Corrections Corporation of America - The 'Gladiator' Of Rotten Industry in Idaho

How nice to see CCA back in the headlines…yet again. Not surprisingly, they seem to be making headlines for doing what they do best – abusing prisoners, participating in dirty cover-ups and of course, costing us taxpayers a damnable fortune for their sorry ass screw ups and inability to safely house so much as a dog, let alone any human beings.

While the political contributions may be a surprise to some residents of Idaho, they certainly are not anything new to anyone remotely familiar with the companies like CCA that operate these prison-for-profit scams to fleece the states and taxpayers out of their money. They buy the lawmakers of every state they do business in; Idaho is not unique at all. In fact, all they’ve done in Idaho has been to implement the same formula for ‘success’ that they have already used in TN, NM, AZ and every other state they do business in.

This page has numerous resources and links to help the general public educate themselves as to how private prison industry operates in this country and to simplify, they are all linked at the bottom of this article. Before you vote for your next state legislator or leader, isn’t it worth your time to make sure they are not on the payroll of one of these appalling companies who don’t care a damn thing about the safety of the public so long as the CEO’s and shareholders can keep lining their pockets…with our tax dollars!

Excerpts from an outstanding two-part investigative series by KBOI 2News which can be found Here and Here.

"Back in July, 2000, the Idaho Correctional Center opened as the state's first privately run prison. Recently, I.C.C, run by Corrections Corporation of America, has come under fire after a lawsuit filed by the America Civil Liberties Union, alleging misconduct, mismanagement and more.

Last year, officials with the Idaho Department of Correction discovered 10 of 13 drug and alcohol counselors at the prison weren't qualified to provide treatment. A separate medical audit revealed I.C.C. had extensive problems administering medical care, including delays in providing medication. In total C.C.A. was fined more than $141,000 by the state.

But the problems for C.C.A. are not limited to Idaho. We found complaints against C.C.A. in all 19 states they operate, all within the past decade, involving much more than just medical care.

Last year the governor of Kentucky ordered 400 female inmates to be removed from a C.C.A. run prison after allegations of sexual misconduct by male guards. In 2009, C.C.A. settled with 21 former female workers in Colorado who claimed male managers forced them to have sex to keep their jobs. In Florida, a corrections officer pleaded guilty to smuggling drugs into a C.C.A. run jail. And in December, C.C.A. settled another lawsuit with the A.C.L.U. in California requiring, in part, the San Diego Correctional Facility hire more nurses.

“It’s not just unique to this facility,” says B.S.U. Criminal Science Professor Dr. Michael Blankenship. Blankenship says part of the problem is that private prison companies like C.C.A. exist to make a profit. “If you’re not delivering profits,” say Blankenship, “who’s going to buy your stock?”

We checked into the financial health of C.C.A. A decade ago on February 1st, 2001, their stock was trading at $2.50 a share. Four weeks ago, on February 1st, 2011, it was ten times that amount at $25.09 a share.

But not only does C.C.A. make money. They give money. KBOI 2News obtained a list of candidates receiving money from C.C.A. between 2003 and 2010. At the head of the pack receiving $19,000 is Idaho Governor Butch Otter.

We called C.C.A. to find out why but the company declined our request for an on camera interview. Instead, Spokesman Steve Owen sent a statement that reads in part: “Because C.C.A.’s political contributions reflect the specific laws and limits of individual states, it is difficult to compare our corporate giving to elected officials from different regions of the country.”

The disparity in campaign contribution is even more noteworthy when you consider of the 75,000 inmates C.C.A. supervises nationwide only 2,000 of them are here in Idaho. That’s less than 3%.

But here's why every Idaho taxpayer should care about what happens to Idaho inmates.

If the state of Idaho is dragged into court it takes taxpayer money for a defense, not to mention a judgment.

Originally the A.C.L.U. named Idaho on the lawsuit, right along with C.C.A. in the case. But last June the A.C.L.U. agreed to drop Idaho as a defendant, saving taxpayers the possible expense in this case.

Currently the A.C.L.U. is suing C.C.A. for $155 million dollars, which is equal to the amount of profit the company earned in 2009."

Check out the full story on  KBOI 2News

For More Information on CCA's wrongdoings and legal woes - Click Here

For More Information on Private Prison Industry - Click Here

For Information on CCA stockholders, CEOs and other connections - Click Here

To Find Out Which Lawmakers Are On CCA's payroll - Click Here

For a complete overview of how private prison industry impacts our laws, our freedoms and our way of life - Click Here.

