Letters to the Editor
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The for-profit prison industry vs. common decency
In the face of a scheduled site visit, Michael Chertoff has put Hutto off limits to the U.N. Human Rights investigator. More information about this hell hole can be found at the website for the Private Corrections Institute. Go to "T. Don Hutto Correctional Center" in the "Texas Hall of Shame: http://www.privateci.org/texas.htm CCA's troubles for the past year at Don Hutto have been well publicized.
The treatment of immigrant families rivals the Japanese internment in WW II. History repeated itself as one old internment camp for Latin American ethnic Japanese in Crystal City Texas, in fact, was turned into a for-profit prison. It was welcomed as "economic development" by a town beyond embarrassment.
CCA has had a 24-year history of gruesome treatment of prisoners including the recent beating death of a woman by four guards in Tennessee. In just a five month period in 2004, the corporation experienced four major riots in four states. Its Youngstown Ohio prison was closed for years after murders and escapes fueled statewide horror and resistance to continued operation. Its friends in the Bush Administration overlook multi-million dollar overcharges. Bush has revived the stock prices of CCA and its industry that was headed for the toilet on 9/11, filling its hugely expensive prisons with countless maids, gardeners and busboys as well as refugees from the NAFTA disaster.
In a startling example of the prison-industrial complex, CCA's vice-president for Corrections is a former Bureau of Prisons Deputy Director and a Congressman sat on its Board of Directors.