[OccupyCU] Readings for prison reading group - 7pm Wed 4/4 at IMC - privatization of prisons/immigration detention

[Stuart Levy]

Hello all,

I'd mentioned this at Friday's GA meeting.  Here are the current 
readings for the *discussion/reading group about prisons* which James 
Kilgore has been leading.

They meet on alternate Wednesdays - including *this Wednesday, 7:00pm, 
April 4th* - in the obscure "zine room" in the basement of the IMC.
Easiest way to reach the room:
    walk up the main stairs that lead to post office (not the small 
downward-leading stairs from elm st);
    from foyer, walk through the door at left which I think says "C4A";
    of the 3 closed doors that then immediately face you, open the left one,
    and follow the short flight of winding stairs downward.
    The meeting room is just at the base of those stairs.

(See, I said it was obscure!)
    Stuart

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	reading for next meeting
Date: 	Sun, 25 Mar 2012 21:25:55 -0500
From: 	James Kilgore <jjincu at gmail.com>
To: 	James Kilgore <jjincu at gmail.com>



Dear all,

  Attached find the main reading for our next session on April 4th at 7 
p.m.  These readings deal with Private Corrections Companies: a report 
from the Justice Policy Institute entitled Gaming the System.his is a 
vital topic as there is a lot of restructuring going on and the privates 
are making lots of new and potentially treacherous moves. I have also 
attached in one document and pasted in below four other short articles 
which fill in some other parts of the picture:

·“Corrections firms offers state cash for prisons”- about CCA’s offer to 
buy up prisons in 48 states

·Two of my own pieces” The New Operation Wetback” and “The GEO Group 
Cashes In: Business is Booming for the Prison Profiteers”. The first 
stresses the role of private prisons in immigration, the second is a 
more up to date profile of the GEO Group’s activities.

·The last piece outlines the activities of those opposing Illinois’ 
proposed first private state prison: a Federal immigration detention 
center in Crete.

CCA article: 
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jvHycYF0BSvqHVIfQ54Zkjxq-Mvg?docId=ff5f031f022146888a1f54c520c6fad7

*Corrections firm offers states cash for prisons*

**

*By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press*

ATLANTA (AP) — The nation's largest private prison company made an 
enticing offer to 48 states that went something like this: We will buy 
your prison now if you agree to keep it mostly full and promise to pay 
us for running it over the next two decades. Despite a need for cash, 
several states immediately slammed the door on the offer, a sign that 
privatizing prisons might not be as popular as it once was.

Corrections Corporation of America sent letters to the prison leaders in 
January, saying it had a pot of $250 million to buy facilities as part 
of an investment. The company is trying to capitalize on the landmark 
deal it made with Ohio in the fall by purchasing a facility, the first 
state prison in the nation to be sold to a private firm.

Prison departments in California, Texas and Georgia all dismissed the 
idea. Florida's prison system said it doesn't have the authority to make 
that kind of decision and officials in CCA's home state of Tennessee 
said they aren't reviewing the proposal. The states refused to say 
exactly why they were rejecting the offer.

"Knowing the state government, it has to have something to do with the 
potential political backlash," said Jeanne Stinchcomb, a criminal 
justice professor at Florida Atlantic University who has written two 
books on the corrections industry. "Privatization has reaped some 
negative publicity, so I can only assume that despite the possible 
benefits, there would be a price to pay for supporting it."

Bruce Bayley, associate professor of criminal justice at Weber State 
University, said he hoped something other than politics drove the 
states' decisions.

"It's always hard for politicians to turn down the money," said Bayley. 
"On the flipside, though, it speaks well to the professionalism of 
corrections departments of these states who don't want to sell out to 
companies just to add some money to their bank accounts."

Critics of private prisons called the offer a backdoor way to delay the 
sentencing reform movements that have sprung up in many states looking 
to cut prison budgets. Lawmakers in many conservative states that once 
eagerly passed tough-on-crime laws are now embracing alternative 
sentences for low-level offenders who would otherwise be locked up.

CCA said selling a prison to a private firm doesn't block states from 
pursuing sentencing reform. The company also said it was still too early 
to say whether any state would take them up on the bid.

"It was an outreach letter making them aware of these offers, it's yet 
another tool in the toolbox," said company spokesman Steve Owen. "We can 
design and build and own facilities from scratch or manage government 
facilities, but this is a third business model."