CCA Prison Detainee Count Distorts MS Census

For anyone who might think that there are no connections between our open-border policy and refusal to deport criminal immigrants and corporate and legislative profit motives, examples like this one ought to help explain why our legislators continue this insane push to incarcerate vs. deport the criminals streaming across our borders.

It is no secret that CCA helps write immigration policy and anyone who thinks they don't force an agenda that is in the best interest of their stockholders rather than the best interest of American citizens and communities might want to spend some time doing a bit more research into who is behind the shaping of our national and state legislative actions and policy making.

Corporations like CCA are able to work with our lawmakers for a $50,000 fee paid to The American Legislative Exchange Council - is it any wonder they promote policy that will increase their profit margins and value on Wall Street?

So while they make a fortune, we the taxpayers get to foot the bill for facilities like the $128 million dollar Adams County Correctional Center. The census should reflect the true population, and not be distorted by counting the imported and illegal immigrant status criminals housed in the districts simply to boost corporate and dirty legislative profits.

Excerpts From Natchez Democrat, "Reality of Population Drop Worse" Posted by By Emily Lane

NATCHEZ — The 2010 U.S. Census included a sizable chunk of people as Adams County residents who do not live in these parts by choice.

Approximately 2,000 inmates at the Corrections Corporation of America prison were counted as Adams County residents in the recent census, Adams County Correctional Center Warden Vance Laughlin confirmed.

That means that the county lost approximately 4,000 — approximately 13 percent — of its population in the last decade when excluding prison inmates at the Adams County Correctional Facility from the equation. Adams County’s population decreased to 32,297 in 2010 from 34,340 in 2000, counting the inmates.

The extra boost in census population explains the growth reported in District 5.
Inmates included, District 5 has 23-percent more residents than the average of all of the districts’ populations.

The census also counted 1,878 Hispanics in District 5, compared to an average of 68 Hispanics in Districts 1-4.

Most of the 2,567 beds at CCA are filled with inmates from Central and South America. An exact breakdown of the prison’s census count was not available by press time.

CCA has a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to house 2,567 criminal alien offenders in Adams County Correctional Center. 

The offenders are low-security illegal immigrants who committed offenses in the United States and will be returned to their country of origin after completing their sentences.

Stacy Vidal, a public information officer for the U.S. Census Bureau, said each state is responsible for its own rules and processes for how they use census data to draw district lines.

Read The Full Story on The Natchez Democrat

Purchasing Access: Examining the GEO Group's Texas Political Expenditures

National Public Radio recently ran a story about how private prison companies helped write Arizona's controversial statute (currently being litigated in federal court) requiring local police to arrest and detain illegal immigrants. Private prison companies' interest in immigration law should come as little surprise for Grits readers: Nearly five years ago I wrote that the potential for expanded detention of illegal immigrants appeared virtually "limitless,"and this blog has long lamented the extra costs to county jails from such policies.

The NPR story inspired me this a.m. to look more closely at private prisons' political influence in Texas, and I plan to follow up with additional, related posts in the coming weeks. A 2006 public policy report (pdf) from the Institute on Money in State Politics identified Texas pols as the second largest recipient of private prison political spending after Florida.

The three big players in Texas' market are the GEO Group, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and a company called Management and Training Corporation (MTC) out of Utah. Of the three, only the GEO Group operates a state-level PAC in Texas. CCA and MTC's contributions appear to come mainly from individuals associated with the company, which are a bit more time consuming to track, so let's start with the Geo Group.

I went through the contribution reports for the Texas Geo Group Inc. PAC for this last election cycle and compiled a list of all Texas House and Senate members who both a) received contributions from GEO in 2009 and/or 2010 and b) won their elections and will be in the Legislature next year. Read the list, with totals combined from multiple reports on Grits For Breakfast

Utah's Management & Training Corporation's (MTC) role in Ariz. immigration law

Tougher immigration laws mean more detentions and bigger contracts for prison companies.
By Jesse Fruhwirth

Many people suspect that backroom deals and corporate interests influence public policy, and rarely are those backroom negotiations exposed to the public. But investigators from In These Times magazine, NPR and others have unlocked one such backroom where Arizona’s controversial immigration law was hashed out, and discovered Utah connections in the process.

A private group of conservative state lawmakers and private-prison-industry representatives discussed and revised Arizona’s controversial immigration bill—both hailed and decried as the toughest in the nation—before it became law. Not only was a Utah lawmaker the chair of that private committee that discussed the bill, but new research also shows that a Utah company—the nation’s third-largest private-corrections company— made campaign donations to the sponsor of Arizona’s law four times in recent years. Immigrants are detained in prisons prior to deportation, so private jailers have a financial interest in tougher immigration laws.

