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A Damning Federal Report Just Confirmed Our Worst Fears About Private Prisons

by LorriS36kvrfq Posted on August 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Federal prisons run by private prison companies aren’t just less safe and less secure than than their publicly run counterparts. They’re also inadequately supervised by the federal Bureau of Prisons, which has outsourced the incarceration of 12 percent of its inmates to three giant for-profit prison companies, while allowing gaps in oversight that endangered inmates and put their rights at risk.

That’s the takeaway from a damning new report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The report, released Thursday, examined how the BOP monitored its contracts with three of the nation’s largest private prison companies: Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group, and Management and Training Corporation. For $639 million, these corporations run the country’s 14 private federal prisons, incarcerating around 22,660 people as of December—mainly low-security immigrants serving short sentences.

The inspector general’s findings corroborate years of reports documenting violence in private prisons, including Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer’s immersive investigation of a CCA prison in Louisiana.

Compared to federal prisons of similar sizes, locations, and security levels, the private facilities had a 28 percent higher rate of inmate-on-inmate assaults, and more than twice as many inmate-on-staff assaults per capita between 2011 and 2014. Prison officials also found nearly twice as many weapons and eight times as many cellphones in private prisons as compared to BOP prisons, per capita. The inspector general also found that private prisons went on “lockdown” much more frequently, confining inmates to their quarters “often in response to a disturbance or incident that threatens the secure and orderly running of the prison.” The number of private prison lockdowns: 101; in BOP-run prisons: 11.

The inspector general found that least two private prisons dealt with overcrowding by automatically assigning new inmates to “special housing units”—isolation units, including solitary confinement, usually used to discipline inmates. There, they were subject to special restrictions, including “controlled movements; limited access to programs such as education or vocational programs, as well as work details; and limited telephone calls.” (According to wardens at the facilities, they had no choice. Vacant beds in solitary created the appearance of extra space at their facilities, so the BOP assigned them more inmates—and the prisons were not allowed to refuse them.)

BOP monitors, who are charged with ensuring that the private prisons are following federal policy and fulfilling the terms of their contracts, did not verify whether inmates were receiving basic medical care, according to the report. One facility went without a full-time doctor for eight months, in violation of its contract—even though the monitor reported it as being in compliance. Monitors also are not instructed to verify that private companies are conducting regular searches of housing units and visiting areas, nor are they required to confirm that the prisons are employing enough staff.

Private facilities did have fewer positive drug tests and sexual-misconduct incidents than BOP prisons, though the inspector general noted that limited or faulty data existed in both of those categories. In its response to a preliminary copy of the report, GEO Group’s executive vice president wrote that the higher incident numbers in private prisons could be explained by more diligent incident reporting than in public prisons.

The companies also claimed that elevated violence in private prisons could be attributed to their “homogenous foreign national population”—largely Mexican—resulting in a “high number of gang affiliations,” according to GEO and CCA. “Any casual reader would come to the conclusion that contract prisons are not as safe as BOP prisons,” wrote Scott Marquardt, president of MTC. “The conclusion is wrong.”

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A Damning Federal Report Just Confirmed Our Worst Fears About Private Prisons

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Shane Bauer’s Four Months As a Private Prison Guard

by JarrodCerda Posted on June 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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What is life like in a medium-security private prison? MoJo’s Shane Bauer applied for a job at the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana to find out. Winn is run by the Corrections Corporation of America, which earned over $150 million running 61 prisons across the country last year. Why is running prisons so profitable? After four months working at Winn, Bauer reports that one reason is simple: the pay for guards is abysmally low and the facility was chronically understaffed. This certainly helped CCA’s bottom line, but it also produced persistent violence that the tiny staff was barely able to control:

On my fifth week on the job, I’m asked to train a new cadet….”It’s pretty bad in here,” I tell him. “People get stabbed here all the time.” At least seven inmates have been stabbed in the last six weeks….Three days later, I see two inmates stab each other in Ash. A week after that, another inmate is stabbed and beaten by multiple people in Elm. People say he was cut more than 40 times.

….If I were not working at Winn and were reporting on the prison through more traditional means, I would never know how violent it is. While I work here, I keep track of every stabbing that I see or hear about from supervisors or eyewitnesses. During the first two months of 2015, at least 12 people are shanked. The company is required to report all serious assaults to the DOC. But DOC records show that for the first 10 months of 2015, CCA reported only five stabbings. (CCA says it reports all assaults and that the DOC may have classified incidents differently.)

