Summer of 1927 – Déjà vu All Over Again

I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s “Summer of 1927,” a fascinating historical look at one astounding year in America. One section – about prohibition – caught my attention. Prohibition, wrote Bryson, “was easily the most extreme, ill-judged, costly, and ignored experiment in social engineering ever conducted by an otherwise rational nation … It made criminal out of honest people and actually led to an increase in the amount of drinking in the country.” As I read Bryson’s tragic yet comedic recounting of prohibition, I couldn’t help but think of the nation’s current “War on Drugs.” We learned nothing from prohibition.

            America has 25% of the worlds incarcerated. Approximately 40% of the men and women behind bars are in prison due to some drug-related conviction. The sale of drugs is one of the primary means gangs use to finance their operations. Over fifty-thousand Mexicans have died as that nation – under direct pressure from the United States – seeks to curb the flow of illegal drugs north.

            Heroin and crystal Meth use are rapidly increasing as is crime associated with the manufacture and sale of these drugs. Prescription pain medication abuse is near epidemic levels. The inner cities are as awash in drugs as they were in the late 60’s and early 70’s. New synthetic drugs such as ecstasy are easily found in almost any high school in America. And this nation’s response? Criminalize it, drive it underground, and treat it like booze in the 1920s. Does anyone see the insanity of this approach?

            Who benefits from America’s “War on Drugs?” For one, the drug cartels and gangs who make billions off this illegal cash business without any taxes being paid. And all that cash gets serviced by banks; America’s financial services industry launders the money.

            Then there’s the prison industrial complex - companies who make billions providing services to state prison systems at a breaking point due to America’s drug war. From inmate medical care, to alcohol and drug treatment, food services – even whole privately-owned prisons with corporate employees serving as guards – these corporations make billions off the incarcerated and their families.

            And law enforcement itself. $60 billion dollars a year for prisons; $120 billion a year for the criminal justice apparatus. Police departments get more and more dollars as others – schools, and community health care, and transportation – fight over the rest. You would think we would have learned from prohibition.

            So guys come to prison, get out, go right back to the drugs, and come right back in. The drug bosses and the CEOs of C.C.A., and GEO and Keefe. Keep smiling because the money’s still coming in.

 

The Business of Prison – The Profit of Despair

A couple of headlines caught my attention this week.  The CEO of Corrections Corporation of America, it was revealed, wrote to 48 state prison directors and made the following offer:  CCA will take over that state’s prisons if the state “guarantees 90% occupancy”, for 20 years.  States, caught in a deep budget crisis that will not let up (look at the soaring pension funding shortfalls in the states) and exploding corrections costs may be tempted to bite.  Not even considering the morality, the ethic, of a private firm holding people under color of law, imagine the effect this would have on prison reform.  States need to address sentencing, especially involving nonviolent felons. 

The truly ironic part of this story is that the CEO in question, Harley Lappin, was until a year ago the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.  He was forced out after his arrest for drunk driving in Annapolis, MD.  Funny, there are guys in here who did the same thing who weren’t named CEOs of any company.

The intent of the letter is clear:  CCA and the other companies who profit from the continued incarceration of people can see their blood money falling away.  As states grapple with the high cost of incarceration and end the three decade long “tough on crime” (“dumb on crime”) policies that led to an explosion in the number and cost of incarcerations, these prison profiteers see the writing on the wall.  Something has to be done to slow the spread of prison reform or their financial heyday is doomed.

Profiting from prisons is gaining a foothold as the moral issue of the decade.  Like divestment from companies doing business in Apartheid South Africa in the ‘70’s, divestment from companies profiting from the incarceration of men and women is a growing movement.

Known as the “National Prison Divestment Campaign”, this group seeks to not only convince ethical investors to divest their holdings in prison-profiteering companies, but also to raise awareness about an industry that not only profits from incarceration, but also drives local and national immigration and criminal justice policy.

In mid-February, the United Methodist Church Board of Pension and Health Benefits voted to sell nearly $1 million in stock from CCA and another prison profiteer, the GEO Group.

As the Pension Board’s Director of Communication so eloquently stated it, “We believe that profiting from incarceration is contrary to church values.”

And, as I have noted in this blog many times, it’s not just private prison ownership that needs to be challenged:  it’s any company that profits from providing a service with the prison.  Incarceration is a function of the state.  The state should not be allowed to outsource that function to avoid the actual costs of confining a person.

In Virginia, the GEO Group manages one prison – the level “3” facility at Lawrenceville.  How is it run?  It is over-run with cell phones, drugs and gang activity.  Prostitution rings operated by the female officers flourish.  Why?  It’s a private contractor with private employees.

Virginia DOC also outsources prison medical care.  If you incarcerate someone and deprive them of normal freedoms you are responsible for providing them a reasonably safe living environment, adequate healthcare, food and other daily essentials.  That’s not some “bleeding heart” theory.  That’s the law.  Private firms handling the state’s corrections responsibilities skirt that legal – and moral – responsibility.

Allowing states to outsource their responsibility is morally suspect.  Investing in companies that profit from the incarceration of fellow citizens is shameful and, in the long run, will not be financially beneficial.

It’s time to shed light on these profiteers and their blood money.