Mother Jones magazine, known for its in-depth investigative reporting, was not content to merely skim the surface of the controversial private prison industry by viewing it from the outside. Prisons both public and private are notorious for their lack of transparency, typically justified in the name of “security” – which is another way of saying “move along, nothing to see here.” Prison walls don’t just prevent prisoners from getting out; they also prevent the public – and news media – from looking in.

That is the environment Mother Jones senior reporter Shane Bauer sought to infiltrate when, using his own name and identifying information, he applied for a job with and was hired by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) at the company’s 1,576-bed Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana. CCA, Bauer said, needed guards so desperately that it “wasn’t interested in the details of my resume.” After spending four months employed as a prison guard at Winn, Bauer’s experiences were recounted in an epic 35,000-word feature story in Mother Jones’ July-August 2016 issue.

CCA operates detention facilities in 20 states for local, state and federal authorities, and has been dogged by scandals, abuses and prisoners’ right organizations for decades. Prison ...

Private prison companies like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year, averaging between $2,771 and $3,366 in profit per prisoner based on 2014 data. According to In the Public Interest (ITPI), a not-for-profit organization that opposes the privatization of public services, the companies make money by cutting corners in staffing, health care, lower employee qualifications and reduced training, and substandard facility maintenance.

ITPI profiled ten case studies involving private prison firms to illustrate those shortcomings, including facilities located in Idaho, Ohio, Florida, Mississippi, California, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan. The case studies included not only corporations that operate prisons and jails, but also those that provide medical and mental health care, food services and reentry programs.

At the CCA-managed Idaho Correctional Center, the company concealed staff shortages by “falsifying records that hid 4,800 hours of uncovered shifts in a seven-month period in 2012.” CCA paid $1 million to state officials in compensation, was held in contempt by a federal court, was the subject of an FBI investigation and eventually lost its contract to run the prison. [See: PLN, Oct. 2013, p.28; May 2013, p.22].

When CCA purchased the Lake Erie ...

In October 2011, 30-year-old Aaron David Persin was accosted by police officers for having an open container of alcohol. When they determined that he had warrants for missing traffic court they arrested Persin, who was homeless. Unable to post bail, he was held at the Oahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC). ...

While lawmakers in Hawaii have advanced bills to fast-track the relocation of a state prison, they were forced to concede that an environmental impact review could not be avoided.

In February 2016, the state legislature held a pair of hearings to consider House Bill 2388 and Senate Bill 2917, which both called for the relocation of the Oahu Community Correctional Center, currently sited in the Kalihi neighborhood on Honolulu. The facility would be relocated to the site of the old Halawa prison.

Under Governor David Ige’s proposal, the administration could access over $489 million through general obligation bonds for the prison’s relocation. The initial plan included a provision that would exempt the project from an environmental impact review, since the facility would be built on a prior prison site. By avoiding the review, construction could be expedited.

The Sierra Club of Hawaii was none too pleased. Marti Townsend, director of the Club’s Hawaii chapter, put the group’s objection into the record, stating, “Our position is simple: conduct an environmental assessment on the prison proposal as state law requires.”

Townsend continued, “How else can the project proponent know that the proposed site is the right location, that the proposed building is the ...

On May 25, 2016, Joanna Saul, 33, the executive director of Ohio’s Correctional Institution Inspection Committee (CIIC), was forced to resign due to infighting between the bipartisan prison watchdog agency, Republican legislators and Governor John Kasich.

Saul first touched a nerve when the CIIC aggressively pursued transparency in prison inspections and issued reports on drugs, violence, gang activity and prison staffing. She again stepped on political toes when she exposed problems at the Lake Erie Correctional Institution, owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. [See: PLN, Nov. 2014, p.44]. Further, CIIC inspections led the state to fine private food vendor Aramark $272,000 for maggot outbreaks in prison kitchens and multiple incidents of employee misconduct. [See: PLN, Dec. 2015, p.1].

Republican lawmakers wanted to disband the CIIC, claiming that Saul had displayed “insubordination and rogue behavior,” although the agency was considered “Ohio’s best protection against a federal lawsuit regarding prison conditions” according to Public Defender Tim Young. Young further noted that the state’s “prison population continues to grow, with an estimated all-time high coming this summer. It is vital to the safety of prison employees and inmates that the institutions are inspected regularly, and potential problems identified and ...

Government accountability advocates have called for private prison companies like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group to be subject to open records laws – including the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) – to ensure they are accountable to the public. This is especially important considering that private prison contracts are paid with public taxpayer funds.

