Tag Archives: CCA

“Don’t ever say thank you:” Lessons from privatization

Screen Shot 2016-06-27 at 4.00.17 PM

Journalist Shane Bauer worked undercover as a prison guard at a private CCA prison for four months.

Privatization means profits over people, every single time. Shane Bauer worked four months in a private prison, going undercover as a prison guard to report on what actually happens there. “Don’t ever say thank you” was one of the early lessons he learned, and perhaps one of the least damaging. Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under prisons

Let’s jail the children and call it child care

Photo of Karnes detention facility

Photo of Karnes detention facility by Jeff Pearcy, published under Creative Commons license.

 

Texas, leading the nation as always, granted a child care license to a jail on April 29. It’s a special, private jail, an immigration detention center in Karnes City run by the private, for-profit GEO Group. The Texas license comes in response to a federal judge’s order that migrant children must be released from detention centers because it’s against the law to hold kids in unlicensed facilities. (A few days after the license was issues, a Texas judge blocked, at least temporarily, a second license for another immigration jail and set a hearing on the licenses for May 13.) Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under children, human rights, immigration

Stopping private prison profiteering in Minnesota

Reverend Armstrong

Reverend Ovester Armstrong, Jr. speaks to #StopCCA rally

“They are not building these prisons to stay empty,” Reverend Ovester Armstrong, Jr. told protesters at the Minnesota State Office Building on March 22. “They are building these prisons to fill them up.” Inside, the House Public Safety Committee held hearings on re-opening a private prison in Appleton. The private prison is owned by the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA), the largest prison company in the United States.

“We should help people, not make money off of them,” said Reverend Armstrong. “We should not let someone’s life be held hostage to a dollar bill.” Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under prisons, race