Tag Archives: CCA

FBI investigating CCA about Gladiator School again

Indefatigable reporter gets FBI to investigate profiteering private prison company: again. CCA already lost the contract for Idaho State Prison and two other CCA prisons have closed. Maybe this time the FBI will shut CCA down.

Rebecca Boone wrote for AP yesterday, APNewsBreak: FBI investigates prison company,

The FBI has launched an investigation of the Corrections Corporation of America over the company’s running of an Idaho prison with a reputation so violent that inmates dubbed it “Gladiator School.”

The Nashville, Tenn.-based CCA has operated Idaho’s largest prison for more than a decade, but last year, CCA officials acknowledged it had understaffed the Idaho Correctional Center by thousands of hours in violation of the state contract. CCA also said employees falsified reports to cover up the vacancies. The announcement came after an Associated Press investigation showed CCA sometimes listed guards as working 48 hours straight to meet minimum staffing requirements.

The Idaho State Police was asked to investigate the company last year but didn’t, until Continue reading →

Bloomberg discovers mandated prison beds for CCA profit

The feds also fell for CCA’s prison snakeoil; it’s not just for states like Georgia.

William Selway & Margaret Newkirk wrote for Bloomberg 24 September 2013, Congress Mandates Jail Beds for 34,000 Immigrants as Private Prisons Profit,

Noemi Romero, who came to the U.S. illegally at age 3, was arrested in January working at a Phoenix grocery store, where she used someone else’s name to get the job.

Romero, a 21-year-old who likes to draw and dance, spent the next four months behind bars, almost half of it in a cramped cell at a 1,596-bed detention center in Eloy, Arizona, run by Corrections Corp. of America. The company, with Geo Group Inc. (GEO) and other for-profit prison operators, holds almost two-thirds of all immigrants detained each day in federally funded prisons as they face deportation, U.S. data show.

Under law, taxpayers must pay Continue reading →

CCA in contempt of court for understaffing Gladiator School in Idaho

CCA wouldn’t even turn in a correct count of its guards at its most notorious prison.

Rebecca Boone wrote for AP today, Judge: CCA in contempt for prison understaffing,

“For CCA staff to lie on so basic a point — whether an officer is actually at a post — leaves the Court with serious concerns about compliance in other respects, such as whether every violent incident is reported.”

More here from George Prentice in Boise Weekly, including the actual court decision and order.

Remember, this is the company our Industrial Authority wanted to build a prison in Lowndes County. Let’s insist on real due diligence.

-jsq

Video released of guards beating prisoner with hammer in 2010

GBI finally released video of prisoners being beaten with hammers by guards after the 2010 prisoner strikes for wages instead of working for free for things like call centers and building weapons. Two guards pled guilty in 2012 to conspiracy, assault with injury, and coverup. But GBI mysteriously hasn’t been able to identify the guard seen in this video beating handcuffed prisoner Kelvin Stevenson with a hammer.

Mary Ratcliff 29 August 2013, Video released of Georgia guards beating prisoners with hammer,

At the beginning of this video, you hear a prison guard shouting, “”Get down! Just get down! Get down! Get down!” presumably to the other prisoners. That exclamation is followed by, “Oh (inaudible) guy over there with his hands hitting him … and a damn hammer!”

The deplorable beatings you’re witnessing occurred Continue reading →

Dump CCA and other private prison stocks now –smart analysts

If business is so good, why did CCA lose two contracts for new prisons in Georgia last year when neither the state nor the feds had enough prisoners to fill them? And why was the private prison in Ocilla nearly sold at auction? Why this year was Gladiator School closed and two other CCA prisons cancelled? And all that was before U.S. DoJ announced today it will “avoid charging certain low-level and nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carry mandatory minimums”.

Ed Arnold wrote for Memphis Business Journal 23 July 2013, Corrections Corp. of America debunks Anonymous report,

As reported on Monday, the computer hacking collective known as Anonymous Analytics published a blog warning investors that a declining prison population and reforms designed to reduce incarceration rates in the U.S. point to shrinking revenue for Corrections Corporation of America (NYSE: CXW) going forward.

CCA flatly denied the Anonymous Analytics conclusions in a statement.

CCA apparently didn’t dare link to the actual report. Anonymous Analytics wrote 9 July 2013, Corrections Corporation of America: The Dismantling of a National Disgrace, Continue reading →

Budget Telling Tonight @ LCC 2013-06-25

Tonight you can go be told what the county’s budget will be, 5PM at the county palace. If you want to see the proposed budget, you’ll have to go their beforehand and view the one paper copy they are required by law to show you. They say they’re short of money, so why are they wasting taxpayer funds suing a legitimate business?

On the county’s online calendar: Budget Public Hearing (6/18/2013)

PUBLIC NOTICE
The Lowndes County Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing for the purpose of considering
the Fiscal Year 2014 proposed budget on the following dates:

June 18, 2013 at 5:30 p.m.