CCA said the offer was inspired by the $72.7 million sale of Lake Erie 
Correctional Institution in Ohio. CCA and its main competitors, which 
have said they don't plan to make a similar offer, typically build their 
own prisons or manage state-owned lockups.

"We want to build on that success and provide our existing or 
prospective government partners with access to the same opportunity as 
they manage challenging corrections budgets," Harley Lappin, the 
company's chief corrections officer, said in the letter to prison leaders.

Eligible facilities must have at least 1,000 beds, must be less than 25 
years old and in good condition, and have to maintain at least a 90 
percent occupancy rate.

The private prison industry boomed in the late 1980s and 1990s as states 
sought cheaper ways to jail people and voters began resisting building 
more prisons. Now companies like CCA and its main rival, Florida-based 
Geo Group Inc., operate dozens of private prisons throughout the nation.

But efforts to privatize prisons have become highly-charged political 
debates in many states, partly because a sale often requires legislative 
approval or an OK by the governor.

In Louisiana, lawmakers last year defeated Gov. Bobby Jindal's proposal 
to privatize and sell several state prisons to generate $90 million. 
Relatives of prison employees aggressively fought the move, fearing that 
they would get lower pay and less benefits working for a private firm.

An effort to privatize a chunk of Florida's prisons also met stiff 
opposition from lawmakers in February. They blocked what would have been 
the largest prison privatization in the U.S.

Some critics of CCA's bid said their concerns extend beyond the 
financial costs of a deal. About two dozen religious groups signed a 
letter saying that accepting the proposal would be "costly to the moral 
strength of your state."

"Mr. Lappin's proposal is an invitation to deepening state debt, 
increased costs to people of color who are disproportionately impacted 
by mass incarceration as well as their families and communities, and 
decreased public safety," said the letter, sent by groups including The 
Episcopal Church and the Unitarian Universalist Association of 
Congregations.

*Immigration and Mass Incarceration in the Obama Era*

**

*The New Operation Wetback*

**

*By JAMES KILGORE*

*August04, 2011*

Last week Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) joined a demonstration in 
Washington D.C. to protest the refusal of President Obama to use his 
executive powers to halt the deportations of the undocumented. 
Gutierrez’ arrest came only two days after Obama had addressed a 
conferenceof the National Council of La Raza. Conveniently forgetting 
the history of the civil right struggles that made his Presidency a 
possibility, Obama reminded those attending that he was bound to “uphold 
the laws on the books.”

With over 392,000 deportations in 2010, more than in any of the Bush 
years, many activists fear we are in the midst of a repeat of notorious 
episodes of the past such as the “Repatriation” campaign of the 1930s 
and the infamous Operation Wetback of 1954, both of which resulted in 
the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Latinos.

But several things are different this time around. A crucial distinction 
is that we are in the era of mass incarceration. Not only are the 
undocumented being deported, many are going to prison for years before 
being delivered across the border.While the writings of Michelle 
Alexander and others have highlighted the widespread targeting of young 
African-American males by the criminal justice system, few have noted 
that in the last decade the complexion of new faces behind bars has been 
dramatically changing. Since the turn of the century, the number of 
blacks in prisons has declined slightly, while theranks of Latinos 
incarcerated has increased by nearly 50%,reaching just over 300,000 in 2009.

A second distinguishing feature of the current state of affairs is the 
presence of the private prison corporations. For the likes of the 
industry’s leading powers,Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and 
the GEO Group, detaining immigrants has been the life blood for reviving 
their financial fortunes.

Just over a decade ago their bottom lines were flagging. Freshly built 
prisons sat with empty beds while share values plummeted. For financial 
year 1999 CCA reported losses of $53.4 million and laid off40% of its 
workforce. Then came the windfall– 9/11.

In 2001 Steven Logan, then CEO of Cornell Industries, a private prison 
firm which has since merged with GEO,spelled out exactly what this meant 
for his sector :

“I think it’s clear that with the events of Sept. 11, there’s a 
heightened focus on detention, both on the borders and within the U.S. 
[and] more people are gonna get caught…So that’s a positive for our 
business. The federal business is the best business for us. It’s the 
most consistent business for us, and the events of Sept. 11 are 
increasing that level of business.”

Logan was right. The Patriot Act and other legislation led to a new wave 
of immigration detentions. By linking immigrants to terrorism, 
aggressive roundupssupplied Latinos and other undocumented people to 
fill those empty private prison cells. Tougher immigration laws mandated 
felony convictions and prison time for cases which previously merited 
only deportation. Suddenly, the business of detaining immigrants was 
booming.PBS Commentator Maria Hinojosa went so far as to call this the 
new “Gold Rush” for private prisons.

