise her message.

Florida's Love Affair With Private Prisons

Many lawmakers in Florida, home of the GEO Group, are enamored with the idea of prison privatization.  Legislators, mostly Republican, have thrice attempted (and failed) to privatize half the state's prison system within the past two years.  The former speaker of the house, serving time in prison, is still being investigated by the FBI in part for his role in bringing a private prison to the state and attempting to force the closure of multiple state facilities to populate it.  He's also the target of a federal grand jury investigation for his dealings with the GEO Group.

In the towns of Southwest Ranches and Pembroke Pines, residents have been waging war against CCA and ICE, who want to build a huge immigration detention center there.  Upset over the risks of bringing a private prison to town, residents have already faced legal harassment after they have failed to capture the attention or sympathy of their representative, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.  The parties are engaged in a struggle over resources, as CCA is attempting to strong-arm the small towns into providing water and sewer services to the prison.  Pembroke Pines has already had to shell out more than $120,000 in legal fees to battle a detention center that the federal government seems to be forcing on them.

The most recent battle in Florida has arisen over the state's plans to privatize health care for all its prisoners, which I guess was the fall-back option if wholesale privatization failed.  The plan is being challenged by the Nurses' Association, which filed a lawsuit similar to the one that successfully defeated the wholesale privatization; basically saying the state Legislature didn't have the authority to order such a sweeping change to such a huge portion of the state budget without passing a stand-alone bill.  It's estimated that as many as 2,800 jobs and $300 million of the budget could be impacted by the switch, which is also opposed by the union that represents COs.

It seems simple to explain part of this love affair, the GEO Group and CCA have contributed huge sums of money to Florida legislators, with most of that going to Republicans.  During the last election cycle, the industry donated nearly $1 million to campaigns, with more than 80% of that coming from the GEO Group.  GEO has already given more than $100,000 to Governor Scott for the upcoming election.

But just looking at the campaign contributions fails to reveal the whole story.  Governor Scott's closest advisor and de facto gatekeeper, Steve McNamara, is a man with so much political influence he's been called the state's "Shadow Governor."  He also happens to be close personal friends with Jim Eaton, head lobbyist for the GEO Group, which might help explain why Scott decided to can the head of the Department of Corrections for challenging the privatization scheme.  After news came out that McNamara had been using his influence to advance himself and his friends politically and financially, he was forced to resign.  Jim Eaton, by the way, also happens to be the head lobbyist for Wexford, one of the companies in the running for the state healthcare contract.  So McNamara's influence is likely to last well beyond his tenure as "Shadow Governor."

Shareholders Challenging the Private Prison Industry

In an interesting bit of grassroots advocacy, a few shareholders of the country's two largest private prison companies have worked to bring more accountability to the industry, which is exempt from public records laws in nearly every jurisdiction despite the fact that it performs inherently governmental functions.

The GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, FL, had its annual shareholders' meeting in Palm Beach a few weeks back.  Some demonstrators protested outside, but the true challenge for the company would come from inside that very meeting.  The Dominican Sisters of Hope and Mercy Investment Services, both of which own a small amount of stock in the company, introduced a resolution that would have required the company to improve its policies to address human rights abuses within its facilities and submit to third-party audits.  A resolution by the Capuchin Order of Priests would have required the company to publicly disclose all the money it spends lobbying and which issues that money is meant to influence.

Meanwhile, CCA has been fighting off a resolution by an activist and shareholder that would require it to report on efforts to reduce sexual abuse within its facilities.  The resolution would bring some much-needed accountability to an industry that has proven quite effective at skirting it.  CCA has been aggressively fighting the resolution with the SEC from its inception, I assume because they'd rather spend their money lobbying Congress and state legislatures than trying to protect the prisoners under their watch.