Most news about corporate interests influencing Arizona’s immigration law has focused on Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private-prison company.

ALEC IN ARIZONA

From The Tucson Citizen
You might have heard some news about the NPR story connecting SB1070 and the private prison industry though ALEC. Here's the story in full. It's worth your time to listen and to read:



Here's the follow-up story about the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is a disturbing story of unregulated influence pedaling of it's own, even without the SB1070 connection:

The (Un)American Legislative Exchange Council; Prison Profiteers Extraordinaire

It is common knowledge that today in the United States millions of people are incarcerated in detention centers, county jails and prisons. What is not such common knowledge are the deep and insidious ties between those who write our laws and those who profit from them. Connections run to much deeper levels than the majority of Americans are aware of, far beyond what seems to have become acceptable by way of contributions and corruption within our government.

In a very brief nutshell, this is how the US prison system currently operates:

There are two major Corporations that run privately operated prison facilities and detention centers; GEO and CCA. There are other, smaller players but these are the two largest. Both trade on the NYSE and their value is determined by the number of beds they keep filled.

The GEO Group, Inc. was initially founded as a division of The Wackenhut Corporation in 1984 under the name of Wackenhut Corrections (WCC). They have acquired a few other companies along the way and today they operate facilities across the globe including Australia, Africa and the UK. They are the folks that run the ICE Detention Center in CO as well as GITMO.

From GEO’s webpage, “We design, construct, finance and manage jails, state and federal prisons, special-purpose institutions, and immigration and detention centers.”  Their profit? Well, according to their page, “Our revenue at year-end 2007 was $1.024 billion, and net income was $41.845 million.”

CCA founded the private corrections management industry more than 25 years ago, establishing industry standards for future-focused, forward-thinking correctional solutions...or so they say.

From CCA’s webpage, “We manage, design, build and own more than 66 correctional facilities and detention centers from coast to coast, in small cities, metropolitan areas and destinations in between.”

What few people realize is that GEO and CCA are both members of ALEC.

Ariz. Immigration Bill and Davis County Utah Connections

By Jesse Furhwith 
Salt Lake City Weekly
 
NPR's Laura Sullivan reported this week on corporate-government coziness that birthed Arizona's immigration law, the toughest in the country. One story referred to the biggest Utah-based company you've probably never heard of, and today a Utah legislator was named.


In brief, Sullivan reports on the deep involvement corporate prison companies had in drafting Arizona's law and also the vast network of state legislators from various states who were also involved in seminal meetings to create that law. The corporations even named the bill that eventually became law in Arizona and drafted it with lawmakers, Sullivan reports. One legislator says corporate influence on the law is overblown. Rep. Paul Ray, a Davis County Republican, chaired the committee of a private organization that considered the bill and passed it on as model legislation. 


Today, Sullivan delved deeper into the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, an educational endeavor for state lawmakers that seems to have as much in common with K Street-style lobbying as it does Weber State-style education. If you have not read/listened to Sullivan's bombshell stories on this, I highly recommend both of them: Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny and Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law.
But on to the Utah connections... Ray says Sullivan's sources are lying. "If anyone is trying to say that private corrections guys had anything to do with that bill, they're flat-out lying to you."
But it gets more complicated, and Ray eventually conceded in our conversation that private-prison industry representatives were involved in crafting model legislation that became Arizona law. Corporate influence is the very nature of ALEC, Ray said.


"I hope they [private prison industry reps] were [involved in drafting the model legislation] because they have a member on the committee," he said. "I have a committee made up of a couple hundred people. [Private prison industry representatives] are members of ALEC, they have a right to be there." 


Ray denied, however, that private prison industry representatives provided any language or edits to the draft legislation--"There was not one amendment or change that came from corrections"--but pleaded ignorance as to whether private interests actually named the bill as Sullivan's reports claims. Ray says that I'd have to talk to Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, the lead sponsor of the Arizona immigration bill, who Ray says brought the bill to ALEC where it was discussed.


Continue Full Story On Salt Lake Weekly Blogs...

Private prisons looking to cash in on illegal immigrants?

Excerpt from KTAR News -

The immigration bill was looked upon to be a "business model" as a continuous source of revenue for the community, the story says.

Pearce says the NPR story is wrong to suggest companies like Corrections Corporation of America had a hand in crafting SB 1070.

Gov. Jan Brewer agrees.

"The state has no business with CCA, it is a federal issue, those are federal-incarcerated prisoners," Brewer said.

State Representative David Lujan (D) thinks differently:

"If Senate Bill 1070 is to be enacted in full, and it increases the number of illegal immigrants that are to be detained, then they will stand to benefit from their facilities here in Arizona."