The figures support Hinojosa’s assertion. While private prisons own or 
operate only 8% of general prison beds, they control 49% of the 
immigration detention market. CCA alone operates 14 facilities via 
contracts with ICE, providing 14, 556 beds. They have laid the 
groundwork for more business through the creation of a vast lobbying and 
advocacy network. From 1999-2009 the corporation spent more than $18 
million on lobbying, mostly focusing on harsher sentencing, prison 
privatization and immigration.

One significant result of their lobbying efforts was the passage of SB 
1070 in Arizona, a law which nearly provides police with alicense to 
profile Latinos for stops and searches.The roots of SB 1070 lie in the 
halls of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a far right 
grouping that specializes in supplying template legislation to elected 
state officials. CCA and other private prison firms are key participants 
in ALEC and played a major role in the development of the template that 
ended up as SB 1070.

For its part, GEO Group has also been carving out its immigration market 
niche. Earlier this year they broke ground on a new 600 bed detention 
center in Karnes County, Texas. At about the same time the company 
bought a controlling interest in BI Corporation, the largest provider of 
electronic monitoring systems in the U.S.The primary motivation for this 
takeover was the five year, $372 million contract BI signed with ICE in 
2009 to step up the Bush initiatedIntense Supervision Appearance 
Program. (ISAP 11). Under this arrangement the Feds hired BI to provide 
ankle bracelets and a host of other surveillance for some 27,000 people 
awaiting deportation or asylum hearings.

Sadly, the Obama presidency has consistently provided encouragement for 
the likes of CCA and GEO to grow the market for detainees. While failing 
to pass immigration reform or the Dream Act, the current administration 
has kept the core of the previous administration’s immigration policy 
measures intact. These include the Operation Endgame,a 2003 measure that 
promisedto purge the nation of all “illegals” by 2012 and the more 
vibrant Secure Communities (S-Comm).Under S-Comm the Federal government 
authorizes local authorities to share fingerprints with ICE of all those 
they arrest.Though supposedly intended to capture only people with 
serious criminal backgrounds, in reality S-Comm has led to the detention 
and deportation of thousands of people with no previous convictions.

At the National Council of La Raza’s Conference Obama tried to console 
the audience by saying that he knows “very well the pain and heartbreak 
deportation has caused.”His words failed to resonate. Instead Rep. 
Gutierrez and others took to the streets, demonstrating that “I feel 
your pain” statements and appeals to the audacity of hope carry little 
credibility these days. It is time for a serious change of direction on 
immigration issues or pretty soon, just as Michelle Alexander has 
referred to the mass incarceration of African-Americans as the New Jim 
Crow,we may hear people start to call the ongoing repression of Latinos 
a “New Operation Wetback.”

*January 09, 2012*

**

*The GEO Group Cashes In*

**

*Business is Booming for the Prison Profiteers*

**

*By JAMES KILGORE*

**

Private corrections company The GEO Group celebrated the holiday season 
by opening a new 1,500 bed prison in Milledgeville, Georgia on December 
12th. The $80 million facility is expected to generate approximately 
$28.0 million in annual revenues.

Though GEO (formerly Wackenhut) is hardly a household name, they are a 
major player in the private corrections sector, combining a self 
righteous amorality in profiting from human misery with a ruthless sense 
of just how to make a buck in this business. The GEO Group is so 
notorious that they were the target of an Occupy Washington D.C. action 
in early December. In addition,the United Methodist Church sold off more 
than $200,000 in stock in GEO Group over the holiday season, judging 
that holding these shares was “incompatible with Bible teaching.”

While such actions may irritate a few within the company’s rank, the GEO 
Group is thick-skinned.Over the years journalists have exposed a long 
history of violence, abuse and corruption in the company’s 
facilities.Such scandals would have driven most firms out of business, 
but GEO has always managed to find the way back to prosperity. While the 
U.S. economy has plummeted in the past eighteen months, GEO has been 
positioning itself for the future.In addition to opening the Georgia 
facility, during this period the company has:

bought up competitor Cornell Corporation and its prisons in 15 states, 
an acquisition expected to add about $400 million a year to GEO’s revenues.

acquired BI Incorporated for $415 million. BI is the U.S.’ largest 
producer and provider of electronic monitoring units with 60,000 
“customers” for their ankle bracelets

begun the intake of new detainees at the 650 bed Adelanto ICE Processing 
Center East in Southern California. Adelanto West is scheduled to bring 
a further 650 beds online in August 2012.

