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"prison guard tower" by Rennet Stowe on flickr
Update on Arizona’s RFP
"prison guard tower" by Rennet Stowe on flickr
So the supposedly conservative leadership of the state apparently doesn’t really care about fiscal responsibility. No surprise there. But I sure hope they care about contract non-compliance and a failure to deliver efficient and effective services. Because the groups vying to get the contracts for these beds all had awful track records. A DOC spokesman said recently that the department would consider past performance in awarding the contracts. If so, the GEO Group might not fare too well in the bidding process, because very recently they have had major issues operating the Walnut Grove Youth CF and the Eastern Mississippi CF. Things like riots, stabbings, guards selling drugs, children being sprayed with chemicals while locked down, physical abuse, extreme malnourishment of prisoners, and abusing prisoners for displaying symptoms of untreated mental illness. You know, little things.
Another company, MTC, is no better. After 3 convicts escaped their Kingman, Arizona facility last year and killed an elderly vacationing couple, it took the company 8 months to implement new security measures. Unfortunately, I don’t think these issues or the ones that all other private prison companies seem to suffer from will stop the state from privatizing, partly because these companies are very effective PR machines, able to consistently sell bad products to the same consumers. The good citizens of Goodyear, AZ didn’t fall for the sales pitch, and emphatically declared their opposition to a private prison coming to their town.
The rest of the state’s taxpayers may also be in luck. Rep. Chad Campbell, the state’s House Majority Leader, has called for a delay of the proposed 5,000 bed expansion. As public hearings continue in various rural areas throughout the state to debate the relative merits of bringing a private prison to town, Campbell asks that the expansion be delayed until “after enhanced security, training, and monitoring policies are in place and shown to be effective at all existing private facilities.” Thank you Mr. Campbell for injecting some common sense into the situation.
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recc’d. I believe we are going to see more and more expansion such as this. Private prisons are rife with problems, devoid of oversight, and profitable. The greedy conservative leadership probably considers the elderly vacationing victim couple just a little necessary collateral damage.
Sick. The whole thing.
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yes it is sick–the whole notion of privatized prisons is sick.
Privatization of prisons does nothing but broaden corruption and human abuse. A perfect example are those two judges in Pennsylvania who sentenced innocent juveniles to prison for kickbacks from the people who owned the prisons.
but it all harks back to the root cause which is the corrupted foundation of Milton Friedman’s “free market” version of economic neo-liberalism which has been the guiding light of the US economy for the past 50 years. Privatization of public institutions is one of its cornerstones.
What passes for the US economy today is nothing more than a multilevel marketing scheme for the rich.
Until this broken ideology (broken for 80% of us, it works quite well for the other 20%) is replaced, nothing of any significance will change for the rest of us.
And we are not going to change this broken ideology by continuing to send millionaire Wall Street investors to Congress. Milton Friedman multilevel marketing economics works well for them.
If you don’t believe me, just compare the percentages of increases in the net worths of Congressional members for the years 2009 and 2010 to that of your own percentage of increase in your net worth and you will see what I mean. These people who speak of “sacrifices” have themselves made none.
For example, in 2009, a year when thousands of American jobs were being cut, David Koch, according to his tax filing increased his net worth by $4.5 billion (and yes I refer to his personal net worth, not that of Koch Industries)
that makes me sick to my stomach to read. I completely agree that our social and political systems are designed to further empower the rich, at the direct expense of everyone else. Our political system has been hijacked by wealthy/corporate special interests who intentionally deceive and defraud millions of Americans into thinking that cutting taxes and regulations on the wealthy will somehow make all of us prosper. Well I don’t buy that “rising tide” BS – eventually, the tide will sink the majority of boats if it gets too violent. That I fear has already started happening.