Private prison corporation GEO Group is not only the recipient of fat federal contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and other agencies: it’s also the retirement location for the former federal officials charged with awarding GEO Group its contracts. GEO Group has a long history of hiring federal
Anyone interested in prison reform is aware the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. Even though our country is large, only five percent of the world’s population inhabit the US. Incredibly, the country’s jails and prisons house 25 percent of all the inmates on the planet. An astounding one-quarter of all of the world’s prisoners are spending time behind bars in the U.S. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, every 33 adults in the U.S. are incarcerated in America’s jails or prisons.
A major contributor to these outrageous statistics, which have doubled since 1990 is the “war on drugs” that has transformed into “the war on indigent people.”
The reasons for incarceration discrimination do not end with economic status. People of color are disproportionately locked-up for minor offenses. A significant factor for this social ill is a lingering policy that has sent countless offenders to prison for years. A small amount of crack cocaine found in the pockets of poor blacks has sent them to prison for decades. However, middle or upper-class whites will endure a mere “slap on the wrist” for cocaine offenses.
More people are behind bars because of drugs than murder, rape or any other violent offense and it is costing tax-payers more than $50 billion a year to keep this atrocity going.
There is only one entity that is benefitting from this out of control economic disaster. The prison industry.
Business moguls have gotten wind of the mass incarceration problem in the U.S. and are making profits off of a deteriorating situation.
By Prison Legal News
The Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) recently completed an evaluation of the effects of private prison confinement on offender recidivism. The evaluation assessed the impact of confinement at the Prairie Correctional Facility (PCF) in Appleton, Minnesota on recidivism among 3,532 offenders released between 2007 and 2009. The average follow-up period for the offenders in this study was 2.5 years.
Key Findings
• Private prison confinement was associated with a greater risk of recidivism in all 20 Cox regression models that were estimated. This association was statistically significant in 8 of the 20 models.
• All five private prison measures examined in this study significantly increased the risk of reconviction.
• Three private prison measures significantly increased the risk of rearrest.
• None of the private prison variables had an impact on either reincarceration measure (new offense and technical violation revocation).
• The findings suggest that the PCF produced slightly worse recidivism outcomes among the healthiest and best-behaved prisoners for the same amount of money. The recidivism results may be due to fewer visitation and rehabilitative programming opportunities for offenders confined at PCF.
Prior to 2010, when prison population growth created shortages in prison beds at state facilities, the DOC frequently housed some of its prisoners at the PCF. The facility, which opened in 1996, once held as many as 1,200 Minnesota state prisoners. Operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a private prison company, the PCF closed in February 2010 due, in part, to slowed growth in Minnesota’s prison population, which minimized the need to transfer offenders to non-DOC facilities.
By James Kilgore / Prison Legal News
In recent months a battle has erupted at Mangaung prison in South Africa. Mangaung, located near the city of Bloemfontein, is one of the country’s two privately-operated correctional facilities. Managed by British-based G4S, which bills itself as the “world’s largest security” company, Mangaung reflects a troubled criminal justice system littered with overcrowded, poorly resourced prisons. A September 2013 strike by guards from the Police and Prison Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) sparked the latest round of drama; the guards were protesting the dismissal of several shop stewards as well as poor working conditions. G4S responded by firing 300 prison staff.
In early October 2013, with the facility still reeling from the mass terminations, a female guard was held hostage for twelve hours. The next day another guard was stabbed. Speaking for G4S, company spokesman Andy Baker alleged that prisoners were being paid to destabilize Mangaung. “We assume it is linked to ongoing staffing strife,” he told the media, implying the union was behind the attacks.
At that point, Minister of Correctional Services Sbu Ndebele stepped in and placed Mangaung under the direct supervision of the state, essentially terminating G4S’s 25-year contract with the South African government signed in 2000. Ndebele claimed G4S management had lost “effective control over the prison.” The move reflected a broader rejection of private prisons by the South African government: Ndebele’s predecessor, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, had blocked the implementation of a bidding process for four more private prisons in 2011. As it presently stands, the country’s only privately-operated facility is Kutama Sinthumule in Limpopo province, co-owned by Kensani Corrections (Pty) Ltd. and the Florida-based GEO Group.
By Michael Snyder How would you describe an industry that wants to put more Americans in prison and keep them there longer so that it can make more money? In America today, approximately 130,000 people are locked up in private prisons that are being run by for-profit companies, and that number is growing very rapidly.
We have profiled every prison within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Learn about each prison’s location, security level, educational and recreational offerings, and much more.
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