Worse than Angola. So bad the Louisiana Dept. of Corrections canceled CCA's contract:

Shane Bauer's undercover report for Mother Jones: My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard...

xmd's picture

Thanks for the link. I read

Thanks for the link. I read the whole article today. Very interesting and sad. I hate thinking some of our prisons are being run by them.

R. Neal's picture

CCA operates six prisons in

CCA operates six prisons in Tennessee. They are headquartered in Nashville. The have a cozy relationship with state government.

Previously:

Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America and its executives, many of them former state or federal Republican officials, gave Haslam’s campaign some $32,375 last year, according to the National Institute on Money and Politics. That made the company Haslam’s No. 5 campaign contributor.

A week before he presented his first budget, Haslam spoke with top CCA officials, and his budget included $31 million to keep CCA’s Hardeman County Correctional Facility at Whiteville going.

See also:

Being born of government, connections between CCA and elected officials were strong at its inception. They remain so today. Co-founder Tom Beasley is a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, and an old friend of former governor and current U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander. In the 1980s, Alexander's wife Honey owned stock in CCA — which she went on to trade, amid some controversy, to the Massey-Burch Investment Group for shares of extremely valuable insurance stock — and Alexander endorsed CCA's failed bid to take over the state's prisons in 1985. For the PR side of that push, CCA relied on the wizardry of Alexander's former chief of staff, Tom Ingram, who remains a political force today (although he hasn't been connected to CCA for some time).

...

The corporation spent more money in Tennessee than in any other state that year save California, dropping a total of $75,850 on state and local candidates, both parties, and affiliated committees.

CCA spent almost as much in 2013, racking up nearly $60,000 in contributions to a wide array of state legislators. Its contributions went largely to Republicans, but not entirely. In recent years, it has written checks to most of the state's most powerful officials or their affiliated PACs, if not both. Since 2010 it has given at least the following:

• $27,400 to Gov. Bill Haslam.

• $5,000 to the Republicans Achieving a Majority PAC, founded by Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, but no contributions to Ramsey himself.

• $7,500 to House Speaker Beth Harwell and HarwellPAC.

• $3,500 to House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick.

• $1,500 to House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, and $500 to CAS PAC, which he founded.

• $2,000 to House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh.

• $1,000 to Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris.

jbr's picture

A very good article. Thanks

A very good article. Thanks for posting.

bizgrrl's picture

A sad and scary article. IMO,

A sad and scary article. IMO, the author was brave to get a job in the prison for this article.

Bird_dog's picture

CCA Tutwiler MS

I have about 4 years of correspondence from an inmate in the MS Delta. I LOATH CCA. 3500 inmates from California were sent to the Mississippi Delta, in a town of 1800 residents. The inmate census counted towards Tutwiler's representation in state government. Sacrificing connections with 3500 families for employment in Tutwiler is a devils bargain... Programing and education? Didn't happen. Lock-down as a cost-saving strategy? All the time.

jbr's picture

Looks like the viewing labor

Looks like the viewing labor as a cost approach as opposed to viewing it as a resource

michael kaplan's picture

Shane Bauer interview on

Shane Bauer interview on today's DemocracyNow!

(link...)

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