[Reader-list] Foucault squared (continued)

[Vivek Narayanan]

Cashing in on Cons

By Silja J.A. Talvi, In These Times. Posted February 10, 2005.

At the American Correctional Association's 2005 Winter Conference, the bottom line is 
paramount.


In 1971, investigative journalist Jessica Mitford attended the 101st Congress of the American 
Correctional Association (ACA) in Miami Beach. The ACA was founded in 1870 as the National 
Prison Association by reform-minded wardens who saw promise in the rehabilitation, 
religious redemption and humane treatment of prisoners. By 1971 they had developed a 
substantial membership, attracting 2,000 attendees to that year's congress.

In her seminal 1973 book, Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business, Mitford reported 
that the organization had shifted its focus from reforming and rehabilitating prisoners to 
reaping profit from incarceration. Exhibitors, she wrote, sold everything from tear gas 
grenades to stun gun prototypes. And with prisons facing costly lawsuits instigated by 
prisoners, litigation, Mitford wrote, was "very much on everybody's mind."

Thirty years later, how much has changed?

The 2005 winter conference in Phoenix – attended by an estimted 4,000 – found the ACA still 
touting its principles: "Humanity, Justice, Protection, Opportunity, Knowledge, Competence 
and Accountability." The organization stresses that it brings together individuals and groups 
"that share a common goal of improving the justice system." But with the prison industry now 
bringing in annual revenue of $50 billion, the ACA seems most intent on "improving" profits.


Sidebars

A Dubious Distinction: Corrupting the prison accreditation process

Do You Like Adventure?: Exporting the fun of correctional services to Iraq

The Wild, Wild West: “Sheriff Joe” Arpaio’s unorthodox techniques
Today's ACA is a sleeker version of the organization Mitford examined, complete with online 
certification courses for correctional employees (starting at $29.95) and an expensive prison 
accreditation process that claims to instill transparency and accountability. Members are 
enticed to earn accreditation in order to receive up to a 10 percent discount on prison 
liability insurance (see "A Dubious Distinction").

Keeping litigation costs down is only one way prison corporations profit from incarceration. 
In addition, for-profit prisons also increase revenues by contracting with other corporations 
to provide substandard or overpriced services to prisoners. In some states, companies like 
Microsoft pay prisons to employ prisoners at wages far below market rates.

Taking advantage of the unprecedented prison boom of the late '80s and '90s, prison 
administrators, politicians, lobbying firms and corporate boards created a prison-industrial 
complex in which everyone benefits except the prisoners.

In 1980, federal and state prisons incarcerated 316,000 people. In 1990, that number had 
grown to 740,000, not including jail populations. By 2000, the number of prisoners had 
surpassed 1.3 million. Prison construction accompanied this growth: More than 1,000 
prisons are now in operation, and each new prison comes with a bevy of contracts for 
construction and services.

The ACA conference is where many of these transactions are cemented.

Noting that the prison population may have reached its apogee, ACA president Gwendolyn C. 
Chunn told members at the conference, "We'll have a hard time holding on to what we have 
now." But attendees seemed more than willing to try; everyone at the conference seemed to 
be riding high on the promise of growth, expansion and profits.

Just Business

This conference's theme was "Corrections Contributions to a Safer World," and the 
conference program didn't try to hide the gathering's militaristic bent. The cover of the 201-
page ACA booklet featured a soldier with an enormous phallic tank gun, superimposed over 
the blue planet earth. And ACA's three keynote speakers were prominent conservatives or 
military officers: retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, Michael Durant, the pilot of Black Hawk Down 
fame, and disgraced Homeland Security nominee Bernard Kerik.

The conference was financially supported by private prison giants such as the Corrections 
Corporation of America (CCA), the GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut), Correctional 
Services Corporation (CSC) and Correctional Medical Services (see "Detention Blues," July 5, 
2004 for background on CSC). The titles of the dozens of overlapping workshops indicated 
what the ACA defined as the latest trends in corrections: "Faith-Based Juvenile 
Programming," "Anti-Terrorism in Correctional Facilities," and "Can't Simply Paint it Pink and 
Call it a Girl's Program."

