StormX
Banned
When America's largest private prison company opened a 2,000-bed facility in a barren stretch of the Mojave Desert in southeastern California in 1997, there was no guarantee that any inmates would ever reside there.
California's exceptionally powerful prison guard union was waging a fierce campaign against private prison companies, telling voters that the facilities were poorly run and that the industry would take away union jobs. "Public safety should not be for profit," Don Novey, president of the prison guard union, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.
Still, David Myers, the president of Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville-based giant of the for-profit prison industry, believed his company's decision to build a prison in that remote corner of the state would eventually pay off.
"If we build it, they will come," he predicted.
Sixteen years later, as California struggles to relieve overcrowding in one of the nation's largest prison systems, the inmates are coming by the thousands.
Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a three-year deal to lease the CCA prison at $28.5 million per year. The prison is currently occupied by federal inmates and operates at well under full capacity, according to recent reports.
Along with two other private-prison deals inked by Brown in September with a different company, the GEO Group, the move punctuates a period of extraordinary growth for the private prison industry in California. Between 2008 and 2012, CCA's revenues in the state more than doubled, even as the company's growth began to slow in other states throughout the country, according to a HuffPost analysis of the company's annual financial documents.
CA alone holds more than 8,000 California inmates at facilities in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. The company's new deal with California expands the state's prison capacity by an additional 2,300 prisoners, and California's contracts with the GEO Group add another 1,400. Along with an existing private prison contract in the state, the new contracts bring California's total number of private-prison inmates to about 12,300.
California is now CCA's second-biggest customer, providing $214 million to the company last year, according to HuffPost's analysis of the company's finances. The state is surpassed only by the federal government, which paid CCA $752 million last year, a figure that accounts for contracts with three agencies -- the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The state of Georgia, the company's third-largest client, paid $99 million last year.
Although Brown's new contracts with CCA and the GEO Group are set to expire after three years and five years, respectively, critics worry that the state may extend the deals. Since California first started sending inmates to private prisons out of state in 2006, officials have renewed, and in some cases expanded, several contracts. "I just don't see these contracts going away," said Glenn Backes, a lobbyist for the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for prison reform.
Such concerns stem in part from the fact that the arrangements could deprive prison reformers of an unlikely but potent ally: the prison guard union.
For years, California's prison guard union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, served as a powerful check on the growth of the private prison industry. The union spent millions to support the campaigns of political allies, and launched media attacks that were widely seen as lethal to the political aspirations of opponents.
Now the union and the private companies are partners. Brown's deal with CCA stipulates that the state will staff the private facility with union guards, effectively creating a detente between the former foes. When Brown first announced the deal in August, the union's leader, Mike Jimenez, joined him on stage in a show of solidarity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/....html?utm_hp_ref=black-voices&ir=Black+Voices
California's exceptionally powerful prison guard union was waging a fierce campaign against private prison companies, telling voters that the facilities were poorly run and that the industry would take away union jobs. "Public safety should not be for profit," Don Novey, president of the prison guard union, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.
Still, David Myers, the president of Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville-based giant of the for-profit prison industry, believed his company's decision to build a prison in that remote corner of the state would eventually pay off.
"If we build it, they will come," he predicted.
Sixteen years later, as California struggles to relieve overcrowding in one of the nation's largest prison systems, the inmates are coming by the thousands.
Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a three-year deal to lease the CCA prison at $28.5 million per year. The prison is currently occupied by federal inmates and operates at well under full capacity, according to recent reports.
Along with two other private-prison deals inked by Brown in September with a different company, the GEO Group, the move punctuates a period of extraordinary growth for the private prison industry in California. Between 2008 and 2012, CCA's revenues in the state more than doubled, even as the company's growth began to slow in other states throughout the country, according to a HuffPost analysis of the company's annual financial documents.
CA alone holds more than 8,000 California inmates at facilities in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. The company's new deal with California expands the state's prison capacity by an additional 2,300 prisoners, and California's contracts with the GEO Group add another 1,400. Along with an existing private prison contract in the state, the new contracts bring California's total number of private-prison inmates to about 12,300.
California is now CCA's second-biggest customer, providing $214 million to the company last year, according to HuffPost's analysis of the company's finances. The state is surpassed only by the federal government, which paid CCA $752 million last year, a figure that accounts for contracts with three agencies -- the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The state of Georgia, the company's third-largest client, paid $99 million last year.
Although Brown's new contracts with CCA and the GEO Group are set to expire after three years and five years, respectively, critics worry that the state may extend the deals. Since California first started sending inmates to private prisons out of state in 2006, officials have renewed, and in some cases expanded, several contracts. "I just don't see these contracts going away," said Glenn Backes, a lobbyist for the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for prison reform.
Such concerns stem in part from the fact that the arrangements could deprive prison reformers of an unlikely but potent ally: the prison guard union.
For years, California's prison guard union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, served as a powerful check on the growth of the private prison industry. The union spent millions to support the campaigns of political allies, and launched media attacks that were widely seen as lethal to the political aspirations of opponents.
Now the union and the private companies are partners. Brown's deal with CCA stipulates that the state will staff the private facility with union guards, effectively creating a detente between the former foes. When Brown first announced the deal in August, the union's leader, Mike Jimenez, joined him on stage in a show of solidarity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/....html?utm_hp_ref=black-voices&ir=Black+Voices
