CCA Guard Gets Second Drug Charge

As I've mentioned previously, private prisons seem to have trouble recruiting and retaining high-quality staff.  It probably has something to do with the fact that they cut corners on screening, don't hire unionized COs, and pay like Ebeneezer Scrooge.  Anyhoo, a CCA guard from New Mexico has just received not his first, but his second charge of being in possession of an illegal substance.  After formerly being charged with marijuana possession, this young man stepped his game up and was just caught smoking heroin.

They Rapin' Errbody Up in Here

To borrow a line from Antoine Dodson.  Forgive me for making light of the situation in the title, but two CCA officers are currently facing charges of rape in separate incidents.

In Florida, a guard is on trial for allegedly raping a fellow employee who was suffering an asthma attack.  Meanwhile, over in New Mexico, a trial against a corrections officer who has admitted to raping 4 women under his watch at the Camino Nuevo Women's CF in 2007 has been delayed as CCA tries to buy more time to mount a defense.

Once again, these shining examples of private prison professionalism give us a glimpse into what happens when profit is a higher priority than providing quality service.

2 + 2 = 4

What do you get when you cross an explosion in the incarceration rate of immigrants with the proliferation of private, for-profit prisons to house them?  Why, you get a FUCKING 90% increase in the arrest of guards in federal prisons over the last decade, and a 200% increase in investigations of misconduct.  And mind you, private prisons still only house about 17% of federal prisoners.  So their guards must really be terrible.

If anyone ever tries to convince you that an employee of a private prison company (or employee of any private company performing an inherently governmental function for that matter) operates to the same standards as his government counterpart, you can call that person an idiot.

Their Guards Molest Women

Private prisons often appear so attractive to lawmakers because they claim they are able to save bundles of money compared to government-run prisons.  While this isn't exactly the truth, these companies still routinely cut corners in almost every aspect of their operations in order to maximize profits, because, after all, that's what they really care about.  Since staff expenses (salary, benefits, training) comprise the largest portion of any facility's budget, private prisons often pay dramatically less to their staff in the name of profit.

The problem with this approach lies in the fact that private prisons, because they offer less in salary and benefits, aren't able to attract as high-quality candidates as government-run prisons.  Just recently, when Hernando County Florida took over operation of its jail from CCA, the sheriff hired only about 1/3 of the private company's employees to work for his department (and remarked at the time that he couldn't believe a lot of CCA's employees weren't incarcerated themselves).  Anecdotally, it's rather well-known that many guards at private prisons have some unsavory histories, and guards who screw up at one prison or another (government-run or not) can usually find work at a different private prison, where the companies rarely perform background checks that are as extensive as the government would.  Combine all this with the industry's aversion to providing adequate and consistent training to their guards (because, again, that would hurt the bottom line), and you've got a recipe for disaster.

Unfortunately, this disaster revealed itself to women who immigrated to the US but found themselves locked up in the Hutto Correctional Center, part of ICE's network in Texas, which is operated by CCA.  A guard at the facility just pleaded guilty to sexually molesting immigrants as he transported them to and from the facility.

CCA is Unfair to Its Employees

CCA and other private prison companies traditionally don't hire unionized corrections officers, which allows them to pay their employees far less than what state employees earn. This is the biggest area of legitimate cost savings offered by privatization, but it often comes at a price (see: everything I've ever written about the quality of guards at private prisons).

CCA is currently facing a challenge from a union in Arizona that represents about 1/3 of the employees at a CCA facility. These officers want half the raise that was just awarded to ICE officers. CCA is offering them 10 cents more per hour, on a salary that already pales in comparison to what governments pay for similar work.

For a much more in-depth analysis of the contract negotiations, go here.

Private Prisons hire unqualified staff

The title link goes to a story about how the warden of the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, run by CCA, has been ordered to repay an inmate $1,700 for jewelry that was stolen from him.  This is a pretty rare decision by the court, which held that the prisoners' parents' wedding rings had been taken arbitrarily from him.  When the poor guy asked about the rings, which obviously meant a lot to him, the warden told him “F__k the Court, I ain’t giving you sh_t.” So it doesn't surprise me that "the judge's order means absolutely nothing to him."

In other private-prison-staff-being-unprofessional news, two GEO Group guards have been charged with trying to smuggle drugs and cell phones into the Graceville Correctional Facility.

And finally, following up on Sheriff Nugent's takeover of the Hernando County Jail after CCA bailed out of their contract, only 35 of the people who worked as COs while CCA ran the jail were hired by the Sheriff.  So out of nearly 200 CCA guards, only about 35 met the requirements and qualifications necessary to work in corrections for the government.

CCA Guards Admit the Staff is Poorly Trained

The title link goes to the personal account of a CCA employee who details a lot of the problems that seem to be inherent to their hiring and staffing processes.  CCA fails to conduct adequate background checks on their employees (which often results in them hiring ex-felons), they don't test incoming guards for their capacity to handle such a high-stress job, and they don't train their guards nearly as much as governments do.  This resulted in poorly-prepared COs that smuggled in contraband, compromising the security of the facility, had inappropriate sexual relations with prisoners, and bragged about having spent time in prison for aiding human smugglers.  As the author himself says, "I worked with officers who had no business being officers because of physical limitations or an extreme lack of intelligence. Such facilities [private prisons] are not safe, neither for officers or staff."

But this is no isolated incident; I have spoken with guards who worked for all different private prison companies, in different states, and all the stories sound very similar to this one.  Check out the comments section on this article for a private prison guard named Pedro who discusses why he thinks privatization of prisons is "horrible for the overall well-being of the criminal justice system."