Unfortunately, all three of these proposals were defeated in the respective meetings.  But there is reason for optimism - they all managed a sizable margin of support.  The resolution before the GEO Group concerning human rights abuses garnered nearly 30% of the vote.  The resolution introduced by the CCA shareholder was likewise rejected, but did garner more than 14 million votes out of a possible 86 million, nearly 20% of the vote.  With such support, I am optimistic these resolutions will be introduced again in the future, which would continue to pressure the industry into more accountability for its actions and transgressions.

Wells Fargo's Cash Cow

I'd be remiss if I didn't put a link here to an excellent article by Charles Davis about Wells Fargo's ties to the private prison industry.  It's more than a month old at this point, but still an excellent piece.

Update on Michigan

I just want to give a super-brief update on the asinine prison privatization proposal in Michigan.  First is a great story from the Detroit Free Press detailing how a company (GEO Group) that just came under intense federal scrutiny for deplorable conditions in one of its juvenile facilities could end up securing a piece of the pie.  That was one of many papers in the state that highlighted GEO's abysmal track record.

Earnings

I'm pretty behind on a lot of news, so I'll try to just get down to it.  First up we've got the first quarter 2012 earnings, where we get to see yet again how much a couple of companies profit by locking people up.  I'm happy to report that CCA didn't do quite as well this year as they did last year; it looks like the Corrections Investment Initiative hasn't quite paid off.  They only earned $31.7 million in the first three months of this year, a measly $352,222 per day.  Just last year, the company earned $40 million over that same time frame.

The GEO Group's profit dipped as well, despite the fact that its revenues increased by about $21 million.  They earned a little more than $15 million in profit, which comes out to about $166,666 per day. 

That seems totally justifiable.

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.

Is The Industry Losing a Lifeline?

California, the state with the highest prison population, has also historically been one of the most privatization-friendly states, despite the influence of the powerful corrections officers lobby.  The state has given hundreds of millions of dollars per year to the industry to house some of its prisoners in a vain attempt to reduce the burden of its overcrowded prison system, rewarding the industry's investment in campaign contributions and lobbying.  But the industry's hold on the nation's most desperate prison system seems to be slipping in the wake of the Brown v. Plata decision from the Supreme Court.

That decision basically held that the state needed to remove about 40-45,000 prisoners from its state system just to ease overcrowding to the point where it could provide medical care that would not be so insufficient as to violate the prisoners' right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.  At the height of the overcrowding, it was estimated that one prisoner died every week from a preventable cause, because the state simply didn't have the resources or manpower to treat all the people it decided to lock up (coincidentally enough, its prison population exploded due largely to sentencing initiatives like 3-Strikes and Truth in Sentencing laws, which were passed by the industry through its work in ALEC during the 90's.  But that's a topic for a whole different post).  The governor's plan to fix the overcrowding is to send thousands of state prisoners to county jails; basically, he's shifting responsibility for the state's overzealous criminalization of nonviolent activities onto counties, many of which are poorly equipped to handle an influx of new prisoners.

In addition to shifting prisoners to county facilities, the Secretary of Corrections announced a few months ago that the state was looking at ways to reduce its reliance on private prisons and stop shipping prisoners to private facilities in other states. It looks like the state has actually started to work towards this goal; a few weeks ago, it announced a plan to halt $4 billion in new prison construction and return nearly 10,000 state prisoners from private facilities in other states.  This plan would save the state almost $400 million per year that it spends on private prisons, and reduce the prison system's impact on the state budget by nearly 4%; in a state with a budget near $137 billion, that's an awful lot of money.

Michigan Repeating Florida's Mistakes?

Michigan, a state that has already had a bad experience with privatizing prisons, is back at it again, like an abused spouse returning to her mate.  The House and Senate are considering budget proposals, put forth by (guess who!) Republicans, that would privatize multiple prisons, including juvenile facilities.  Republicans claim they can save more than $11 million dollars, despite a growing body of evidence showing that privatization doesn't save money, and without any supporting evidence.  In fact, the state's last foray into privatization ended when it determined its private juvenile prison cost more than about 90% of the government facilities to operate.  The budget could also cut 580 positions from the department of corrections, including librarians and support staff, because, hey, fuck those prisoners.

