Problems With Private Prisons  - STOP CCA IN San Diego & CCA Contracts with ICE.

   

Imagine going into Family Court, Superior Court, Civil Court or Federal Court and you see the letters CCA underneath.  You don't know that CCA means Corrections Corporation of America. You don't know that in a major, influencing way a private prison that needs 90% of it's beds filled to cover costs and make a profit is part of your court system.  You don't know that there have been $180 million dollars in law suits against this prison corporation including employees selling drugs to inmates, problems with controlling violence, poor to no medical care, and wrongful death litigation among others.      You don't know that two judges in Pennsylvania are serving prison sentences for accepting $2.8 million dollars in bribes from a prison corporation that gave the judges money for giving minors longer sentences in their private prison.

 

   Now imagine you don't have a car and your court has been moved outside the San Diego City limits so far away that you might miss your court date and receive a prison sentence because you didn't have transportation and you weren't able to reach the court.  You also find people reluctant to help you because you struggle with the language.

 

    All this works in favor of the company that runs the prison.  They have to keep their prison 90 % full to cover costs and make a profit. The company is Corrections Corporation of America.  The court is the Immigration Court.  The charges are not criminal, they're civil so you are not even a criminal and you are being forced to run a legal gauntlet leading to a company making a profit from your poverty and suffering simply by not having proper documentation.

 

     The only thing missing from the Immigration Court/CCA sign on this page is an insignia of a kangaroo.  Corrections Corporation of America is bad news with a bad history. 

 

     We don't want another prison in San Diego, especially a private one run by a corporation with a checkered history. The potential for abuse is manifold.  Private prisons had such a bad record of prisoner abuse in the nineteenth century in the United States they were outlawed by the turn of the century.

 

     A report released in December of 2003 by Philip Mattera and Mafruza Khan of Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First in Washington, DC and Stephen Nathan of Prison Privatization Report International in London made the following conclusion about privatization of prisons and Corrections Corporation of America:

 

     As this report shows, in spite of these efforts to improve, CCA has not been a success even by its own standards. CCA continues to be plagued by many of the same kinds of operational deficiencies,

scandals and mismanagement that characterized its performance during its early years. It is no

surprise that the company acknowledges that, “The operation of correctional and detention facilities

by private entities has not achieved complete acceptance by either governments or the public.

CCA’s record is a clear example of how the pursuit of profit stands in the way of carrying out a core

public function such as corrections. It is time for the public to know that independent investigators

have failed to find clear evidence that private prison management is superior in terms of quality,

recidivism rates or cost. CCA has succeeded in staying in business for two decades, but it has not

succeeded in demonstrating that prison privatization is socially, economically or ethically acceptable.

 

     Indeed, there have already been lawsuits against CCA in San Diego County, e.g., the litigation

for medical negligence to Francisco Castaneda, who had his penis amputated and died several months later when pleas for cancer treatment were ignored by CCA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.). And isn't what happened to Mr. Castaneda a metaphor for the history of racism (slavery, Jim Crow, Prison-Industrial Complex - see Ruth Gilmore and her book Golden Gulag) in this country and the emasculation of men of color?

 

CCA also faced litigation from San Diego ACLU for triple-celling, a practice where two man cells are packed with a third man who then sleeps on a mat by the toilet.  A bad practice for ethics but good for profits from cruel and unusual punishment.  Read about it at the ACLU website, www.aclusandiego.org  or my website at www.jimpoet.com Type in a search for Corrections Corporations of America.  Bring some coffee; you'll be reading for a while about unconstitutional, unethical neglect and abuse that seems to be policy.

Now is the time to write and call your congressional representatives, President Obama, and especially the Bureau of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and demand the end of detention contracts with Corrections Corporation of America.