Reported or not, by my seventh week as a guard the violence is getting out of control. The stabbings start to happen so frequently that, on February 16, the prison goes on indefinite lockdown. No inmates leave their tiers. The walk is empty. Crows gather and puddles of water form on the rec yards. More men in black are sent in by corporate. They march around the prison in military formation. Some wear face masks.

This is a long piece, and it’s not easy to summarize. Its power comes from the relentless, detailed buildup of Bauer’s record of daily life at Winn. Do yourself a favor and put aside some time to read it.

And if you also want to watch the video version, we have that too: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Parts 4-6 to come later in the week.

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Shane Bauer’s Four Months As a Private Prison Guard

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Inside Shane Bauer’s Gripping Look at the Workings of a Private Prison

by JadeChatman3601 Posted on June 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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In December 2014, Mother Jones senior reporter Shane Bauer started a job as a corrections officer at a Louisiana prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country’s second largest private-prison company. During his four months on the job, Bauer would witness stabbings, an escape, lockdowns, and an intervention by the state Department of Corrections as the company struggled to maintain control. Bauer’s gripping, revelatory investigation is the cover story of Mother Jones‘ July/August 2016 issue.

Why Mother Jones sent a reporter to work as a private prison guard

Using his real name and personal information, Bauer applied for jobs at private prisons to get an inside look at the secretive industry that holds nine percent of America’s prisoners. He was soon hired by CCA’s Winn Correctional Center, a medium-security prison that housed around 1,500 men. After four weeks of training, Bauer was placed in a unit where he and another officer were responsible for supervising more than 350 inmates. He was paid $9 an hour and routinely worked 12-hour days.

As a guard, Bauer got an unconstrained look at the workings of a private prison. Among the episodes and issues Bauer details in his article:

• Guards felt overworked and outnumbered. Metal detectors went unused. One of Bauer’s colleagues resorted to using two prisoners as unofficial “bodyguards.” Guards skipped required security checks and recorded checks that never occurred. As one guard in the segregation unit told him, “To be honest with you, normally we just sit here at this table all day long.”

• Louisiana paid CCA $34 per day for each prisoner at Winn. Staff-intensive activities such as work program and many vocational programs had been cut. Hobby shops were shuttered and the recreation yard and law library were often closed. “We just sit in our cells all day,” one inmate said. “What you think gonna happen when a man got nuttin’ to do?”

• A prisoner escaped, slipping past unwatched security cameras and guard towers that no longer had officers in them.

• “Believe it or not, we are required by law to take care of them,” Winn’s assistant warden said about inmates’ health needs. Yet one prisoner who had lost his legs and fingers to gangrene said his multiple requests for medical care had been ignored. (He’s suing CCA for neglect.) There were no full-time psychiatrists professionals on staff. Inmates with psychiatric issues often requested to be put on suicide watch, where they were held in segregation cells without a mattress or clothes.

• A rash of stabbings broke out, leaving inmates and guards fearing for their safety. Bauer witnessed incidents in which inmates attacked other inmates. CCA responded by sending in members of its Special Operations Response Team, a SWAT-like unit that kept order with shakedowns and pepper spray. These tactical officers “use force constantly,” Winn’s assistant warden told the guards, adding that, “I believe that pain increases the intelligence of the stupid, and if inmates want to act stupid, then we’ll give them some pain to help increase their intelligence level.”

• Eventually, the prison was put on an 11-day lockdown, and officials from the state Department of Corrections came in to monitor the prison. As one inmate told Bauer shortly after he came to Winn, “Ain’t no order here. Inmates run this bitch, son.”

Bauer’s article also includes profiles of guards and prisoners struggling to survive, “locked in battle like soldiers in a war they don’t believe in.” It also describes his reaction to the stress and risk of being a prison guard—a transformation that revealed the unsettling reality of one of America’s most difficult jobs. “More and more, I focus on proving I won’t back down,” he writes. “I am vigilant; I come to work ready for people to catcall me or run up on me and threaten to punch me in the face.”

