Corrections Corporation of America
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Selling Prisoners to the Highest Bidder
Youth Services InternationalCorruptionJudgesIncarcerationPrisonsCorrections Corporation of AmericaPrisonsSexual AbuseCrime
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State officials in Idaho
recently made major news when they announced that they would be
taking control of a private prison which was built by the state
in 1997 and run by a private corporation since that time. Under the deficient
leadership of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), multiple crimes
were alleged to have occurred and the quality of life for inmates was said to
greatly decrease. According to the Associated Press,
"The CCA prison has been the subject of
multiple lawsuits alleging rampant violence, understaffing, gang activity and
contract fraud by CCA. CCA acknowledged last year that falsified staffing
reports were given to the state showing thousands of hours were staffed by CCA
workers when the positions were actually vacant. And the Idaho state police is
investigating the operation of the facility for possible criminal
activity."
This isn't the first time
a prison corporation has been accused of permitting or even committing crimes,
as evidenced by the recent lawsuits against a Florida prison company, Youth
Services International, whose staff allegedly sexually abused
children held in its prisons.
There are a variety of issues that arise when the government
outsources the running of prisons to private corporations, from concerns over
price gouging to improper training for private prison guards, to the greater
ethical concern of who should manage the people society has decided should be
incarcerated. When we take away a person's freedom by putting them in jail, we
are taking away one of their fundamental rights, the right to liberty. This
deprivation of freedom can only by ordered by the government, so why do we
think that private corporations have the right to carry out the sentence?
One of the most serious
concerns regarding private prisons is the profit motives of prison
corporations; essentially, if corporations get paid more money for holding more
prisoners, what's to stop them and their lobbyists from supporting or even
proposing government policies that result in more inmates staying in prisons
longer or even bribing local judges to send
more people to jail? This isn't just hyperbole as Edward Kenzakoski,
a teen with no prior criminal record, killed himself after months of being
unfairly jailed by a judge who received kickbacks
from a prison corporation.
And why would prisons fully pursue important policies like
educational programs intended to prevent recidivism? If such policies were
effective and decreased the number of inmates in their prisons it would
negatively impact their bottom line.
The serious philosophical shift that permits private citizens to lock
people up is no small development. Until recently, prison administration was
one of the services the general
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