Gulag Archipelago, Bahrain Archipelago — Systems to Silence Dissent
LET’s TALK “ARCHIPELAGO”
I often call the Family Law system an “Archipelago,” referring to the networked system that ensnares families.
My other, kind of ridiculous analogy, includes the Giant Squid, lurking in the depths, but with many tentacles, and the nightmare of a ship at sea and sailors’ dreams. When you experience multiple tentacles through this system, the only way to mentally/emotionally grasp the whole is by flexible imagery, it’s a SENSING.
Just in case, someone missed the reference:
June 16, 1974
By STEPHEN F. COHEN
THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO. 1918-1956. An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 1-11.
By Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.
Translated by Thomas P. Whitney. LETTER TO THE SOVIET LEADERS
By Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.
Translated by Hilary Sternberg.
ost books about the experience of holocaust, especially those written by survivors, have two purposes. One is to chronicle the full horror of the holocaust, to sear it into the collective consciousness, so that it may never recur. The other is to explain the historical origins and causes of that experience.
The Gulag Archipelago” is a non-fictional account from and about the other great holocaust of our century–the imprisonment, brutalization and very often murder of tens of millions of innocent Soviet citizens by their own Government, mostly during Stalin’s rule from 1929 to 1953.
. . .
Solzhenitsyn has recreated the history between 1918 and 1956 of “that amazing country of Gulag which, though scattered in an archipelago geographically, was, in the psychological sense, fused into a continent–an almost invisible, almost imperceptible, country inhabited by the zek people [prisoners]”. . .Archipelago refers to the far-flung system of forced labor camps run and augmented by the secret police and its institutions, whose prisoner population grew from small numbers after the revolution of 1917 to 12 to 15 million (about half “politicals”) at any one time by the 1940’s. Gulag is the acronym of the central office that administered the penal camps
AND
June 18, 1978
By HILTON KRAMER
THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO:1918-1956. An Experiment in Literary Investigation. Volume III.
By Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.
Translated from the Russian by Harry Willetts. KOLYMA: The Arctic Death Camps.
By Robert Conquest.
e have known about the Russian purges,” Edmund Wilson wrote in 1971, “but we have not really been able to imagine them.” The writer who, more than any of his contemporaries, decisively changed this situation, giving the world an epic account of the suffering and destruction Russia has endured under its Communist leaders and giving it in the most concrete, most moving, most classical human terms is Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.Solzhenitsyn who has restored a human face, a recognizable human substance and spirit, to the swollen, faceless statistics of the Soviet holocaust. If, after “The Gulag Archipelago,” we are still unable to imagine what the Soviet reign of terror and death signifies, both for its millions of victims and for us, too, in the precarious comfort of our freedom, it is because we do not want to–because we cannot bring ourselves to face the worst about the politics of our century and the murderous morals of our species.
Solzhenitsyn was one of the many millions in Russia forced by political circumstance into facing the worst as a daily experience. Altogether he has spent 11 yeas of his life in prisons, concentration camps and in exile in the Soviet Union, and now lives in Vermont, in permanent and involuntary exile from his native land. In 1945, at the age of 26 and while serving as a decorated artillery officer in the Red Army, he was arrested for having made some unflattering remarks about Stalin in letters to a friend. It was thus as a zek–a convict in the vast “archipelago” of Russia’s concentration camp system–that Solzhenitsyn was confirmed in his literary vocation. “Prison released in me the ability to write,” he tells us in this new volume, and even after his release–for Solzhenitsyn was among the lucky ones–the moral fire that ignited his literary endeavors in the first place, giving purpose to a condemned existence, continues to rage in every word he writes.
Under the most extreme and intolerable conditions, Solzhenitsyn made himself into the great rememberer of Russia’s terrible ordeal–made of memory itself both a literary medium and an instrument of survival.
You see that “instrument of survival…” — you see this blog, the some of the links on my blogroll, others in this system? This current system doesn’t compare — I THINK — but it sure is headed that way, and becoming an ACCEPTED practice in the USA and overseas, Thought Police is no joke, really.
Combining history and anecdote, analysis and polemic, with searing vignettes of so many doomed lives made all the more eloquent by the author’s intense empathy, his fiery sarcasm and moral fury, Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag” is the kind of book that permanently alters the way we perceive the world in which we live. No one who reads through its many blood-stained pages can ever be quite the same again–can ever again read a newspaper, listen to a political speech or look upon then political and human circumstances of his own life with quite the same complacency and comfort. It is a book that leaves a permanent scar on the reader’s soul.
. . . requires a strong stomach–and something else, too: a moral commitment of the sort that few writers nowadays require of their readers-
You cannot help a situation you can’t stomach even being aware of, naming, or seeing. This is how much abuse gets ignored. There’s an innate alienation to emotionally protect onesself from the (truth) that the world just ain’t fair, AND that “time and chance happen to us all.” No, it must have been something about the victim’s fault, and the “But that’s THEM, and not US” scenarios kicks in, even when it’s someone close to the person. I understand this. It’s a daily balance from being paralyzed by awareness of what DOES and CAN happen, right here, now (not referring to this historical piece) and from realizing that one’s conscience canNOT accept a “back to business as normal,” again.