Shortly after Bauer left Winn in March 2015, CCA announced that it was backing out of its contract to run Winn Correctional Center. Documents later obtained by Mother Jones show that the state had asked CCA to make numerous immediate changes at the prison, including filling gaps in security, hiring more guards and medical staff, and addressing a “total lack of maintenance.” Another concern was a bonus paid to Winn’s warden that “causes neglect of basic needs.”

Bauer’s article is the result of more than a year of reporting, writing, and fact checking. Read it here.

Bauer’s experience is also the subject of the upcoming episode of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX airing on public radio stations across the country starting Saturday, June 25, and on the Reveal podcast on Monday, June 27.

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Inside Shane Bauer’s Gripping Look at the Workings of a Private Prison

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The Corrections Corporation of America, by the Numbers

by ChristoperHaverf Posted on June 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Read Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer’s firsthand account of his four months spent working as a guard at a corporate-run prison in Louisiana.

The Corrections Corporation of America launched the era of private prisons in 1983, when it opened a immigration detention center in an former motel in Houston, Texas. Today the Nashville-based company houses more than 66,000 inmates, making it the country’s second-largest private prison company. In 2015, it reported $1.9 billion in revenue and made more than $221 million in net income—more than $3,300 for each prisoner in its care. More on CCA’s operations:

Where CCA operates

CCA runs 61 facilities across the United States.

These include 34 state prisons, 14 federal prisons, 9 immigration detention centers, and 4 jails.
It owns 50 of these sites.
38 hold men, 2 hold women, 20 hold both sexes, and 1 holds women and children.
17 are in Texas, 7 are in Tennessee, and 6 are in Arizona.

No vacancy

CCA and other prison companies have written “occupancy guarantees” into their contracts, requiring states to pay a fee if they cannot provide a certain number of inmates. Winn Correctional Center was guaranteed to be 96 percent full.

Who owns CCA?

CCA’S biggest investor: The Vanguard Group, the country’s second-largest money management firm, holds 14 percent of CCA stock, valued at $447 million as of late 2015.

Notable company figures:

Thurgood Marshall Jr.: CCA board member, lawyer, and son of the first African American Supreme Court justice.
Charles Overby: CCA board member and former CEO of the Freedom Forum, a foundation that promotes press freedoms.
C. Michael Jacobi: CCA board member and chairman of gunmaker Sturm Ruger.
Harley Lappin: CCA’s chief corrections officer and former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

CCA stock price, 1997-2016

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Getting out of prisons

A divestment movement targeting private-prison companies has convinced some major investors to cash in their CCA stocks. Some recent divestments and their estimated values:

Pershing Square Capital Management: $196 million
Systematic Financial Management: $93 million
General Electric: $54 million

“Frankly, we’re delighted to have a greater share of investors who are thoughtful about our business, can tell the difference between rhetoric and reality.” —CCA spokesman commenting on the University of California’s decision to divest in 2015.

CCA in court

CCA told shareholders it faced $4.2 million in liabilities related to lawsuits in 2015, but it said no pending cases would seriously affect its bottom line.

CCA will not disclose details about the lawsuits it faces. But data on more than 1,200 cases obtained by Prison Legal News offers a snapshot of the types of civil cases commonly filed against the company by its prisoners and employees.

Subjects of lawsuits filed against CCA

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Prisoners filed 82 percent of the more than 1,000 federal civil cases naming CCA as a defendant between 2010 and 2015. Federal prisoner suits against CCA have fallen since they peaked in 2000, perhaps due to a 1996 federal law that made it more difficult for inmates to sue prisons.

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The Corrections Corporation of America, by the Numbers

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A Brief History of America’s Private Prison Industry

by WillardArchdall Posted on June 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Read Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer’s firsthand account of his four months spent working as a guard at a corporate-run prison in Louisiana.

In the early 1980s, the Corrections Corporation of America pioneered the idea of running prisons for a profit. “You just sell it like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers,” one of its founders told Inc. magazine. Today, corporate-run prisons hold eight percent of America’s inmates. Here’s how the private prison industry took off:

1983


More: Who owns the Corrections Corporation of America?

Thomas Beasley, Doctor R. Crants, and T. Don Hutto start Corrections Corporation of America, the world’s first private prison company.

1984

CCA begins operating a county jail and a juvenile detention center in Tennessee. It also opens its first privately owned facility in Houston, a motel hastily remodeled to hold immigration detainees.