I'll Say It Again: CCA Has Pretty Low Standards

A CO at a CCA prison in Indiana was just arrested for criminal gang activity, fighting with police, and resisting arrest. All with her 16-year-old son. I'm sure she is perfectly qualified to be guarding prisoners.

CCA Has Pretty Low Standards

A third of the guards who used to work at Hernando County Jail when it was operated by CCA were immediately disqualified from Sheriff Richard Nugent's hiring process.  The Sheriff has recently taken over operations of the facility, and thankfully is looking for better-qualified officers to staff it with.  I've written before about this jail and CCA's shadily baking out of its contract after a bunch of serious maintenance issues were uncovered; but given the level of professional excellence of the people who worked there, I can't say I'm that surprised by the fact that it fell into such disrepair.  The most recently-rejected candidates were disqualified for things such as acting as an intermediary in drug deals, and admitting to taking "a variety of substances in the past, ranging from marijuana and cocaine to mushrooms and a veterinary anesthetic."  Now I know people make some dumb choices in life and I'm willing to chalk up a lot of drug use to that, but a veterinary anesthetic?

I am completely in favor of Sheriff Nugent taking over operations of the jail, especially when he says things like ""If they're going to wear my badge and work for me ... the corrections staff will handle inmates and the public professionally."  But one thing I find troublesome is that he says he will have the exact same number of guards watching the prisoners as were there before, and claims that this will put no one at risk.  What the Sheriff may not realize is that CCA chronically understaffs their facilities, so I hope he analyzes his need for COs based on the inmate population and security concerns, rather than just copying what CCA does.  Given their track record, including their failure to even adequately maintain this jail, I think the Sheriff would be wise to steer clear of just aping CCA's incompetence.

Dubious Hiring Decisions

Private prisons typically don't hire unionized correctional officers (mainly because they cost more than non-unionized ones).  They also tend to fail to conduct thorough background checks on the people they do hire.  CCA in particular has hired convicted felons to work in their facilities.  While I'm not in favor of discriminating against felons generally in the job market, I can understand not hiring them to work in a correctional setting.  Among the crimes some CCA employees were convicted of are battery, receiving stolen goods, and lewd and lascivious battery of a child.  But CCA went a step further; they hired someone who had been charged with the manslaughter of a 14-year-old boy to work in a juvenile boot camp.  And apparently that's not an isolated incident; Sheriff McKeithen of Panama City, Florida, found that CCA hired "many people with 'felony backgrounds.'"

Surprise, Surprise

Just a quick link here to a story from Hernando County, Florida, which is sorting its way through a mess of a maintenance situation that resulted in CCA abandoning its contract and the sheriff taking over operations of the jail.  Apparently, many of the COs that worked at CCA aren't qualified enough to work as CO's in the sheriff's department, which just demonstrates what I've said here time and time again; private prison companies don't adequately train their employees and are more inclined to take a lower caliber of employee than governments that run their own prisons

Spreading the Love

The former warden and assistant warden at the Idaho Correctional Facility, the prison being sued by the ACLU because it’s so violent it is called “gladiator school” by the inmates, have already been moved to assistant warden positions at two other CCA facilities (both of which contract with federal agencies), so they can spread the love and good cheer they fostered in Idaho, elsewhere.  What's even better: according to the contracts CCA has with the US Marshalls' Service and the Office of Federal Detention (the two agencies contracting with the facilities these guys were moved to), the government can't even prevent CCA from doing this, as long as the wardens pass a background check.  This is why contracts private prison companies sign with governments should be made available to the general public, because clauses like that unduly handicap our government, making it incapable of ensuring the safety of prisoners housed in private prisons.

From Bad to Worse

Just a quick little thing I noticed in an article detailing a number of the issues CCA has had in hiring and retaining corrections officers; their head of HR used to hold a simliar position at Wal-Mart, Inc.  Even better, he took advice on managing people from Sam Walton.  Now there's someone who treats his employees right.

CCA and Cornell Get What They Pay For

The private prison industry is known for not always having the most qualified corrections officers, because they don't run as extensive background checks as the government, they pay considerably less (because they hire non-union), and they don't provide as many hours of training.  This of course results in all sorts of abuse and foul play taking place among the guards.  The title link goes to an article about a Cornell employee who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old under his watch (yes, they run juvenile detention centers too), and here's a link to an article about a CCA employee who tried to smuggle cocaine into the prison for an inmate:

http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoenixmetro/central/story/Arizona-corrections-officer-caught-buying-cocaine/wUAfv6nbHEiuQuV7VsQ4eQ.cspx

And it was apparently a good deal of cocaine, because he received $1,600 and a half ounce of the stuff as payment (great too, by the way, for a corrections officer to get half an ounce of cocaine.  I'm sure he's supremely qualified to have authority over prisoners)

Poor Planning Will Lead to All Sorts of Problems

A new CCA prison in Natchez, MS, seems like a recipe for disaster.  95% of the new employees were just average citizens before coming to the facility, meaning they have no experience in managing a prison.  On top of that, 6 employees speak Spanish.  81% of the inmate population of over 1,500 inmates are hispanic.  And for some reason, no one seems to think this is a big problem.  Well I assure you, having a staff comprised of 95% of people with zero experience, and only 6 spanish speakers to communicate with thousands of men, will lead to a lot of major issues down the road.  I hate you for your lack of planning and cultural insensitivity, CCA.