WIKIPEDIA contributes — and would I miss a chance to mention this? Of course not.
He was raised without a father. Must’ve been at risk of a horrible life because of that (and not wars, political changes, or purges. No, healthy families have two parents. WELL then, with this formula, how does one explain such an author? Or is there ANOTHER reason for this policy in the US, and the Family Court Archipelago here, and overseas?
The Gulag Archipelago has sold over thirty million copies in thirty-five languages. It was based upon Solzhenitsyn’s own experience as well as the testimony of 256[29] former prisoners and Solzhenitsyn’s own research into the history of the penal system. It discussed the system’s origins from the founding of the Communist regime, with Lenin himself having responsibility, detailing interrogation procedures, prisoner transports, prison camp culture, prisoner uprisings and revolts, and the practice of internal exile. T
“In 1918, Taisia became pregnant with Aleksandr. Shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed, Isaakiy was killed in a hunting accident. Aleksandr was then raised by his widowed mother and aunt in lowly circumstances. His earliest years coincided with the Russian Civil War. By 1930 the family property had been turned into a collective farm.
Later, Solzhenitsyn recalled that his mother had fought for survival and that they had to keep his father’s background in the old Imperial Army a secret. His educated mother (who never remarried) encouraged his literary and scientific leanings and raised him in the Russian Orthodox faith;[5] she died in 1944.[6]“
In the BAHRAIN ARCHIPELAGO (physical island chain)
Human Rights Issues in a small island nation:
Yesterday’s post blogged a custody case of a woman and child from Arizona trapped in Bahrain in a custody dispute. Bahrain is an “archipelago.” I showed the NASA photo, and found multiple Human Rights Watch articles on Woman and Child Abuse there. Portugal and Great Britain had their time in its history, divisions between Shi’ite majority and Sunni minority reverse (from what I can tell) the rest of the world’s status, and women only got the vote in 2002. It’s considered more liberal than some of it’s neighbors, and is home to what will be (is?) the WORLD’s longest bridge, from Qatar peninsula to the tiny Bahrain main island. Not the best place for a foreign-born woman to be trapped in a custody dispute!
HERE is an article “Women Don’t Need to Accept Polygamy” (currently that doesn’t seem true, but it presents issues)
And Amnesty International Documented in 1994-1996, increasing abuse of women and children in suppressing civil unrest:
- http://www.amnesty.org
- Description:
- Since 1994, the Government of Bahrain has responded to civil unrest with widespread arbitrary arrests, apparent extrajudicial killings, imprisonment of prisoners of conscience, torture and the death sentence, the first to be carried out in almost 20 years. The government has also continued a policy of forcible exile of its own nationals, sending whole families out of Bahrain, or banning their return if suspected of opposition political activity abroad.
- AND
- “December 1994, there was an alarming, unprecedented increase in human rights violations in Bahrain following widespread pro-democracy demonstrations. For the first time, women and children as young as nine or ten years old were targeted for arrest and many were reportedly ill-treated in custody. For many women, this was the first time they had engaged in an active and vocal participation in public protests, a shift from their traditional role away from the public arena.
- {{Protest – Retaliation. Women and children participating, speaking out, took a real hit: the goal being to quell and suppress, ESPECIALLY if this population was going to mobilize. Even more so if this belies religious traditions. U.S. has its religious influences also, in human rights violations against omwne and children in the courts, and in abuse of children in the penal / juvenile system. We ARE the world’s largest jailor, but do things a little differently undert the form of government…}}
- Groups of women also wrote petitions to the Amir urging the restoration of democracy, and led demonstrations calling for the release of their menfolk and of all political prisoners. Children also joined the protest movement, staging sit-in strikes in schools and participating in street demonstrations which sometimes developed into clashes with security forces. The government dealt with both these groups by arresting them arbitrarily, holding them for extended periods in incommunicado detention and often ill-treating or torturing them during investigation. International standards addressing the particular vulnerabilities of women and children and rules regarding their detention and trial were consistently violated.
- Amnesty International recorded the Bahraini Governments violations of human rights in a report entitled Bahrain: A Human Rights Crisis (AI Index MDE 11/16/95), issued in September 1995. The report detailed a number of cases in which women were held in incommunicado detention for months at a time before their release without charge or trial. As with most other detainees, the women were deprived of their right to contact their relatives or a lawyer during their detention period.
{{they were in islands of their own}}
A number of them were subjected to beatings and threats for allegedly [1] having participated in demonstrations or [2] for attempting to prevent the arrest of their male relatives. Some women were arrested and held as hostages in order [3] to coerce male relatives to hand themselves over to the authorities, while others were detained [4] apparently as a punishment for the opposition activities of their male relatives, who were either detained or had evaded arrest. It would appear that some women were also detained [5] in order to deter other women from joining public protests.”