One workshop – "Intensive Medical Management: How to Handle Prisoners Who Self-Mutilate, 
Slime, Starve, Spit and Scratch" – featured footage of a non-violent paranoid schizophrenic in 
Utah being forcibly extracted from his cell and then tied down to a restraint chair. After being 
strapped down naked for 16 hours, the delusional prisoner died. The session was facilitated 
by Todd Wilcox, the medical director of the Salt Lake County Metro Jail, who used the 
imagery as an example of how to avoid costly litigation. "Don't get personal with this," Wilcox 
said. "It's just business." He reminded the audience how important it is to sever the 
"emotional leash" that guards and nurses can form with inmates. He also referred to some 
mentally-ill patients with "Axis II disorders" as "the people we affectionately call 'the 
assholes.' "

Pain for a Price

The real draw of the ACA conference was the exhibitors, who had two full days to showcase 
their wares. The exhibition hall corridors had been given names like "Corrections Corporation 
of America Court," "Verizon Expressway," "Western Union Avenue," and "The GEO Court 
Lounge," where one could sip Starbucks and eat free glazed doughnuts.

Here, the discussions were all about increasing profit margins, lessening risks and liabilities, 
winning court cases, and new, improved techniques and technologies for managing the most 
troublesome inmates. In the glaringly bright exhibit hall, attendees buzzed around booths, 
snapping up freebies and admiring the latest in prison technology.

Exhibitors hawked restraint chairs, tracking systems, drug-detection tools, suicide-
prevention smocks and prison facility insurance. Dozens of companies competed to sell 
private health care systems, pharmacy plans, commissary services and surveillance systems. 
Of particular interest were behavior modification programs, juvenile boot camps, and 
internet and phone services. Interest in the latter brought in the "big boys" of 
telecommunications: Sprint, AT&T, NEC, MCI Communications, Verizon, Global Tel*Link and 
Qwest. And why not? Prison phone contracts that overcharge prisoners and their families 
generate an estimated $1 billion a year.

The range of products went on from one corridor to the next: storage systems, money 
wiring, surveillance, security transport, fencing and prison medical packages. (Industry giant 
Prison Health Services brought in rescued owls and hawks to draw crowds. What was the 
connection to prison health? "Oh, nothing!") Vendors who couldn't afford dog-and-pony 
shows handed out free bags, pens, toothpicks, mugs, tape measures and sugarcoated 
churros. The exhibitors who didn't need giveaways to draw crowds included weapons 
manufacturers Smith & Wesson, Glock and Taser International.

Two smiling exhibitors, standing behind the Taser booth, allowed the curious to handle the 
latest in 50,000-volt stun gun technology. On the Taser table a video looped on a monitor. It 
depicted a naked African-American man being chased down by police officers. Shot once, 
he's shown falling hard to the ground. Tasered again, his body shudders, before collapsing 
altogether. The contextless footage was meant to illustrate the efficacy of the stun gun, used 
by more than 6,000 police departments, that had become the leader in the "non-lethal 
weapons" industry – that is, before a spate of negative press, including reports of an SEC 
investigation, had put the company's stock price into a tailspin.

In November 2004, Amnesty International issued a report that blamed at least 74 deaths 
since 2001 on Tasers and called for a suspension of their use until further studies could 
prove just how "non-lethal" these weapons were. Headline business news emerged during 
the ACA conference: Taser executives were reported to have sold $91.5 million of their own 
stock, raising suspicions that they sought to maximize their own profits before their product 
lost ground. The company subsequently announced that sales were projected to slow in the 
months to come. The stock plunged 30 percent. As if all that weren't bad enough, Taser 
International President Tom Smith said in an interview that four active-duty police officers 
had been offered stock options for law enforcement training programs they supervised, 
which in turn had "led directly to the sale of Tasers to a number of police departments."

It's a good thing that former Taser spokesman Bernard Kerik cashed in when he did. The 
former New York City police commissioner made more than $6.2 million in pre-tax profits 
from the sale of Taser stock in the month leading up to his abortive Homeland Security 
nomination.

The Venal System

Scores of individuals from prison acquisition and purchasing departments, consulting 
agencies, and the ranks of high-level prison administrators had come to the conference for 
networking, recruiting and, above all, business. Private contractors, like food-service 
businesses Aramark and Canteen, discreetly targeted these attendees for their off-site wine-
and-dine dinners, issuing covert invitations to people whose badges indicated their 
importance in the field.

