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Wackenhut Corrections Corporation - the truth behind private prisons Within the conceptual framework of this research, we will elaborate on Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, a private prison system that is nowadays notorious for numerous human rights abuse cases. History of Wackenhut Corrections Corporation as well as its owner will be briefly discussed, followed by detailed elaboration on numerous problems that Wackenhut Corrections Corporation experienced. After careful research, it is apparent, that Wackenhut Corrections Corporation in particular, and private prisons at large, are not able to handle the responsibilities of inmate incarceration. For a relatively brief period from about the 1940 s through the 1970 s, public entities enjoyed a near monopoly in the business of incarceration. (Chambliss, 1999) This situation came to an end in the mid- 1980 s on a broader wave of privatization and a surge in American incarceration rates. The first modern county-level privatization contract was established in 1984 and the first state-level contract in 1985.
Between three and six percent of inmates nationwide are now incarcerated in privately run facilities, for a total of about 120, 000 inmates in about 150 facilities. (Tonry, 2002) Several states and the District of Columbia incarcerate at least fifteen percent of their inmates in private prisons. Today the industry is dominated by two corporations, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA); together they control over two-thirds of the market. The primary subject of this research is Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. George Wackenhut, who used to work for FBI, founded his company in 1954, in state of Florida. The companys board of directors is abundant with other ex-FBI workers. George Wackenhut is quite a controversial individual, he is considered quite strict and sometimes very emotional by his subordinates. (Coyle, 2003) His corporation brings a lot of profits in, and he is known to diligently check all the aspects of its working.
As already mentioned, the past two decades have witnessed a disturbing trend in the American criminal justice system. From immigration detention centers and work farms to county jails and state prisons, private corporations have entered the incarceration business en masse. In fact, there are currently more than 100, 000 people incarcerated in private prisons in the United States. (Dyer, 2000) Privatization of the criminal justice system has been driven largely by the currently dominant ethos of a neoliberal agenda in which a wide variety of traditionally public goods have been transferred to the supposedly more efficient and less corrupt private sector. However, correctional services are fundamentally different from other goods, such as garbage collection, which have been transferred into private hands.
Providing correctional services is a vastly complex and difficult task. Institutions are charged with the task not only of protecting society but also caring for the physical, psychological and emotional needs of inmates so that they may one day successfully return to the community. Unfortunately, private corrections firms have failed miserably in the task they were so eager to take on, as systematic human rights abuses have become the rule and not the exception. (Chambliss, 1999) Wackenhut Corrections Corporation is a good example when it comes to discussing human rights violations and other abuses in private prisons. One of the facilities operated by Wackenhut under a contract with the state in 1996 was the McPherson Unit in Arkansas, housing 685 women. By 1998, officials from the state correctional system discovered that 70 percent of the women were being given psychotropic medications, a rate of medication many times higher than the rate for women prisoners in the state's custody. (Tonry, 2002) Two years later, when state officials attempted to verify the company's schedule for programming, they found that the programming, including substance abuse programs, did not exist. Wackenhut blamed the state, saying that its contract did not produce enough money to allow it to offer programs. (Tonry, 2002) Wackenhut also operated a particularly notorious juvenile facility in Jena, Louisiana.
Although the worst conditions at Jena involved deliberate abuse of youth and failure to provide them with necessities such as shoes, underwear, and blankets, a report by the Department of Justice also found that, not surprisingly, the company cut costs by failing to provide necessary medical care. When the facility opened, its ostensible purpose was the provision of substance abuse treatment. The Department of Justice found, however, that virtually no substance abuse programs actually operated at Jena. After extensive media coverage of the abuses at the facility, Louisiana took over its operation in April 2000. (Coyle, 2003) When Jena Juvenile Justice Facility in Jena, Louisiana, operated by the Wackenhut Corporation was closed as a result of gross human and civil rights violations, it left thousands of African American children subject to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of having been so terribly abused. Youth at this facility were subjected to corporal punishment, excessive force, and gas grenades rather than given access to rehabilitative services. One US Department of Justice report confirmed that youth at the Jena facility overwhelmingly African American males were at substantial risk of harm due to unreasonable levels of violence from juvenile-on-juvenile assaults and the use of excessive force and abuse from staff. (Coyle, 2003) Further, in December 2000, a juvenile prison in Columbia, South Carolina, operated by Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, was found to have subjected abuses so egregious and repugnant to the conscience of mankind upon its largely African American youth population that punitive damages were awarded against the offenders in the amount of $ 3 million. (Coyle, 2003) Such abuses are not only witnessed at juvenile facilities.