{{Pause to reread the above paragraph — the various PURPOSES for beating and threatening these women. It didn’t always even related to anything they personally had done.}
National Identity. Bahrainis self-identify as part of the Arab world. There are tensions between the Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, and religious affiliation is of primary importance in defining one’s identity.
Ethnic Relations. Expatriates constitute 20 percent of the population. They come mainly from other Arab nations but also from India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and America. While relations are not unfriendly, foreigners generally are not integrated into Bahraini society. The vast majority are temporary workers and thus constitute a transient population.
Leadership and Political Officials. Political parties are prohibited, but there are several small underground leftist and Islamic fundamentalist groups. The main opposition consists of Shi’a Muslim groups that have been active since 1994, protesting unemployment and the dissolution in 1975 of the National Assembly, an elected legislative body.
Social Problems and Control. The legal system is based on a combination of Islamic law and English common law. Most potential laws are discussed by the Shura council before being put into in effect.
G ENDER R OLES AND S TATUSES
Division of Labor by Gender. Women are responsible for all domestic work, and few are employed outside the home (only 15 percent of the workforce is female). This is beginning to change as more girls gain access to an education, and foreign influence has modified traditional views of women’s roles. There are no women represented in the government.
Relative Status of Women and Men. In the Islamic tradition, women have a lower status than men and are considered weaker and in need of protection. Bahrain has been more progressive than other Arab nations in its treatment of women. The first school for girls was opened in 1928, nine years after the first boys’ school.
What about Here? What about, now, today, the U.S.A. — are we an island in the world, with our Bill of Rights and Constitution, and legislative, judicial, executive branches of government, and just a bit of distance between the states and the feds? (less and less so each administration….). Do we have ROYALTY? Do we have RIGHTS?
Define “we.”
TheLoop21.com
Incarcerated Teens testify about abuse in private prisons
Mon, 08/30/2010 – 10:24Incarcerated youth give testimony of abuse: Private Prisons Part 3
Two teens share their harrowing experiences of sexual assault in juvenile detention facilities
By: Brandale Randolph | TheLoop21 (Add to your loop)
Mon, 08/30/2010 – 10:24After my last piece on Private Prisons, I got several nerve shattering responses. Inmates from prisons all over the country were sending me direct messages and tweets about the piece but what jarred me the most is that I received several messages from kids who had been housed in juvenile detention centers. Still, nothing could prepare me for the conversations I had with several teens who are currently in juvenile detentions centers. Of those, three were housed in privately owned and operated facilities.
For the purpose of this post, I selected one male and one female juvenile inmate. The third juvenile did not say much, we got to a point in the conversation when I heard her cry. Out of respect for the things that she told me, I erased the recording.
Two teens share their harrowing experiences of sexual assault in juvenile detention facilities
Male and Female, they are getting raped, and know better than to protest to the guards, some of who participate
Corrections Corporation of America is making millions, some from prison labor
By: Brandale Randolph | TheLoop21 (Add to your loop)
Mon, 08/16/2010 – 00:00African Americans comprise more than 40 percent of all of the inmates in American. Many of the crimes that have lead to our incarceration are non violent. Crimes such as grand theft, drug possession, prostitution etc., that many see as norms in our community are feeding the worst beast of the prison industrial complex, the private prison.
Private prison companies are literally making billions off the incarceration [of] African Americans. L
Let’s look at, the Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA for short. CCA is the largest private prison corporation in America. With 60 facilities and more than 85,000 beds, they are the fourth largest corrections system in the nation, only the federal government and three states are larger.
Last week, on Aug 5th, CCA announced its quarterly earnings, for the three-month period between April and July it earned a reported $419.4 million. In other words over last three months. That’s along with $414 million reported in the 1st quarter, or $833 million in the first six months of 2010.
Yes, despite the poor economy and reports of dozens of inmate dying because of poor health care and inmate abuse, CCA continues to generate billions of dollars.
However, the revenues generated by CCA do not include just the tax revenue paid by states and the federal government to house inmates. Like other private prisons, CCA generates money from prison labor. Under the guise of vocational training, CCA hires inmates to perform construction duties, law enforcement dog training, and even software testing for Microsoft. All at a fraction of the cost of using labor outside the walls.
In 2008, there was a phenomenal article in Mother Jones by Caroline Winter, “From Starbucks to Microsoft: a sampling of what US inmates make and for whom.” According to the article findings, inmates process food including beef and chicken, packing for Starbucks and even lingerie for Victoria’s Secret.
The larger threat is that CCA spends money on political campaigns as a lobbying organization. For example, let’s look at its involvement in Arizona’s SB 1070.
According to a Phoenix news report a few days ago, CCA donated money directly to the gubernatorial campaign of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. Moreover, the company receives more than $11 million dollars per month from the state of Arizona. Also according to this report, two of Gov. Brewer’s top advisors have ties to CCA. Paul Senseman, her deputy chief of staff is a former lobbyist for CCA and his wife is now a current lobbyist for the company. Chuck Coughlin one of her policy advisors and campaign chairman, owns the company that currently lobbies for CCA.