Following a day of tours at Arizona jails and prisons, about 60 conference-goers headed to 
the Canteen fete at an upscale Italian restaurant in the nearby Arizona Center. Cocktails and 
bottles upon bottles of wine were poured out prior to a multicourse meal. Wardens and top-
ranking corrections administrators from Arizona, New Mexico and Maryland sat in the 
outdoor patio under heat lamps. Salesmen from Canteen were pressing flesh and passing out 
business cards. There were smiles all around.

Like so many other private companies working in prisons, Aramark and Canteen have had 
their share of problems. Aramark was singled out by "Stop the ACA" union-organized 
protests outside of the conference. On the third day of the conference, protesters snuck in 
and placed informational materials in the toilet seat cover holders of convention center 
bathrooms.

On the fourth day of the conference, Aramark sought to spruce up its image with a faux-New 
Orleans-style gentleman's "entertainer," complete with pink top, feather cap and black 
fishnets. The heavily made-up young woman knelt before prison administrators, giving them 
free shoeshines.

Aramark's low bids have succeeded in getting contracts in many jails and prisons. The 
company boasts that it provides more than a million meals a day to prisoners nationwide. 
Aramark materials also emphasize the company's adherence to ACA standards, but that 
hasn't stopped the allegations from piling up. In Dauphin County, Pa., for instance, a grand 
jury is investigating charges of overbilling and poor food quality. In July 2004, New Mexico 
inmates at Los Lunas prison, fed up with Aramark's low food quality and "inedible" meat-type 
products, organized a hunger strike. Similar problems have been reported in at least a dozen 
states.

Privatization, Politicians and Payola

The glossy GEOworld magazine, distributed at the ACA conference, trumpeted the success of 
the largest "Private-Public Partnership in the World," a sprawling detention center complex in 
Pecos, Texas. Known as the Reeves County Detention Facility (RCDC), the complex consists of 
prisons for both Bureau of Prisons and Arizona state inmates. According to GEO, "the joint 
venture ... between GEO Group and Reeves County has been a rewarding challenge."

Unmentioned was the fact that a Reeves County judge, Jimmy Galindo, is facing a lawsuit 
over his role in granting the private operation and expansive construction of RCDC. 
According to the local Odessa American newspaper, building RCDC has led to the "near 
financial ruin of the county." RCDC is currently the subject of an FBI and Texas Ranger 
investigation into tampering with government documents. (In addition, two corrections 
officers resigned in early January 2005 over sexual molestation charges.)

The RCDC is a private-public partnership in more ways than one. Randy DeLay, the brother of 
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), lobbied the Bureau of Prisons to send its 
prisoners to RCDC, at the behest of county officials.

Randy DeLay isn't the only member of his family with an interest in corrections. In December, 
Rep. DeLay accepted a $100,000 check from the CCA for the DeLay Foundation for Kids.

The CCA has become a leader in securing private prison contracts. In FY 2003, the CCA 
generated more than $268.9 million in revenue. Greasing the palms of legislators nationwide 
hasn't hurt: In 2004, the CCA's political action committee gave $59,000 to candidates for 
federal office – 92 percent to Republicans.

This is part and parcel of an industry in the business of locking up human beings. As the 
industry has grown, the ACA has moved away from the ideals of rehabilitation and 
redemption of the human spirit. Today, human beings behind bars are little more than 
commodities to be traded on the open market.

Bill Deener, a financial writer for the Dallas Morning News, writing about recent gains in the 
private prison market, put it this way: "Crime may not pay, but prisons sure do."

In 1963, philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote about the "banality of evil." Contained within the 
packed exhibition hall of the ACA conference was evidence of what Arendt cautioned against: 
the normalization of dehumanization. Today, the banality of evil has found a home in the 
mundane marketplace that is the prison industry.

Three days before the ACA conference, MSN Money's Michael Brush issued a glowing report 
on the investment potential for the CCA and GEO. The children of the baby boomers, he 
explained, are about to enter the 18-24-year-old age group – "the years when people 
commit the most crimes." He suggested now is the right time to buy into the trend: "[T]he 
nation's private prison companies look like solid investments for the next several years."


In reporting this story, the author did not disclose her identity as a journalist. All the 
attributed quotes in this article come from individuals speaking in an official capacity at ACA 
events.

Silja J.A. Talvi, an award-winning journalist, is currently writing a book about women in 
prison.