SEARCH
Gov. Scott Set to Hand Florida’s Prisons to Corporate America
Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, sends us this.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-controlled legislature are moving fast to privatize all 29 prison facilities in 18 counties in southern Florida.
Last year, the GOP prison privatization proposal was ruled unconstitutional because it was wrapped into a budget proposal, a violation of Florida laws that requires policy changes be in separate laws. Tallahassee Judge Jackie Fulford ruled that the lawmakers rushed the process.
The privatizers aren’t making the same mistake this time. Not only are they proposing to privatize the prisons but they are changing the law to be able to privatize any service as fast, as easily and as secretly as possible. Under the latest proposals, an agency would not have to report its privatization of a program or service until after the contract is signed. And they also would eliminate a current legal requirement to do a cost-benefit analysis before privatizing any government function.
In other words, don’t let the public know what you’re doing and don’t bother to find out the costs.
Scott, former CEO of hospital giant Columbia/HCA, came into office on a mission to privatize Florida government. Scott left HCA as the company was being investigated for the “biggest Medicare fraud case in U.S. history.” Columbia/HCA ultimately paid a record $1.7 billion in fines, penalties and damages.
Scott has already proposed privatizing the state’s Medicaid system, state park campgrounds, the state’s three remaining public mental hospitals, three centers for the developmentally disabled and six veterans’ homes.
The two largest prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut), are poised to strike, in what Judith Greene, director of Justice Strategies calls, “an unprecedented” expansion of the use of private prisons that no other state has undertaken.
GEO has been a consistent force within Florida politics. GEO Group alone gave more than $400,000 to the party in the past election cycle. Geo Group‘s lobbyist, Brian Ballard, hosted Scott at his Tallahassee home to watch the Super Bowl. GEO Group and CCA donated nearly $1 million toward the Scott’s inauguration celebrations.
 |
Become a Fan on Facebook |  |
Follow Us on Twitter |  |
Subscribe to YouTube |  |
Subscribe to Blog RSS | ||||
29 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Just wait until corporate prison operators start advertising their prisons:
“Come commit your crime in our area, so you, too, can come to the most modern prison facility on the continetnt! We’d love to have you!”
If private ownership means less cost I am for it. If not keep it public. Are the people who work in prisons union members?
You aren’t faking it are you? I can’t believe anyone with as little understanding, as you seem to, of how anything actually works can hold down a job.
You should heed the old saw about, “Tis better to be silent and thought an idiot . . . . .”
I bet I am happier and more wealthy then you are.
He’d have to be happy, as crazy as Swearto-WHOoligan is. Reminds me of a 1960s song about how they’re coming to take him away… ha ha… they’re coming…
When you turn a government run project over to the private sector the first rule of order is profits. It stands to reason that private prisons would not exist if there was no crime. I can easily believe that in private prisons there is a penchant for failure to abide by the rules both with inmates and captors. The more a prisoner is accused of violating, and found to have violated, the rules, the longer they stay in prison. The longer they stay in prison, the more money the private prison makes. It will not be cheaper in the long run.
You think they will sell stocks on these prisons? If they do man what cheap labor you can get. This company would be a growth industry.
Thank you Anus-throat, we can smell your thick grossly-smelling slippery stuff coming out your mouth as you cheer on the culture of making more criminals out of people by denying them a decent life so they resort to desperation in the face of the travesty of commercial communism.
As for me, I will invest in those businesses that try to make our society be better so that people have decent jobs and nothing Establishment-organized that will challenge people’s better decision-making.
We need a more humane society which educates people and then protects people from exploitation, which the corporate prison system only aids and abets that exploiting commercial-communist system, no prison can remediate the prime problem we have in our society, which is to humanize our society so that all people will have a lawl-abiding chance to fit in with society, and which will accommodate all people to share in the prosperity of our society, and not to put people into prisons because they make rash choices for the reason that there are no choices in seeking socially-acceptible opportunities in the first place.
With privateers looking to profit in any way they can, look for them to start with current employees; pay, benefits etc..
GEO, who is in bed with the Florda legislature and milking tax payers there, by them giving $$ to the Republican party and Scott’s campaign, this is a conflict of interest. With their history of abuse towards inmates, what is the legislature thinking?
This has been done in Arizona and the workers are paid a little more than minimum wage. My nephew works in one of them and they have the workers sign contracts where they cant even get a second job to live on. This is a bad thing for this country. Why hasnt there been a recall for this guy yet. BTE my nephew cant even seek a better job because of the contract he signed, he cant quit either.
Florida can expect the prison population to swell. The more people incarcerated, the more money made by these corporate creeps. And don’t forget the kickbacks to all up and down the line, from traffic cops to judges, so much per head. It just goes to show–crime does pay, if you are a corporate jailer.
Try to get the innocent released from these places while there’s money to be made keeping them locked up.
sweartogod, you must have zero math skills.
Try this; Cost = Cost, when govt run.
Cost, + Profit = BIGGER Cost, when privately owned.
You cannot do something Cheaper, by ADDING profit costs.
Just look at how much the US pays for healthcare, vs all the national helthcare nations,,,,WE pay far more, for less coverage.
DEE DE DEEEH ! Are you insane or just so partisan to not care about facts?
I heard private prisons are real are real wealth builders. I wish I could own a prison. I fill it with illegal aliens. What a growth industry. Thanks Obama.
when government runs anything the costs go higher. soon to be 16 trillion in debt. Tell me about government costs? You must be living in La la land.
Anus-throat is just never going to understand logic no matter how truthful you are, hardwroc. It’s just the sad truth. He is a mentally-deformed abortion who escaped in spite of scientific birth techniques.