I decided to look up this CCA, and found a 2000 “CORPWATCH” article that calls the Private Prison Complex a “Gulag.”
Note: My laptop is slow, and frequently loses text before it’s saved. This is exceptionally frustrating — yesterday, I lost probably 2 hours of work, background on Bahrain — which is why it’s on today’s post. The other part of the word “wait” is some days, simply watching a little “processing” symbol spin around and load a page. Graphics rich pages, such as from TheLoop21.com, are painful to load; guilt tends to kick in at this point for even blogging.
While on this topic: NONE of this blog was done from a regular, home PC. I had a laptop, which was stolen, briefly. Then probably a half year of (back to the libraries) (being car-less), and recently laptopped again — only a older, slower one. So be thankful for whatever comes out cohesive and coherent. Most times, I am looking at a single screen maximum 2 paragraphs visible at a time. Printing is another project. So all in all, perhaps it symbolizes the trouble also being stuck in the courts — basic infrastructure is hard to maintain, and forget it for a current generation of electronic equipment, whether computer, phone, or mechanical, such as transportation.
How could any system which so systematically removes work time from adults be in the interest of children? And the instability of it over time is reflected in parents’ ability to retain jobs and social connections.
We are heading towards world-wide slavery, it seems.
Many (noncustodial) mothers I know, active in protesting and seeking reform, speak eloquently on the human face of the suffering. Others also speak of the legal abuse, and psychological devastation of ongoing threat of losing one’s children, or hope of seeing them again, or being caught (liek the author, above) speaking “in appropriately” and thrown in jail, or being gagged, with the threat of jail, if they don’t comply. As I, too, have become alienated from a normal work life, not through economy, but through the courts, after dysfunctional/violent (which came first?) marriage, and similarly dysfunctional institutions willing to do anything about the violence, I have become more aware of, and personally know mothers who’ve become shadows of their former severals, women who have gone to jail attempting to protect a child, and women who have been threatened with jail if they don’t shut up (“Gag order”). I don’t want to think about how many homeless women I know who got that way after a custody switch, or women who are not homeless, but paying their former batterer.
In addressing this, people protest the indignity and the travesty of human rights, legal rights, and common sense.
WELL, some attitudes are NOT common to all, and better acknowledge it sooner.
FAR FEWER are willing to analyze the common CENTS (more like $$) economically that are behind the system. Some do, but how many people do you know that are willing to become the next Irving Fine ? Or will take their chances, and start to subpoena major organizations’ bank accounts, tax records, and insist that answers be given?
If it’s gut-wrenching and and too much to stomach, hearing about the outrage of children and juveniles being raped, without anyone stopping it, of a complete dual system of enforcement of court orders, and no recourse when failure to arrest still results in unnecessary deaths, LOTS of them, then why not look at some “dry” figures, some analyses, and get really outraged?
The bottom line is the bottom line. We all have our personal, legal ones, but the systems in this country (and extending globally) are political/economic. THEIR bottom line looks a lot different.
Remember, in any relationship, there are two points of view, and two “bottom lines.” When the government power to incarcerate is involved, and combined with this same government’s IRS agency (similar powers) to take and reallocate income — not just people — we have to take a look at their books, and who cooked up the business plan.
Now: PRIVATE PRISON ARCHIPELAGO — CORPORATE / GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE
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What is the most profitable industry in America? Weapons, oil and computer technology all offer high rates of return, but there is probably no sector of the economy so abloom with money as the privately run prison industry. |
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US: America’s Private Gulag , |
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What is the most profitable industry in America? Weapons, oil and computer technology all offer high rates of return, but there is probably no sector of the economy so abloom with money as the privately run prison industry. Consider the growth of the Corrections Corporation of America, the industry leader whose stock price has climbed from $8 a share in 1992 to about $30 today and whose revenue rose by 81 per cent in 1995 alone. Investors in Wackenhut Corrections Corp. have enjoyed an average return of 18 per cent during the past five years and the company is rated by Forbes as one of the top 200 small businesses in the country. At Esmor, another big private prison contractor, revenues have soared from $4.6 million in 1990 to more than $25 million in 1995. Ten years ago there were just five privately-run prisons in the country, housing a population of 2,000. Today nearly a score of private firms run more than 100 prisons with about 62,000 beds. That’s still less than five per cent of the total market but the industry is expanding fast, with the number of private prison beds expected to grow to 360,000 during the next decade. The exhilaration among leaders and observers of the private prison sector was cheerfully summed up by a headline in USA Today: “Everybody’s doin’ the jailhouse stock”. An equally upbeat mood imbued a conference on private prisons held last December at the Four Seasons Resort in Dallas. The brochure for the conference, organized by the World Research Group, a New York-based investment firm, called the corporate takeover of correctional facilities the “newest trend in the area of privatizing previously government-run programs… While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be made — profits from crime. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now!” A hundred years ago private prisons were a familiar feature of American life, with disastrous consequences. Prisoners were farmed out as slave labor. They were routinely beaten and abused, fed slop and kept in horribly overcrowded cells. Conditions were so wretched that by the end of the nineteenth century private prisons were outlawed in most states. During the past decade, private prisons have made a comeback. Already 28 states have passed legislation making it legal for private contractors to run correctional facilities and many more states are expected to follow suit. The reasons for the rapid expansion include the 1990’s free-market ideological fervor, large budget deficits for the federal and state governments and the discovery and creation of vast new reserves of “raw materials” — prisoners. The rate for most serious crimes has been dropping or stagnant for the past 15 years, but during the same period severe repeat offender provisions and a racist “get-tough” policy on drugs have helped push the US prison population up from 300,000 to around 1.5 million during the same period. This has produced a corresponding boom in prison construction and costs, with the federal government’s annual expenditures in the area, now $17 billion. In California, passage of the infamous “three strikes” bill will result in the construction of an additional 20 prisons during the next few years. {{GOT THAT? SERIOUS CRIME RATES HAVE BEEN DROPPING FOR 15 YEARS (@2000). GOTTA KEEP THE PLACES FILLED FOR BUSINESS TO TURN A PROFIT, THOUGH. HOW? DRUGS WAR, 3 STRIKES YOU’RE OUT}} The private prison business is most entrenched at the state level but is expanding into the federal prison system as well. Last year Attorney General Janet Reno announced that five of seven new federal prisons being built will be run by the private sector. Almost all of the prisons run by private firms are low or medium security, but the companies are trying to break into the high-security field. They have also begun taking charge of management at INS detention centers, boot camps for juvenile offenders and substance abuse programs. The PlayersRoughly half of the industry is controlled by the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, (CCA) which runs 46 penal institutions in 11 states. It took ten years for the company to reach 10,000 beds; it is now growing by that same number every year. {There’s a TN connection…} CCA’s chief competitor is Wackenhut, which was founded in 1954 by George Wackenhut, a former FBI official. Over the years its board and staff have included such veterans of the US national security state as Frank Carlucci, Bobby Ray Inman and William Casey, as well as Jorge Mas Canosa, leader of the fanatic Cuban American National Foundation. The company also provides security services to private corporations. It has provided strikebreakers at the Pittston mine strike in Kentucky, hired unlicensed investigators to ferret out whistle blowers at Alyeska, the company that controls the Alaskan Oil pipeline, and beaten anti-nuclear demonstrators at facilities it guards for the Department of Energy. Esmor, the number three firm in the field, was founded only a few years ago and already operates ten corrections or detention facilities. The company’s board includes William Barrett, a director of Frederick’s of Hollywood, and company CEO James Slattery, whose previous experience was investing in and managing hotels. US companies also have been expanding abroad. The big three have facilities in Australia, England and Puerto Rico and are now looking at opportunities in Europe, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and China. Greasing the Wheels of Power to Keep Jails FullTo be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a 90-95 per cent capacity rate is needed to guarantee the hefty rates of return needed to lure investors. Prudential Securities issued a wildly bullish report on CCA a few years ago but cautioned, “It takes time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits.” Still, said the report, company earnings would be strong if CCA succeeded in ramp(ing) up population levels in its new facilities at an acceptable rate”. “(There is a) basic philosophical problem when you begin turning over administration of prisons to people who have an interest in keeping people locked up” notes Jenni Gainsborough of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. {{Now we are going to talk about LOBBYING….}}
Private prison companies have also begun to push, even if discreetly, for the type of get-tough policies needed to ensure their continued growth. All the major firms in the field have hired big-time lobbyists. When it was seeking a contract to run a halfway house in New York City, Esmor hired a onetime aide to State Representative Edolphus Towns to lobby on its behalf. The aide succeeded in winning the contract and also the vote of his former boss, who had been an opponent of the project. In 1995, Wackenhut Chairman Tim Cole testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge support for amendments to the Violent Crime Control Act — which subsequently passed — that authorized the expenditure of $10 billion to construct and repair state prisons. CCA has been especially adept at expansion via political payoffs. The first prison the company managed was the Silverdale Workhouse in Hamilton County, Tennessee. After commissioner Bob Long voted to accept CCA’s bid for the project, the company awarded Long’s pest control firm a lucrative contract. When Long decided the time was right to quit public life, CCA hired him to lobby on its behalf. CCA has been a major financial supporter of Lamar Alexander, the former Tennessee governor and failed presidential candidate. In one of a number of sweetheart deals, Lamar’s wife, Honey Alexander, made more than $130,000 on a $5,000 investment in CCA. Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter is another CCA stockholder and is quoted in the company’s 1995 annual report as saying that “the federal government would be well served to privatize all of their corrections.” In another ominous development, the revolving door between the public and private sector has led to the type of company boards that are typical of those found in the military-industrial complex. CCA co-founders were T. Don Hutto, an ex-corrections commissioner in Virginia, and Tom Beasley, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. A top company official is Michael Quinlan, once director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The board of Wackenhut is graced by a former Marine Corps commander, two retired Air Force generals and a former under secretary of the Air Force, as well as James Thompson, ex-governer of Illinois, Stuart Gerson, a former assistant US attorney general and Richard Staley, who previously worked with the INS. Leaner and Meaner?The companies that dominate the private prison business claim that they offer the taxpayers a bargain because they operate far more cheaply than do state firms. As one industry report put it, “CEOs of privatized companies… are leaner and more motivated than their public-sector counterparts.” Because they are private firms that answer to shareholders, prison companies have been predictably vigorous in seeking ways to cut costs. In 1985, a private firm tried to site a prison on a toxic waste dump in Pennsylvania, which it had bought at the bargain rate of $1. Fortunately, that plan was rejected. Many states pay private contractors a per diem rate, as low as $31 a prisoner in Texas. A federal investigation traced a 1994 riot at an Esmor immigration detention center to the company’s having skimped on food, building repairs and guard salaries. At an Esmor-run halfway house in Manhattan, inspectors turned up leaky plumbing, exposed electrical wires, vermin and inadequate food. To rachet up profit margins, companies have cut corners on drug rehabilitation, counseling and literacy programs. In 1995, Wackenhut was investigated for diverting $700,000 intended for drug treatment programs at a Texas prison. In Florida the US Corrections Corporation was found to be in violation of a provision in its state contract that requires prisoners to be placed in meaningful work or educational assignments. The company had assigned 235 prisoners as dorm orderlies when no more than 48 were needed and enrollment in education programs was well below what the contract called for. Such incidents led a prisoner at a CCA facility in Tennessee to conclude, “There is something inherently sinister about making money from the incarceration of prisoners, and in putting CCA’s bottom line (money) before society’s bottom line (rehabilitation).” {{Couldn’t have said it better myself: 2 bottom lines. MONEY? or REHABILITATION? (or whatever line someone is pushing at the public, currently}}
The companies try to cut costs by offering less training and pay to staff. Almost all workers at state prisons get union-scale pay but salaries for private prison guards range from about $7 to $10 per hour. Of course the companies are anti-union. When workers attempted to organize at Tennessee’s South Central prison, CCA sent officials down from Nashville to quash the effort. Poor pay and work conditions have led to huge turnover rates at private prisons. A report by the Florida auditor’s office found that turnover at the Gadsden Correctional Facility for women, run by the US Corrections Corporation, was ten times the rate at state prisons. Minutes from an administrative meeting at a CCA prison in Tennessee have the “chief” recorded as saying, “We all know that we have lots of new staff and are constantly in the training mode… Many employees (are) totally lost and have never worked in corrections.” Private companies also try to nickel and dime prisoners in the effort to boost revenue. “Canteen prices are outrageous,” wrote a prisoner at the Gadsden facility in Florida. “(We) pay more for a pack of cigarettes than in the free world.” Neither do private firms provide prisoners with soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes or writing paper. One female prisoner at a CCA prison in New Mexico said: “The state gives five free postage paid envelopes per month to prisoners, nothing at CCA. State provides new coats, jeans, shirts, and underwear and replaces them as needed. CCA rarely buys new clothing and inmates are often issued tattered and stained clothing. Same goes of linens. Also ration toilet paper and paper towels. If you run out, too bad — 3 rolls every two weeks.” Cashing in on CrimeIn addition to the companies that directly manage America’s prisons, many other firms are getting a piece of the private prison action. American Express has invested millions of dollars in private prison construction in Oklahoma and General Electric has helped finance construction in Tennessee. Goldman Sachs & Co., Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, among other Wall Street firms, have made huge sums by underwriting prison construction with the sale of tax exempt bonds, this now a thriving $2.3 billion industry. Weapons manufacturers see both public and private prisons as a new outlet for “defense” technology, such as electronic bracelets and stun guns. Private transport companies have lucrative contracts to move prisoners within and across state lines; health care companies supply jails with doctors and nurses; food service firms provide prisoners with meals. High-tech firms are also moving into the field; the Que-Tel Corp. hopes for vigorous sales of its new system whereby prisoners are bar coded and guards carry scanners to monitor their movements. Phone companies such as AT&T chase after the enormously lucrative prison business. {{And you thought the concept was just science fiction, or some religious doomsayer, predicting…. NOPE! Shades of Holocauset, much?}} About three-quarters of new admissions to American jails and prisons are now African-American and Hispanic men. This trend, combined with an increasingly privatized and profitable prison system run largely by whites, makes for what Jerome Miller, a former youth corrections officer in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, calls the emerging Gulag State. Miller predicts that the Gulag State will be in place within 15 years. He expects three to five million people to be behind bars, including an absolute majority of African-American men. It’s comparable, he says, to the post-Civil War period, when authorities came to view the prison system as a cheaper, more efficient substitute for slavery. Of the state’s current approach to crime and law enforcement, Miller says, “The race card has changed the whole playing field. Because the prison system doesn’t affect a significant percentage of young white men we’ll increasingly see prisoners treated as commodities. For now the situation is a bit more benign than it was back in the nineteenth century but I’m not sure it will stay that way for long.” This article originally appeared in CounterPunch, a Washington DC-based political newsletter. |
WELL, someone had to say this, and I’m not the first. As to women, a term that continues to come to mind as to this court system was a “Jim Crow” period following some feminist gains in the 70s. The backlash can be severe.