A report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) accuses private prison companies of manipulating their current immunity from most open records laws to cover up violations of prisoners’ rights and conceal their real costs.

“It makes no sense to exempt private prisons from the same transparency requirements already applied to government-run state and federal prisons,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director. “Highly profitable private prison companies like [CCA] and the GEO Group have quite a deal: They take in taxpayer dollars without suffering taxpayer scrutiny.”

For-profit prison operators can skirt public records laws, including FOIA, due to their status as private entities. But clearly, companies like CCA and GEO are simply acting as surrogates for government agencies, and CREW and other critics of the private prison industry argue that open records laws should therefore apply to privately-run prisons. ...

An Arizona federal district court concluded that employees of Corizon Health, a private company providing care to prisoners at the Mohave County Adult Detention Facility, “are not within the class of persons to whom qualified immunity is afforded.”

The plaintiff brought two claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983 and a state law wrongful death claim, Defendant John Anastasoff, a nurse employed by Corizon, moved for qualified immunity, that was joined by co-workers nurse Margaret Saltsgiver and Dr. Donovan Schmidt.

They contended they were not public employees whose “eligibility for qualified immunity should not be denied merely because they provide the public function of medical care and treatment to the jail inmates through the county’s private medical contractor.”

The court concluded that none of the factors in Richardson v. Mcknight, 521 U.S. 399 (1997) [See PLN December 2000, p. 32), to allow a qualified immunity defense are involved here.  In sum, the court found that “market forces and privatization flexibility” overcame the Richardson “timidity and deterrence factors” which are the basis for granting public officials qualified immunity.

The trend in federal law is to refuse granting qualified immunity “to privately-employed health care providers working in detention centers or correctional facilities.”  The ...

The Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee (CBC PAC) says that it works to increase the number of African-Americans in the U.S. Congress, support non-black candidates who champion black interests, and promote African American participation in the political process.

However, Color of Change (CoC), the nation’s largest online civil rights organization, has accused the Caucus of not working in the best interests of the black community. CoC launched a national campaign in April 2016 to urge the CBC PAC to stop accepting funding from lobbyists that advocate for private prisons, arguing that private prison companies target African-Americans to reap corporate profits.

Research has found that privately-operated prisons house a disproportionate number of minorities that is even greater than the disparity in public prisons. [See: PLN, March 2014, p.20; March 2013, p.16].

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group – the two largest for-profit prison firms in the U.S. – have donated millions of dollars to political candidates and spent millions more lobbying government agencies.

“Ironically, both Democratic presidential candidates have shunned contributions from private prison lobbyists but the CBC PAC has taken thousands of dollars from Akin Gump, the lobbying firm that makes millions lobbying to protect their ...

A 55-year-old mother of seven died in a Pennsylvania jail cell on June 7, 2014 while serving a 48-hour sentence for failure to pay truancy fines and court costs that totaled about $2,000.

Eileen DiNino was jailed by Berks County District Judge Dean Patton for debts that had been accruing since 1999. The truancy violations caused by her children missing school were numerous, each resulting in up to a $75 fine, but DiNino’s debt increased as a laundry list of court costs began to add up. In one case, for example, she was billed $8.00 for a “judicial computer project,” $60.00 for county constables and $10.00 for postage.

“The woman didn’t have any money,” said Diana Sealy, whose son married DiNino’s daughter. “Years ago, I tried to help her out. She had all these kids.”

Judge Patton referred to DiNino as a “lost soul,” and said it was only reluctantly that he sent her to jail. He noted that a short stint behind bars can sometimes “break the habit” of parents who’d rather party into the night and not get their kids to school the next day. The judge added that he had lost sleep over her death.

DiNino did ...

Information collected by the federal government has revealed the conspicuous inequality between private prison executives and the guards that their corporations employ. According to data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median salary for private prison and jail guards in 2015 was $32,290. One in four private prison guards makes less than $26,091 annually – near the poverty line for a family of four.

By sharp contrast, based on filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) Chief Executive Officer Damon Hininger received a base salary of $882,807 in 2015, which was augmented by $2.52 million in other compensation, such as bonuses and stock awards. That same year, George Zoley, CEO of the GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison firm, received a $1,000,000 base salary with additional compensation of $5.6 million.

Examining the income of those two CEOs in comparison to wages paid to private prison guards between 2011 and 2015, In the Public Interest, a public policy research organization that opposes privatization, found the median hourly rate for guards ranged between $15.53 and $16.47 per hour. In stark disparity, Zoley and Hininger’s equivalent hourly pay ranged from $426 to $487 ...