Read Full Story

The United States of McAmerica

My last article covered a few of the “acts” that ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council; a special interest conservative right leaning organization) has helped our legislators to write and implement across the country. What I outlined previously were merely a few examples of their good works put out by their Criminal Justice/Homeland Security task forces. While I focus on ALEC in much of my writing, please keep in mind that ALEC is but one of a hundred or so groups who work behind the scenes in D.C. to buy off our politicians and force policies that meet their own political and profit driven agendas. I tend to single out ALEC only because they are one of the most prominent groups and there are numerous connections between ALEC, private prison corporations, declining education and our ever tightening and restrictive ‘tough on crime’ laws…but I cannot emphasize enough that they are just one of the players and takers of the big profit pie that our lawmakers gorge themselves on.

For this article, I am going to highlight some of the ways ALEC (and other outside influences) has helped our educational system along. Since there seems to be a direct connection between education and incarceration, this is an important piece of how politicians and CEOs are legislating profits for prison industry. Let’s face it, very few ‘hardened criminals’ have college degrees and if our government wanted high achievements from our schools, we’d damn well have high achieving schools, don’t you think?  

From ALEC’s webpage on their education task force:

Each year, the Task Force releases an annual Report Card on American Education. One of ALEC's flagship publications, the Report Card takes a comprehensive look at the state of public education all across our country. Based on a variety of indicators, the Report Card consistently shows no direct correlation between conventional measures of education inputs, such as expenditures per pupil and teacher salaries, and educational outputs, such as average scores on standardized tests.

As always, the Task Force will continue to focus on those policies that hold teachers accountable for the education they are providing as well as developing new ideas on how businesses can become partners in educating the next generations of our children.

We’ve already seen the wonders of bringing businesses into our prisons, now they want to do the same to our schools? Pardon me if I don’t jump up and down in excitement over this idea.

Here is more from ALEC’s page:

“Our Model Legislation

Resolution Supporting the Principles of No Child Left Behind”

Apparently NCLB has been a smashing success for those who profit from filling up cellblocks. Pink said it best with, “No child gets left behind, we’re not dumb and we’re not blind; they’re all sitting in your cells, while you pave the road to hell…”

When you read more closely into parts of NCLB here is what is written into the fine print, and again, this is straight off of ALEC’s page:

“Focus on Achievement: NCLB not only promotes—and fully funds—innovative reforms in public education, but the law also holds schools accountable for their own success. For the first time in history, states must prove that they are yielding academic results before the federal government hands over the money. When achievement is not up to standard, the federal and state governments expect them to focus on how they can improve public education standards.”

Back the hell up. Schools that are doing poorly get cut off from federal aid.

The Kingman Case: Private Prison Politics

August 13, 2010
Globe-Miami Times

The Private Prison sales pitch finds a receptive audience among small, economically challenged communities who want to find jobs and a way of paying the light bill at City Hall. Or, perhaps more to the point in the case of Globe – a way of getting a new sewer line for the NW Corridor.

Yet, it turns out the sales pitch is does not give the whole story.

The Information Highway goes both ways

Consider the information provided by the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit, non-partisan organization which researches and documents prison policy. They report that in spreading the gospel of privatization, our friends at Corrections Corp of America (James Parkey) and its competitors (Emerald Companies, Management & Training Corp (Kingman),Cornell and others)”… have used a small body of professional literature that purports to approve the superiority of for-profit corrections. What they fail to mention is that much of this literature has been written by analysts who are either being funded by the industry or have an ideological predisposition in favor of privatization.”

What were murderers doing in Kingman?

In the effort to package their message to local communities who are more open to warehousing the “not so violent” residents are often told by the pitch men, “Prisoners housed in private facilities are far less likely to be convicted of serious or violent offenses, or to have high medical and mental health needs,than prisoners housed in public facilities used to generate cost comparisons.”

In actuality, PPI reports, Public prisoners were seven times as likely to be serving time for violent offenses, three times as likely to be serving time for serious offenses and twice as likely to have high medical needs than those housed in private facilities.


You need look no further for proof of this than our own example here in Arizona recently, when 3 murderers escaped last week, from the 1400 bed facility in Kingman which was approved in 2004 by voters as a minimum to medium security prison to house DUI and Substance Abuse Cases!

According to Management & Training Corporation – the needs of the DOC “expanded.”

Next week, we will look at the issue of funding and how that plays out in the debate over Private Prisons. You know that saying, “Freedom isn’t Free”? Well, Neither are Private Prisons.