I remind this world that a lot of people became fatherless during WARS.
Now, we are ready to read the next post from the UK area. This post was just an introduction which got out of hand…
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
I had remembered he ranked high on the “Richest Congressmen” rollcall, and was heavily invested in a Childcare provider (below). I also recalled the expansive Head Start provisions in recent administration.
http://www.rollcall.com/features/
Guide-to-Congresss_1009/guide/38181-1.html?page=7
“24. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)
$12.13
The Tennessee Senator remains financially steady, reporting a slight 2 percent dip in his minimum net worth in 2008.
Alexander reported the sale of at least $1.5 million in stock of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, a national workplace child care services provider. The sale included stock Alexander previously valued at $500,000 to $1 million, as well as stocks held by his wife previously valued at “over $1 million.”
The Senator continues to own $5 million to $25 million of stock in Processed Foods Corp., a Knoxville-based company where he served on the board prior to his election to the Senate in 2002. His wife also owns “over $1 million” in company stock.
The Alexanders also list numerous real estate holdings, including commercial buildings and undeveloped properties, such as a Nantucket, Mass., plot that Alexander values at $1 million to $5 million, which his wife also lists as an asset valued at “over $1 million.”
Connection with CCA has too many sources to list:
Here’s one 2-pager called
“Connections Between U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander and Corrections Corp. of America” From “opensecrets.org”
“He helped found a company that is ***now the nation’s largest provider of worksite day care.*** He taught about the American character as a faculty member at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.”
http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Lamar_Alexander (near bottom)
http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/archives/1996/46/
(This is a Reader….)
“In 1984, Honey Alexander, the governor’s wife, purchased $8,900 in CCA stock. Concerned about avoiding a conflict of interest, Honey Alexander exchanged her CCA stock for 10,000 shares in South Life Corporation, a life insurance company, through Massey’s venture-capital firm, Massey-Burch Investment Group. In 1989, Honey Alexander sold her shares in South Life for $142,000. In 1995, an observer of the financial maneuvering quipped, “Hillary Clinton made only $100,000 on cattle futures; Honey did even better on what one could call prison futures.” The future didn’t change much for the state’s inmates; the CCA privatization idea did not work and virtually all CCA-run institutions were returned to state stewardship.”
Here’s another one from 1995:
“Mr. Alexander made most of his investments through a trustee. In many cases, the trustee was his wife, Honey. Follow the dance:
* In 1981, Governor Alexander and seven other investors acquire an option to buy the Knoxville Journal, a daily newspaper. Later, they swap their Journal stock for Gannett Co. shares, and Mr. Alexander nets $620,000.00 when he sells his.
* In 1984, Honey Alexander invests $8,900 in Corrections Corporation of America, a company founded by another Tennessee politician and friend of the Alexanders. In 1985, C.C.A. successfully makes a $250 million dollar proposal to take over Tennessee’s prison system. This proposal is championed by Governor Lamar Alexander.To avoid any conflict of interest, Honey Alexander trades her C.C.A. stock to another friend for 10,000 shares in South Life Corporation, a life insurance company.In 1989, Mrs. Alexander sells the South Life stock for a gain of $133,000.00. Note: privatiziation of Tennessee jails failed and all but one were eventually returned to the state.
* >>>Mr. Alexander appoints Mrs. Alexander during the 1980’s to head a \\Task Force on Healthy Children.// The staff director of the Task Force leaves in 1986 \\to found Corporate Child Care Inc., in which the Alexanders invest $5,000.00.// \\By 1991, the Alexanders’ C.C.C.I. stock is worth $800,000.00.// Their role in the start-up, other than putting the money in, is unknown; Mr. Alexander in campaign speeches claims to have “co-founded” a business employing 1,200 people but the C.E.O. says, “if you ask, did he come to work and sit beside me at the desk, that’s not literally true.”<<<
http://www.spectacle.org/595/lamar.html
"My source for the following is Politics for Profit: The Rich Rise of Lamar Alexander, by Doug Ireland in The Nation for April 17, 1995."
This writer concludes:
" * In 1991, as Mr. Alexander is being confirmed as Secretary of Education, he agrees to sever ties to Whittle Communications (which among other business services, sells a television news service to schools.) As a parting shot, a Whittle executive buys the Alexanders' Knoxville home for $977,500–more than $400,000 more than they had paid for it a year before. (Now, that's appreciation!)
* This year, a Tennessee law firm which doubles as a Washington lobbyist (representing clients such as U.S. Tobacco and Martin Marietta) is paying Mr. Alexander $295,000–while he attends 148 fundraisers and otherwise spends his time running for President.
What is the moral of the story?