Private adult prisons also have a higher rate of inmate-on-inmate homicides than government-run facilities. A 1997 survey conducted by George Washington University Professor James Austin found that there were 65 percent more inmate-on-inmate assaults in medium- and minimum-security private facilities than in government-run medium- and minimum-security prisons. Between 1998 and 1999, the Wackenhut Corporation's New Mexico facility had a homicide rate of one for every 400 prisoners, compared to state-run prisons, which had a homicide rate in 1998 of one for every 22, 000 prisoners. (Dyer, 2000) After Wackenhut began running Texas pre-release centers, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice found that the corporation had collected excessive profits from its operations at the same time as medical and dental care, among other services, were deficient. (Coyle, 2003) The events of September 11 in the United States are likely to combine with the Supreme Court's decision in the Males case to exacerbate the problem of the denials of medical care in private prisons. (Coyle, 2003) Prior to September 11, private prisons in the United States were in deep trouble. The nation's two largest private prison corporations, CCA and Wackenhut, together account for about 75 percent of all private prison beds. CCA was on the verge of bankruptcy. Although Wackenhut was in better financial shape, by May 2001 its stock had fallen from around thirty-five dollars a share in 1998 to about eleven dollars a share. (Coyle, 2003) After September 11, however, the Bureau of Prisons issued its two largest requests of the year for bids on the operation of facilities in Georgia to lock up non-citizens charged with crime.
The Bureau of Prisons also intended to solicit bids in early 2002 for fifteen hundred detainees to be held in the deserts of the southwest United States. Prospective investors sense a potential bonanza in running prisons for profit. Wackenhut, the second-largest prison corporation, hopes to capitalize on its experience in Australia of converting military bases to immigrant detention camps. Moreover, even before September 11, prisoner population within the Bureau of Prisons was continuing to grow, although population trends in the state corrections system were almost flat. (Coyle, 2003) Accordingly, the future of private prisons appears to lie increasingly in housing federal rather than state prisoners.
The most controversial form of private sector involvement in correctional services is the management and operation of entire correctional facilities by forprofit corporations. In some cases, private firms have taken over the operation of public facilities; in others, corporations have constructed and then managed entire sites. This type of involvement has fostered situations in which a myriad of human rights abuses have occurred. Wackenhut Corrections Corporation can surely be considered one of the leaders when it comes to human rights abuse. In many cases, the corporation's desire for cost-effectiveness has led to simple corner-cutting, which in turn fosters abuses. For example, low pay and a subsequently high turnover rate has led to a grossly under qualified and inexperienced staff at Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. (Chambliss, 1999) Far too often, this has resulted in the flagrant abuse of prisoners.
In 1997, a videotape surfaced in the media that showed guards at a private Wackenhut facility in Texas shooting unresisting prisoners with stun guns and kicking them to the ground. One of the guards involved had recently been fired from a government-run prison for similar conduct. (Coyle, 2003) Rehabilitation costs have also been systematically slashed by Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. Opportunities for meaningful education, exercise and rehabilitation in Wackenhut Corrections Corporation are virtually non-existent. For example, in 1995 Wackenhut Corrections Corporation facility in Texas was investigated for diverting $ 700, 000 intended for drug treatment when it was found that inmates with dependency problems were receiving absolutely no treatment. (Dyer, 2000) This type of flagrant neglect amounts to abuse and almost certain recidivism as job training and education programs, drug and alcohol rehabilitation services, as well as social and psychological counseling, are absolutely critical if the transition back into society is to be successful.
Prisoners confined at Wackenhut Corrections Corporation prisons, just like those held in public facilities, are at heightened risk for many diseases, including communicable diseases. But there is substantial reason to be even more concerned about the health care offered in private prisons. Whatever the failings of publicly-operated facilities, they do not operate under the same set of incentives as for-profit prisons. (Tonry, 2002) Officials who run public prisons are not ordinarily judged primarily on the basis of the bottom line. Indeed, controversies about publicly-run prisons rarely focus directly on costs; instead controversies tend to concern whether a prison is fulfilling its functions, which range from preventing escapes to maintaining constitutionally required services, including medical care.
In contrast, private prisons, like other business corporations, are organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholder. Indeed, corporate officials have a legal duty to act in the interest of the corporation and its shareholders. (Coyle, 2003) Accordingly, private prisons have an economic motive to cut costs in every area of operations, whether they involve security, programs or health care, as long as the savings in cost do not result in penalties under their contract with the governmental agencies or increases in the cost of litigation that outweigh the savings. Nevertheless, the first constraint on reducing costs, the prospect of governmental monitoring, is unlikely to prove a substantial deterrent for Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. While Wackenhut Corrections Corporation typically agrees in their contracts that the contracting governmental agency can monitor the company's performance of the contract, the private prison is usually not subject to the same general oversight that a prison operated directly by the agency would face. (Chambliss, 1999) For example, the federal Bureau of Prisons is covered by the Freedom of Information Act, the Administrative Procedures Act, and the Government in the Sunshine Act. (Dyer, 2000) These statutes require agencies to answer requests for information, to publish their rules and regulations, and to allow public scrutiny of internal decisions and records.