expanded their first facility, Aurora Detention Center (founded in 1987) 
from 400 to 525 beds

moved ahead with plans to develop a 600 bed Civil Detention Center 
inKarnes County Texas, expected to generate $15 million in annual revenues

For the first nine months of 2011, GEO reported total revenues of $1.2 
billion, an 11% rise over 2010. Shareholders are gloating with the 
company’s success. A hundred dollars invested in GEO in 2005 would have 
risen to $322 by 2010. At the top of the profiteers standslong-time CEO 
George Zoley. The owner of 70% of GEO’s stock, Zoley consistently pulls 
down annual compensation in excess of $3 million, landing him squarely 
in the ranks of the one per centers. His Chief Operations Officer Wayne 
Calabrese, is not far behind at around two million a year.

GEO’s rising profitability is a result of their capacity to change with 
the times. While the War on Drugs and facility construction were the 
cash cows of the industry from 1980 to 2001, 9/11 and the sinking 
economy have shifted the terrain. Immigration and alternatives to 
incarceration are the new windows of opportunity in the freedom 
deprivation sector.GEO, as usual, is right on the money. In Zoley’s 
prosaic jargon, the company is developing a “full continuum of care with 
leading competitive positions in every key market segment in 
corrections, detention and treatment rehabilitation services.”

Along with the new centers at Adelanto and expanding Aurora, the 
acquisition of BI has enhanced GEO’s potentialtocapitalize on 
anti-immigrant crackdowns. The takeover included BI’s five year, $372 
million contract with ICE for monitoring 27,000 immigrants under Federal 
supervision but not held in detention centers.

Grabbing BI has also put GEO in a position to take advantage of the 
early release programs being implemented in California and other states. 
BI operates a network of daily reporting centers which offer drug 
treatment, anger management workshops, counseling, and a host of other 
services to individuals on parole and probation. These centers stand 
ready to help state agencies address the increasing need for supervision 
of people released or diverted from prison. In the long run, the large 
scale privatization of probation and parole functions is an obvious aim.

Further moves in line with the changing times are the firm’s forays into 
the psychiatric field through their GEO Care division.With mainstream 
mental hospitals suffering massive cutbacks, GEO Care has found a niche 
market in facilities for the involuntarily institutionalized, in other 
words, psychiatric prisons. GEO Care runs three such facilities in 
Florida alone. Their prize plum is the720 bed Florida Civil Commitment 
Center. (Courts impose a civil commitment on those judged a threat to 
public safety though not convicted of any crime. People with sex offense 
histories are the most frequent targets.) In addition to its Florida 
operations, GEO Care has a presence in Texas as well, having gained a 
contract to run a 100 bed facility for people awaiting trial in 2009.

Predictably, GEO could not have achieved these financial successes 
without the usual assortment of dirty tricks and influence peddling. The 
firm’s team of 63 lobbyists has been active in 16 states over the past 
decade. In the first quarter of this year alone GEO spent more than 
$100,000on lobbying in Floridaas the legislature was considering a plan 
to privatize 29 state prisons. Unfortunately for Zoley and company, the 
initiative stalled this time around but is likely to resurface in 
upcoming legislative sessions.

GEO complements its lobbying activities with political campaign 
contributions, which totaled just over $2.4 million between 2003 and 2010.

Perhaps even more worrying than the GEO Group’s political maneuverings, 
however, are their efforts to export the U.S. model of mass 
incarceration and immigration detention. Inthe late 1990s, GEO (then 
Wackenhut) had a financial stake in Australia’s notorious Woomera 
Immigration Detention Center. UN Envoy Justice Bhagwati visited the 
facility and said he felt he was “in front of a great human 
tragedy.”Barbara Rogalia who worked there as a nurse, echoed these 
sentiments: “It reminded me of a Nazi concentration camp I visited in 
Czechoslovakia, now a museum. The only thing that was missing from the 
gate, at the top near the razor wire, was a sign saying ‘Arbeit macht 
frei‘ (‘Work sets (you) free’).”

Following massive demonstrations by community activists, a string of 
uprisings by those detained and a series of escapes the center closed in 
2003. A corporate restructuring process ensued and the company’s 
corrections wing re-emerged as GEO Australia and continues to operate 
four prisons.