1985

A federal judge orders Tennessee to stop admitting inmates to its overcrowded prisons. CCA offers, unsuccessfully, to pay $250 million for a 99-year lease on the state’s entire prison system.

1986

CCA goes public, saying its facility design and use of electronic surveillance mean it can operate larger prisons “with less staff than the public sector would have needed.”

A guard dog at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana

1987

Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, later known as the GEO Group, gets its first contract to run a federal immigration detention center.

Mid-’90s

CCA co-chairs the criminal justice task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Among the “model” bills to emerge are truth-in-sentencing and three-strikes legislation that help fuel the ’90s prison boom.

1997

Arguing that it’s in the property business, CCA becomes a real estate investment trust for tax purposes. A new affiliate, Prison Realty Trust, raises $447 million for a prison-buying spree.

Private And Public Prison Populations 1990-2014

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1998

The Justice Department investigates a CCA prison in Youngstown, Ohio, following a spate of escapes, stabbings, and killings. In addition to finding inexperienced and poorly trained guards, the probe reveals that CCA took on maximum-security inmates at a facility designed for a medium-security population.

2000

As prison occupancy rates drop, Prison Realty Trust nearly goes bankrupt. CCA stock, once nearly $150 a share, falls to 19 cents. The company drops the trust and restructures.

CCA Stock Price, 1997-2016

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2004

A Justice Department report finds a “disturbing degree” of physical abuse by staff and underreporting of violence among inmates at a Baltimore juvenile facility run by the private prison operator Correctional Services Corporation. CSC is later acquired by GEO.

2005

Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) introduces the Private Prison Information Act, which would require private prisons holding federal inmates to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests. It died, as have at least seven similar bills opposed by CCA and GEO.

2007

A drawing by an immigrant child held at CCA’s T. Don Hutto Center. ACLU

CCA’s and GEO’s stock prices jump as both companies jockey to run the federal government’s expanding immigration detention centers. Meanwhile, the ACLU settles a case against Immigration and Customs Enforcement for conditions in the CCA-managed T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas, where about half the detainees are kids. Under the agreement, children no longer wear prison uniforms and may move more freely.

2008

The New York Times investigates the deaths of immigration detainees, such as a Guinean man at a CCA-run facility who fractured his skull and was placed in solitary confinement before being taken to a hospital. He died after four months in a coma.

2009

A CCA representative attends a meeting where ALEC members draft the legislation that will eventually become Arizona’s notorious anti-immigration law. CCA denies having a hand in writing the bill. It cuts ties with ALEC the following year.

2010

An ACLU suit alleges rampant violence at a CCA-run Idaho prison known as “gladiator school.” The lawsuit claims the prison is understaffed and fosters an environment that “relies on the degradation, humiliation, and subjugation of prisoners.” The FBI investigates but doesn’t pursue charges. In Kentucky, the governor orders all female inmates removed from a CCA prison after more than a dozen cases of alleged sexual abuse by guards.

2011

Inmates at Winn Correctional Center

CCA becomes the first private prison company to purchase a state facility, buying Ohio’s Lake Erie Correctional Institution as part of a privatization plan proposed by Gov. John Kasich and supported by his corrections chief, former CCA Director Gary Mohr.

2012

CCA offers to buy prisons in 48 states in exchange for 20-year management contracts. The same year, a GEO-operated youth facility in Mississippi where staff sexually abused minors is described by a judge as a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions.” At another Mississippi facility, a 24-year-old CCA employee is killed during a riot over prisoners’ complaints about poor food, inadequate medical care, and disrespectful guards.

2013

CCA converts back to a real estate investment trust, as does GEO. Mother Jones reports that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $2.2 million in GEO.

2014

CCA’s annual report flags criminal justice reform—including drug decriminalization and the reduction of mandatory minimum sentences—as a “risk factor” for its business. Chris Epps, Mississippi’s prison commissioner and the president of the American Correctional Association, is charged with taking kickbacks from a private prison contractor.

2015

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) co-sponsors the Justice is Not for Sale Act, which would ban all government contracts with private prison companies. After Hillary Clinton is criticized for using campaign bundlers who’d worked as lobbyists for CCA and GEO, she promises to no longer take their money and says, “We should end private prisons and private detention centers.”

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A Brief History of America’s Private Prison Industry

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