I encourage people to check out Robert Sloan's excellent blog http://sloan-wwwpiecp-violations.blogspot.com/2010/10/corporatocracy-v.html regarding the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate lobby group responsible for helping major corporate players to enrich themselves (building private prisons and contracting for dirt cheap prison labor are just two examples) from the public trough at taxpayer expense. Sloan documents some of ALEC's more questionable activities much more clearly than I can here.
Sloan also maintains an up-to-date website regarding his watchdog activities regarding for-profit prison scams at http://www.piecp-violations.com/ - as well as a file-sharing site with extensive documentation at http://www.piecp-violations.com/box_widget.html
Who's Making Big Bucks Off Prison Privatization
From my cursory survey of Internet sources, I have identified at least six places along the food chain where people are turning over profits (at taxpayer expense) in the booming prison business (see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_19_15/ai_54736555/):
- The Wall Street investment banks who issue the bonds to finance the building of state and local prisons (I won't list them here. Just Google the banks who got TARP bail-outs. As usual, Goldman Sachs is at the top of the list).
- The private companies who run prisons - Corrections Corporation o of America and Wackenhut are the largest, but there are now 18 altogether (CCA also operates our federal immigration detention facilities and helped write Arizona 's controversial immigration law see ).
- Depressed rural communities facing a decline (thanks to NAFTA and GAT which made it easier to move local companies overseas) in traditional sources of revenue, such as mining, dairy farming and manufacturing.
- Private companies that provide food services, health care, and assorted security paraphernalia to prisons.
- Bed brokers who, in Texas , earn $2.50 - 5.50 per man-day (for the duration of a prisoner's sentence) by recruiting prisoners from out of state.
- Major corporations, the best known being BP, Dell, TWA, Compaq, J.C. Penny, Best Western Hotels, Honda, Chevron, IBM, Microsoft, Victoria's Secret, and Boeing, who save on labor costs by employing cheap prison labor (0 to $1.50 per hour - the average is 40 cents) - which turns out to be far cheaper than outsourcing overseas - especially with rising labor costs in economic boom countries like India and China.
Local New Orleans residents who have been put out of work due to the mass Gulf oil spill are extremely unhappy about BP using prison labor in the clean-up.
Also if you recently made a
credit card reservation at TWA or Best Western Hotels, it was very likely a
prisoner who took your credit card details. Using prisoners for call centers
and telemarketing is especially popular.
Implications for Prison Reform
These powerful economic drivers have some very important ramifications for prison reform advocates:
- Money spent on private prisons is basically corporate welfare - taxpayer money that is winding up in the pockets of private corporations with little or no oversight or accountability.
- Genuine prison reform is unlikely to come about unless these corporations themselves are targeted. As we have seen with the anemic Wall Street bail-outs, federal and state lawmakers are totally unwilling to undertake major reform that potentially affects the bottom line of their corporate donors.
For people wanting to do something to end this atrocity, I strongly suggest they contact Grassroots Leadership at www.grassrootsleadership.org, which is aggressively organizing to end prison privatization.
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