The real kicker of the whole situation is that none of the Republicans pushing the measure decided it would be a good idea to consult with the Department of Corrections about how to operate prisons, much like the situation in Florida (which ended up costing the head of their DOC his job when he challenged the privatization effort).  I imagine that has something to do with the fact that the GEO Group, which will likely get the prisoners to be transferred because it already owns the aforementioned expensive-as-hell facility in the state, has hired the former Speaker of the House (a Republican) as its chief lobbyist.

Update on Labor Struggles in Australia

Just a quick update on the labor struggle taking place between the GEO Group and its employees down under.  Employees have threatened to stop working, demanding better pay and better staffing ratios, because the guards feel incapable of properly operating the facility with the staffing levels the management wants.  Cutting staff is the quickest and most effective way to save money when operating a prison.  Unfortunately, it's also the quickest and most effective way to make a dangerous working and living environment.  Now, the situation is coming to a head; guards threatened to walk off the job tonight if their demands aren't met.

So here's to you in solidarity, GEO Group guards in Australia, from the other side of the globe.

Virginia Considering Privatization

Quick link here to an article discussing how Virginia is considering privatizing the only prison facility in the state devoted to sexually violent offenders.  Because what better population would you want a profit-driven company in charge of?  But it's a very good article that discusses a lot of the risks and drawbacks associated with privatization, including the industry's ability (or lack thereof) to save money, its many security issues, and the millions of dollars it spend in political contributions to cover all that up.

Mississippi Tosses GEO Group!

Mississippi, of all places, has had enough.  Not exactly known for its hospitable prison system, the state announced last Friday that it intends to terminate its contract with the GEO Group to operate 3 facilities, effective in July.  One of those facilities is Walnut Grove, which was recently the target of a lawsuit that brought sweeping change to the way Mississippi incarcerates its youth.  Plagued with violence, medical neglect, and persistent sexual abuse, the facility's conditions were so abysmal that the Department of Justice called it "some of the worst abuse" they had seen in any investigation of a prison or jail.  Children housed there used terms like "barbaric," "a war zone," and "the deepest depths of hell" to describe it.  The settlement in the lawsuit removed all juveniles from Walnut Grove and mandated that they never be held in solitary confinement.  Lest you feel bad for GEO getting slapped around so hard in the lawsuit, remember that they earned millions of dollars in profit by treating children like shit.

Now, the state will pursue a new company to take over operations of the prisons.  Apparently, it hasn't crossed the Governor's mind to just have the government run them.  Anyway, CCA probably has the inside track to take over the prisons, since they already contract with the state to operate two others and can probably offer the lowest bid, because they're the largest and operate the biggest economy of scale in the industry.  I imagine maybe the things like the murder and the multiple suicides in one of the prisons, along with GEO's request for $5 million more per year to operate the prison, caused the state to want to move in a new direction.  GEO, playing the perfect jilted lover, claims it's the one who initiated the split, because the facility had been "financially under-performing," which if true just proves how fickle and greedy their corporate mentality is.

Change is long overdue.  The federal judge who ruled in the lawsuit against Walnut Grove called it a "cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate, the sum of which places the [children] at substantial ongoing risk."  I have no faith in any private prison company to come in and operate these prisons much better - this is far from the first time the industry has dramatically failed to live up to its promises and the terms of its contracts.  Mississippi should think long and hard before inviting yet another for-profit company to operate these prisons. Keeping the door open for the private industry simply invites more abuse.  The state would be much better served by assuming responsibility for its prisoners.  In addition to the considerable improvement many prisoners would see in their living conditions, the state should not continue to funnel taxpayer dollars to an industry that profits by performing an inherently governmental function.  Especially when the state's own experience shows just how poorly that money is being spent.