Banking on private prisons in the fleecing of small-town America

[marmar]

from In These Times:



The Rainmakers
Banking on private prisons in the fleecing of small-town America.

By Beau Hodai


The sleepy town of Hardin, Mont., began its foray into the private prison industry in 2004, an adventure that would eventually saddle it with millions in debt and an empty, 464-bed prison collecting dust at the edge of town.

It all started when James Parkey, the founder, owner and president of Texas-based Corplan Corrections, met with then-Montana Gov. Judy Martz (R) at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport while Martz was en route to the Western Governors Association meeting in Santa Fe, N.M.

Since the 1980s, Parkey’s company has developed 33 private jails or detention centers in New Mexico, Texas, Idaho, Louisiana and Colorado. Corplan’s fortunes, along with those of private-prison giants Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut), date back to the “tough-on-crime” legislation of the ’80s and ’90s, when mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines pushed the U.S. prison population up to about 2.5 million—an 800 percent increase over the number of people incarcerated in 1970, the year before the commencement of Nixon’s War on Drugs.

But with the prison population leveling out and more states facing budgetary crises, lawmakers have questioned the wisdom of stiff sentencing guidelines. Consequently, the private-prison industry has moved onto the greener pastures of immigration detention centers. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5578/the_rainmakers

[izquierdista]

1. Their business model

With two improvements: (1) you never "dispose" of your inventory and (2) no need for energy wasting crematories.

[Doctor_J]

2. Reading the article, this operation

sounds suspiciously like racketeering.