Public life (especially in states like Arkansas and Tennessee) is like dancing a cotillion in which, at the end of the mad whirl, your pockets are stuffed full of money. While the rest of us (assuming we have money to invest at all) struggle to select stocks or mutual funds that will do well, and frequently suffer for our mistakes, public officials like Lamar Alexander and Bill Clinton are surrounded by appreciative people who will cut them in on a sure thing, helping to support them in a comfortable manner while they helm the ship of government. Doubtless without expecting anything in return.
This modest proposal is the only solution: let's require a vow of poverty from anyone who wants elective office. There is no other way out of this."
I wonder HOW many policies are a direct result of this type of activity and relationship.
familycourtmatters
September 1, 2010 at 3:32 pm
[…] This post was Twitted by AMPPUSA […]
Twitted by AMPPUSA
September 12, 2010 at 6:13 am
I was looking up something else, and found this recent (May 2011) commentary on private prison industry lobbyists. I copied most of the article, here:
From the AFL-CIO blog (comments currently closed)…
This Money Trail Leads Straight to Prisons—Private Ones
http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/05/06/this-money-trail-leads-straight-to-prisons-private-ones/
by Mike Hall, May 6, 2011
189
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After the November elections, with its raft of new Republicans in governors’ seats and in control of state legislatures, we’ve seen many of those states implement a corporate agenda that includes attacks on workers’ rights, new corporate tax cuts and privatization of state services.
Some of the biggest privatization prizes are state prison systems. A new report from AFSCME follows the money from corporations to the lawmakers who are now pushing lucrative prison privatization contracts in several states.
According to “Making a Killing: How Prison Corporations Are Profiting from Campaign Contributions and Putting Taxpayers at Risk,” the three largest private prison companies are The GEO Group Inc., Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the Management & Training Corporation (MTC). Each election cycle, according to the report, these corporations:
pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaigns of governors, state legislators and judges, in the hopes of advancing their political agenda—establishing more private prisons and reducing the number of public ones.
November’s Republican victories provided the private prison industry with new friends on the state level.
The upshot is a broad network of powerful private prison companies and pro-privatization legislation and budget initiatives linked by thousands of dollars in political donations to the party in power. This year, the industry is betting on these newly-elected allies to deliver the contracts they were losing under former state leadership.
Here are two examples from the report.
Florida: The Miami Herald reports that since 2001, the Florida GOP has received more than $1.5 million from the two largest prison contractors and their affiliates. Over two thirds of that total can be traced to the GEO Group of Boca Raton, which manages two of the state’s private prisons. The Florida Senate is now pushing to outsource corrections facilities to private companies in 18 additional counties.
Texas: In Texas, private prison companies and their PACs have given over $130,000 to candidates for public office since 2006. Texas has more privately operated correction facilities than any other state in the country. Harris County—the most populous county in the state—is now deliberating a plan to privatize the state’s largest jail.
The AFSCME report also points out that private prisons “routinely experience more inmate escapes and higher rates of violence due to chronically lax security and poorly trained minimally paid staff.” It also notes that there is no:
conclusive evidence showing that private prisons save states money. Policy Matters Ohio, a state think-tank whose report on prison privatization was released earlier this year, stated: “While debate over prison privatization has been heated and divisive, there is little or no consensus on whether it actually saves money….” In fact, in some cases, the opposite is true.
Click here for the full report and check out this report from the Teamsters (IBT) on the move to privatize prisons in Florida.
familycourtmatters
July 13, 2011 at 2:27 pm
The AFCSME report linked to here givesi details, including by-state:
Dispelling the myth: What do states get when they embrace incarceration for profit, besides thousands of dollars in contributions to local campaigns and elected officials? The answer is far from what companies like The GEO Group, CCA, and MTC would have the public believe.
“Workforce instability at private prisons has resulted in riots, rapes, assaults & escapes” (from an AFL-CIO report).
Click to access AFSCME-Report_Making-A-Killing.pdf
“• In 2010, Kentucky pulled its female inmates out of the CCA-run Otter Creek Correctional Complex after a sex scandal involving prisoners and guards. Several hundred women were relocated 377 miles away to the state-run prison. The state of Hawaii also moved its nearly 200 women prisoners out of Otter Creek, in part because of the incidents.
• In 2010, The GEO Group reached a $2.9 million settlement providing up to $400 each to about 10,000 inmates at six GEO facilities. The settlement covers GEO-run prisons in Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Mexico. The original lawsuit, filed in 2006, was filed against The GEO Group over strip searches that were allegedly conducted regardless of whether there was reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe the person was armed or in possession of contraband.19”
(read the report. Also being privatized — services associated with our courts, child support enforcement, and more).
familycourtmatters
July 13, 2011 at 2:32 pm
[…] 1, 2010, “Gulag Archipelago, Bahrain Archipelago — Systems to Silence Dissent” (this predates any published table of contents on the blog. Besides clicking on the link, […]
Privatization, Functionalism, the Complete Mental Health Archipelago. It’s Here, So Why Should We Still Care? (May, 2020). | Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, &
May 17, 2020 at 3:22 pm