Margaret Mayer's List: Privatization of Prisons

• But Brewer is hardly the only powerful politician in Arizona with ties to this influential industry.  A Cell-Out Arizona investigation has revealed that John Kavanagh (R-8), Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has accepted numerous campaign contributions from lobbyists and others associated with Geo Group, the nation’s second largest private prison company and one of the bidders for a contract to build and manage 5,000 new prison beds in Arizona. 

   

  Now we know why Kavanagh is such a staunch supporter of private prisons.  He appeared last week on Phoenix Channel 8’s public affairs program, Horizon, debating the issue with Rep. Cecil Ash.  

• ederal contracts from three agencies – ICE, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons – account for 40 percent of the 2007 revenue of CC
• A, which controls almost half of the private prison beds in the United States.
• The competing GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., credits the three agencies for 27 percent of its operating revenue last year, with ICE responsible for 11 percent. The company, which earned total revenues of $1.2 billion in 2007, runs the Western Regional Detention Facility in downtown San Diego, a U.S. Marshals Service prison from which ICE rents short-term space.
• CCA and GEO Group, for example, contract with the Bureau of Prisons to house foreign-born inmates under a federal “criminal alien” program. Both companies contract extensively with the U.S. Marshals Service, which receives federal funding to hold a growing number of immigrants being prosecuted for illegal re-entry after deportation.
• According to ICE, the agency spent $119.28 per day on average last year to house a detainee at an agency-run facility, compared with $87.99 per day at a contract detention facility.
• 980s, when state governments were grappling with overcrowding. Tougher sentencing guidelines created demand for more prison space, but many states lacked the funds and political support to build it.
• capital destruction mode,” said Hie, the analyst.
• industry was rocked by a series of highly publicized escapes, riots and other scandals, among them a 1996 videotape showing inmates in a now-defunct firm’s Texas prison being kicked by officers and attacked by dogs, which prompted an FBI investigation.
• Many states started learning that they were not saving money, a
• lot of liabilities associated with privatization
• CA’s stock value took a dizzying tumble, falling from a high of $70.13 on Jan. 1, 1998, to $1.15 on the same date three years later.
• federal government began seeing a surge in demand around this time, fueled by federal drug-sentencing laws that had created more inmates and tougher 1996 immigration laws that made more immigrants deportable.
• the federal Bureau of Prisons entered into an agreement with CCA to house foreign-born convicts in a California City prison, initially built on speculation in the late 1990s to house state prisoners that didn’t arrive
• CCA announced its immigration-detention contract in San Diego
• Since 2001, CCA shares have split twice and multiplied tenfold, closing recently at $26.17. The GEO Group, which changed its name from Wackenhut Corrections in 2003, has also completed two stock splits and seen its stock value jump from roughly $2.50 a share in early January 2001 to $26.76 recently.
• broadened its political influence, spending more to lobby agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Prisons. CCA alone boosted its federal lobbying expenses from $410,000 to $3 million between 2000 and 2004,
• the Cornell Cos., which had flat revenue last year, partly blamed a $2 million loss on the withdrawal of ICE detainees from a troubled facility in Albuquerque, N.M.
• 1,100 beds to its ICE contract facility in Aurora, Colo. According to its most recent financial report from 2006, the company opened or expanded half a dozen facilities that year.
• here is more demand to support the latest building boom. Strong demand also helps companies push terms favorable to them. “Take or pay” arrangements such as the one at San Diego, where ICE must pay for a set occupancy level even if beds go unfilled, are commonplace.
• Last year, all of the agency’s 3,619 new detention beds were contracted.
• CCA executives told investors that ICE was planning to privatize three of its detention centers in California and Arizona. The agency has three facilities in these states – in El Centro, San Pedro and Florence.

19 more annotations...

• eissued a Request for Proposals for the construction and management of 5,000 minimum-to-medium security prison beds. Proposals for the 20-year, fixed-price contract are due by Thursday, February 24 at 3 P.M
• “to ensure that private prison contractors can meet security and operational requirements and to eliminate or reduce unfavorable occurrences within Arizona’s contracted private prisons,”

• contracted for nearly 2,600 additional beds in out-of-state prison facilities in an effort to reduce inmate overcrowding and increase access to rehabilitation programs.