In the words of the Supreme Court, the basic purpose of such laws is to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed. (Tonry, 2002) Private prisons like Wackenhut Corrections Corporation are exempt from all these laws. Similarly, private prisons that hold federal prisoners are exempt from regulation under state prison regulatory standards. For example, in New York City there is both a Board of Correction that promulgates minimum standards and inspects local jails and a New York State Commission of Corrections that has authority over prisons and local jails, but neither of these regulatory bodies could have acted to ensure health care for a federal prisoner. (Dyer, 2000) Moreover, there are structural barriers to effective governmental monitoring of private prison contractors. When a governmental agency contracts with a private firm in other areas, such as constructing a public road, taxpayers can readily observe the results. Prisons, in contrast, are closed institutions and the general public has almost no ability to evaluate the quality of the services purchased with its money. In economic theory, this problem is known as the hidden delivery problem, in which the quality of the goods sold cannot be effectively observed by the buyer, so that the seller has the opportunity to substitute goods of less value than those specified in the contract without the normal risk of detection. (Taylor, 1999) It is true that neither public nor for-profit prisons are open to substantial citizen scrutiny, so there is always the risk that prison managers will betray the public trust by utilizing the difficulty of detection to misuse their budget, or that they will abuse the extraordinary power they are granted over their charges.
However, the risk of misuse of public funds is particularly great in the case of private prison operators. If the official in charge of a private corporation saves money on a contract with the government by failing to provide medical staff, and that failure is not detected, the company will be more profitable and those profits are likely, in some form, to benefit the manager. In contrast, it is generally extremely difficult for an official of a publicly-operated prison to transform funds that were appropriated for prisoner services to the official's private benefit. If, for example, the warden of a publicly-operated prison decided to cut the budget by refusing to hire necessary medical staff, the warden would still find it difficult to transform the saved funds into personal gain. (Coyle, 2003) There are other reasons to expect that governmental agencies will not perform adequate monitoring of contracts with Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. First, once the agency has selected the company to perform the contract, the agency may have reason to expect that the company's failure to perform the contract satisfactorily will reflect badly on the agency, so the agency may be motivated to ignore failures to comply with the contract. In addition, there may be high transaction costs to attempting to change companies, particularly because the private prison market is dominated by a small number of big companies. (Taylor, 1999) Once a particular private company is entrenched in a contract, the governmental authority is likely to be resistant to changing contractors.
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation can then generate excess profits, not by raising its contracting price, but by reducing the services to which it is obligated under the contract. From 1995 to 2000, the three major private prison companies Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut, and Cornell made a combined total of more than $ 528, 000 in federal election campaign contributions, much of it directly to political parties. (Coyle, 2003) In light of the spate of scandals and lawsuits involving these for-profit enterprises and numerous cancellations of state contracts, this attempt to influence politicians is understandable. Meanwhile, the war on terrorism is likely to bring further revenues to Wackenhut Corrections Corporation and other private corporations in the increased detention of immigrants. Even as new anti-terrorism legislation was passed in Congress, the value of stocks in some private prison corporations soared by as much as 300 percent. (Coyle, 2003) In light of these recent developments, the earlier rumors of the demise of the prison industrial complex may have been premature. Prisons are as good (if they can ever be good) as the staff who run them, given adequate financial support and a progressive mandate from above. When profit motives dictate policies, one can predict that the focus on rehabilitation will wane.
The modus operandi is to make the corporation money usually through reduced wages, lower staff / inmate ratios, and reduced health care spending for inmates and employees alike. The risk is that the services provided for health care, vocational education and treatment, will all go to the lowest bidder. International precedents for these concerns have already been set. In this age of globalization, corporations easily expand into foreign markets. (Taylor, 1999) Wackenhut, for example, had some initial success in selling their prisons overseas; private prisons for women sprang up in Australia, New Zealand, and England. Women's prison activists had several major concerns, including: the removal of women to a large centralized prison far away from family; exemption of private prisons from freedom of information because of commercial confidentiality; the economic and political influence of the multinational corporations on Australian sentencing; and use of cheapened prison labor. It is obvious that the US prison system, private and public prisons alike, has far to go before it will meet the basic correctional standards that human rights activists and penal reformers have long advocated.
After 25 years of booming capacity expansion, too many American prisons remain plagued with overcrowding. Under staffing, sub-standard healthcare, insufficient programs, and human rights abuses are still widespread. However, prison privatization has not only failed to alleviate these problems, the industry has actually produced a much worse record of deprivation, violence and abuse than is found in the public prison system. Bibliography Chambliss, W.
J. Power, Politics and Crime. Westview Press, 1999. Coyle, A.
Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization & Human Rights. Clarity Press, 2003. Dyer, J. The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime. Westview Press, 2000. Taylor, I.
Crime in Context: A Critical Criminology of Market Societies. Westview Press, 1999. Tonry, M. The Handbook of Crime & Punishment. Oxford University Press, 2002.
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Research essay sample on Wackenhut Corrections Corporation The Truth Behind Private Prisons