Once the prisons are privatized, the Constitution doesn’t matter. Private Corporations are exempt. That’s why Bush hired Blackwater. Whatever they do you have to sue the Corporation and they will tie that up in court for years.
Privatization of Government should be Illegal. We cannot allow Corporations to take over our Government. They already control the Electorate.
I do not want government taken over by the left wing. They will destroy this country like they are doing now.
And Anus-throat’s statement thus proves my statement above about him being an escaped abortion.
In Florida it is not allowed to recall the governor – he must ‘serve’ his rich buddies for the whole hellish 4 years. Besides, the voting is rigged here, and if they somehow lose anyway, they just refuse to count the votes and look for the right wing ‘supreme’ court to annoint them king. The argument they make is that private corporations run things more ‘efficiently’, which means, they pay less for food and medical care by abusing and neglecting and poisoning the poor people unlucky enough to find themselves behind bars – usually for bullshit like having pot on them. What they don’t tell us is that the profits taken out more than outweigh any savings achieved through overcrowding and abuse. They also don’t explain that this creates a massive, powerful and well-funded lobby for long sentences and draconian laws to keep the prisons full and profits up. Another big unspoken reason why our enemies love this idea is that there is much less oversite so that the inevitable abuses more often than not go unexposed and unreported. This is a disaster for any of us who are at the wrong place at the wrong time. Now that money is free speech, we workers have little of either, and no justice.
This will add a huge cost eventually to the cost of doing these functions. The private prison industry has been corrupted since it started. they abuse prisoners, killing many of them. They get laws changes so more people will end up in prison – look at Texas where something like one in twenty people have been imprisoned. Doesn’t matter if they are innocent because they buy the judges too. Pennsylvania imprisoned thousands of teens because the private prison owners paid the judges millions to put them in prison. Many were innocent of doing any thing wrong but some should have been misdemeanors and not felonies.
You can bet your costs will go up AND you lose freedoms. The private prison industries are all corrupt and the freedoms lost through their actions should not be tolerated.
Contracting out to private industry is just admitting you can’t manage, but the loss is in freedom and justice. Yes many union members will lose wages and benefits because of Scotts ignorance.
So if people are eventually elected that view this privitazation as something that’s wrong, can they reverse it? Or would that be too crazy? Can the state sign contracts with these guys that go on indefinitely?
Number one yes. Number 2 yes. Number 3 yes.
Those comments weren’t numbered, so they are alpha-”a”, alpha-”b”, and alpha-”c”, our dear friendless Anus-throat.
When I was in federal prison (for the crime of fighting for my union) there was talk that CCA was going to take over the prison. The “normal” prisoners like myself hated the idea. But the professional criminals loved the thought of it. They knew they could bribe the lowly-paid guards and get away – perhaps literally – with murder. A guard can get (i.e. bribed) $250 for bringing in a carton of cigarettes. A guard making $10 an hour is going to have a hard time resistting that kind of temptation. And once an inmate gets his claws into a guard – he owns him.
Yes Swearto, the prison guards were unionized. Which, I have to admit, worked to my advantage once the word got around as to what my crime was.
As a former inmate with friends still inside, I don’t wish privitization on any prisoner. But I do believe they will operate it more cheaply. I remember we had a temporary asst warden came in and the first thing she did was spend $40,000 redecorating her office including a new $6,000 desk chair. But she didn’t like that one so she ordered a different one for $9,000. She stayed one year. I was the clerk in charge of all rec yard, gym and game room activities so when new equipment was needed I would help the rec supervisor pick it out. We had to order it from a specific company and the prices were outrageous. I once siad to the super, “You could buy this same thing at any local store for one-fourth the price!’ But he siad we had to buy from the companies that were “approved” by the government – that is, by those copanies that bribed the politicains (of both parties). The prison system as now run is a scam. If it’s privatized it’ll just be a scam of a different sort. There’s just too much unaccounted money.
I spend about 100 pages relating my prison experience in my book CRIMES OF A CHRISTIAN. The preceding 200 pages tell the story of how I got there – negotiating union contracts the Chicago way.
The Chicago way? Oh My. The democrats have controlled that city longer then the communists controlled Russia. Gee our president comes from that a a nice city. Oh that hurt. They really can get out the vote in that city. You can be dead and still vote.
Have you ever been to Chicago? It is a cool and fun place with great restaurants and a diverse, friendly and educated population. I am assuming that maybe you have not. You should check it out, but I must warn you, their are a lot of folks their that might not be white enough for your tastes. No, you probably are stuck in one of the many dead small towns or suburbs that amount to no more than a pimple on America’s unemployed, uneducated and uninspired fat diabetic ass.
Sweartogod, AGAIN, just example private contractors in Iraq, doing what GIs do, for ONLY 10 Times the pay. HUGE savings in your eyes, right?
Seabees built bases for far less and quicker than Haliburton, and NOBODY got shocked to death showering.
Again, your partisanship is blinding you to reality. Govt debt is due to giving away the tax money we HAD to buy votes, then spending more than every before on wars CHOSEN and unfunded exept with DEBT, handing it to the successor president to then villify HIM for the debt he was handed.
Disengenuous is a kind word for the GOP actions and privatization is nothing but gifting the US taxpayers money to cronies/owners of the GOP.
Of course, on the other hand, obeying orders from The Establishment, our Sea Bees could rig up electric showers for the detainiees… oh my gosh, I’m sorry I said that, I don’t want to give them any more of Bush and Cheney’s and Rove’s and Woo’s ideas!