GEO’s ventures in the U.K. have had a slightly smoother landing. In 2011 
GEO UK won a contract for prison escort services worth$150 million a 
year. In addition, they took over management ofthe 217-bed Immigration 
Removal Center in Glasgow, Scotland.

GEO Group’s last overseas venture is a 3,000 plus bed prison in the 
Limpopo Province of South Africa. Not long ago, it appeared that South 
Africa was preparing to embark on a large-scale prison privatization 
project, with GEO in the lead. However, a change in cabinet personnel 
landed Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula as Minister of Corrections. She has 
declared her intention to keep all facilities in state hands. Unlike in 
the U.S., at least someone in a national position of power in South 
Africa is prepared to say no to the private prison industry.

At the moment there doesn’t seem to be a Mapisa-Nqakula emerging in the 
Obama administration. Instead, the GEO Group looks set to make an 
increasing variety of projects “shovel ready.”If the halting of private 
profiteering from freedom deprivation is to become a reality, we will 
need a lot more Occupiers and political leaders with the courage to 
listen and act.


*IMMIGRANT FAMILIES AND SUPPORTERS ANNOUNCE A 3-DAY WALK TO CRETE - 3/21*

Submitted by Sugar on Fri, 2012-03-23 15:17

*PRESS ADVISORY *

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE *

*March 19 for March 21st at 10:30AM*

*IMMIGRANT FAMILIES AND SUPPORTERS ANNOUNCE A 3-DAY WALK TO CRETE*

*/Resist the Crete Immigration Detention Center/*

*Chicago, IL* – Immigrant Families, activists, and supporters will 
embark on a 3 day walk from Little Village, Chicago to Crete Illinois. 
This action is a response to the “detention center” planned by 
Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), Corrections Corporation of 
America (CCA) and the village of Crete. While immigrant rights advocates 
have been demanding an end to all deportations and immigration reform, 
the Obama administration has instead done the opposite; deporting over 1 
million immigrants and pushing “Immigration Detention Reform.” ICE is 
currently planning to build at least five detention centers nationwide 
located in states that have a high concentration of immigrants 
(California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and New Jersey)

*WHAT:*Press Conference to announce a 3-Day walk Action to Crete IL.

*WHEN:* Wednesday, March 21st at 10:30 AMWHERE: Our Lady of Guadalupe 
Mission 3442 W. 26th St. Chicago IL 60623

*WHO:* Families affected by the immigration system, Our Lady of 
Guadalupe Mission/Justice Mission, Moratorium on Deportations Campaign 
(MDC) and other organizations.

*BACKGROUND:*

ICE is negotiating with the village of Crete and Corrections Corporation 
of America to build a new Immigrant Detention Center, a prison with the 
capacity to incarcerate 700-800 immigrants, just South of Chicago. The 
contract has not yet been signed – and until it is, this new prison can 
still be stopped. “Our families are being torn apart, so we come 
together and walk as one large family.” stated the Organizers’ website 
for the Walk to Crete. "Detention is about an open market in the 
business of selling human lives – Detention centers are a new prison 
experiment, an old product re-packaged in new ways."

Participants in the walk will be available for interviews.

*Itinerary for the 3-day Action*

For daily updates visit: www.moratoriumondeportations.org 
<http://www.moratoriumondeportations.org/>

*Friday, March 30*

3PM-4 PM: Departure event

3PM: Gather at Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission, 3442 W 26th St, Chicago

3:30PM march together to Cook County Jail , 26th St and California Ave. 
RALLY:  a gathering to make commitments about the future we want to 
build together – one which knows no detention or mass incarceration. Add 
your own sign. Wish the walkers a good journey!

4:30PM-8PM: Walk through Back of the Yards, Chicago Lawn, Wrightwood, 
arrive in Evergreen Park

*Saturday, March 31*

9AM-8PM: Walk through Beverly, Blue Island, Harvey, Homewood, arrive in 
Chicago Heights - rallies along the way, times/locations TBA

*Sunday, April 1*

9AM-12PM Arrive in Crete

1PM-4PM Rally and procession in Crete, action at site of proposed 
Detention Center

6PM-7PM Return to Chicago



-- 
James Kilgore
Research Scholar
Center for African Studies
University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)
check the website for my new book: http://freedomneverrests.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/occupycu/attachments/20120402/410940c0/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: gaming_the_system.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 2420485 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/occupycu/attachments/20120402/410940c0/attachment-0001.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: private prison articles for reading group 4-8-12.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 25962 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/occupycu/attachments/20120402/410940c0/attachment-0001.docx>