June 25, 2013 at 5:00 p.m.

Location:
Lowndes County Commission Chambers
327 N. Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA

A copy of the proposed budget is available for public review in the office of the County Clerk.
For questions please call 671-2400.

Kay Harris wrote for the VDT 19 June 2013, Lowndes County facing budget woes,

Continue reading →

Gladiator School cancelled; 2 other CCA prisons closed

CCA loses contracts, including for its notorious Gladiator School; GEO, too. Some states are catching on to the private prison scam.

Aviva Shen wrote for ThinkProgress 21 June 2013, Three States Dump Major Private Prison Company In One Month,

State lawmakers who embraced private prisons as a cost-cutting measure are starting to have trouble ignoring their abysmal conditions. Corrections Corporation of America, the largest and most powerful private prison company in the nation, lost four prison contracts in the past month after extensive reports of abuse, neglect, and even fraud within their operations.

Idaho cut ties with the corporation on Wednesday, which turned the state’s largest prison into a violent hellhole inmates called “Gladiator School.” Earlier this year, CCA was caught understaffing the prison and using prison gangs to control the population. The company admitted to falsifying nearly 4,800 hours of staffing records to squeeze more money out of the state for nonexistent security work. Shift logs at the prison showed the same security guards working for 2 to 3 days at a time without breaks.

Last week, Texas closed two CCA prisons, including Continue reading →

Decatur County already went from private prison to solar park

Decatur County, that’s turning an industrial park into a solar park; why is that county familiar? Because it’s the other county that thought it was getting a CCA private prison last year!

Decatur County has already moved on from that boondoggle that would have prisoners competing with local workers while not increasing local employment. Decatur County is already well along towards a solar park that could bring “400 hundred thousand a year in tax revenue”. Has our Industrial Authority got anything in negotiations for a solar park? How about our Airport Authority? And what is Georgia Power doing to help?

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AZ invites CCA to help get more customers in School to Prison Pipepline

We could have slipped down this slippery slope with that proposed CCA private prison, down to where Casa Grande Arizona is, inviting CCA’s guards and dogs into our schools to collect our children as private prison customers.

Sadhbh Walshe wrote for the Guardian 13 December 2012, Arizona funnels business to CCA through its school-to-prison pipeline: Casa Grande invited a private prison firm to help make a high-school marijuana bust. Can you spot the conflict of interest?

Drug sweeps of schools are not uncommon occurrences in the recent past in America, much to the chagrin of civil rights advocates, who see such sweeps as an efficient means of diverting certain kids to prison — in some cases, even before they make it to adolescence, via the much-criticized “school-to-prison pipeline”. What was unusual about this particular raid, however, is that, among the team of law enforcement personnel and canines put together by the local Casa Grande police department, there were prison guards employed by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country’s largest for-profit prison company, which owns and operates several prisons in the area. CCA was also kind enough to provide their sniffer dogs for the raid.

What’s even more unusual about this is that pretty much nobody in a position of authority in and around Casa Grande seems to think there’s anything wrong with that.

That’s where “jobs, jobs, jobs” with no consideration of the consequences leads you. Some jobs are not worth having. Private prison jobs are among them.

The state of Georgia spends a billion dollars a year locking people up, many of them for minor drug offenses, and around 85% of them for drug-related offenses. What if instead we spent a fraction of that money on drug counselling and mental health care, and the rest on public education? Then we’d have healthier people more prepared for real jobs.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Dante Acevedo.

Most corrupt state sells public education to Waltons

Amendment 1 results And it wasn’t even close: 2,152,091 to 1,526,959 (58.50% to 41.50%). Lowndes County went for the Atlanta-power-grab “charter school” amendment 18,606 to 17,619 (51.36% to 48.64%). The voters of Georgia just sold their children’s educational birthright for a mess of slick brochures.

Amendment 2 results The other ALEC amendment, on multi-year contracts, passed by an even wider margin: 2,241,621 to 1,275,809 (63.73% to 36.27%). Lowndes went for it 20,205 to 14,414 (58.36% to 41.64%).

Apparently Georgia voters will vote for any old thing that’s submitted to them as a constitutional amendment.

Esau sells his birthright for a mess of pottage Congratulations, ALEC and Wal-Mart! You’ve demonstrated money talks and slick brochures sell. This was even better for you than ALEC’s so-called anti-immigration law which the legislature passed and that actually devastates Georgia agriculture for the profit of private prison company CCA. This time you got the people of Georgia to vote directly against their own best interests to the benefit of school privatizing corporations in Virginia and Michigan!

Boo Georgia voters. You’ve just given the most corrupt legislature in the country the ability to commit you the taxpayers to contracts for decades. And you’ve just traded your children’s educational birthright for a mess of slick paper.

-jsq