Profiting Off of Incarcerated Youth
June 1, 2007 - 10:30am
Article by Caylor Roling
A wise person once said to me, “Anyone who looks at a child and sees the potential for profit should be the last person put in charge of that child’s life.” But everyday across the country, private, for-profit companies run juvenile prisons and boot camps, turning taxpayers’ dollars into investors’ profits and turning children into commodities.
In 2003, roughly 1 in 3 young prisoners in the United States were being held in a prison that was run privately, with many of these prisons run for profit. Over 30,000 young people were incarcerated in private prisons, and over 66,000 were incarcerated in publicly-run youth prisons. And 2 out of 3 of those youth were being held for non-violent crimes (property crimes, drug crimes, and public order crimes.)
Unfortunately, young people in prison are an especially vulnerable prison population, and they have suffered from abuse in both public and private prisons. But, the pressure on corporations to watch the “bottom line” and draw a profit adds an extra layer of danger for youth incarcerated in private prisons. Fundamentally, corporations are businesses, and they’re in it for the money. Anything left over after the bills are paid is profit, so there is tremendous incentive to cut costs and cut corners. This translates into staff members who are paid much less than people who work for the state, high staff turnover, fewer educational, treatment or mental health programs, and more violent prison environments.
Some of our readers are intensely familiar with GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), since both companies incarcerate our some of our Washington and Idaho members in private prisons in Minnesota and Texas. These same corporations run youth prisons in several states, and are major players in the “youth incarceration” industry. And what are taxpayers getting in return?
The Lawsuits
Because of abuse and sub-standard conditions, both GEO Group (Wackenhut) and other companies that run private youth prisons have paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits stemming from the abuse of children in their prisons. In 1998, Wackenhut paid $1.5 million to settle a suit filed by 12 girls who were sexually, physically and mentally abused by the staff in the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center. One guard pled guilty to sexual assault, but the terms of the agreement stated that the private company was not to blame.
Also in 1998, the Justice Department sued the State of Louisiana over another Wackenhut-run youth prison. The first demand of the suit was for “the State and Wackenhut to: stop using corporal punishment, excessive force, and gas grenades.”
The Scandals
Some of those problems were in the 1990s but GEO Group’s Coke County private prison for youth was back in the news just last month (March 2007) for abuse and mismanagement. In March, GEO fired a Coke County Juvenile Justice Center staffer who had previously been convicted of a sex crime with a child -- only after intervention by the state’s troubled youth commission. The staffer maintained that he had disclosed his previous conviction (for exposing himself to a child while he himself was a juvenile) when he interviewed for the job. Two youth escaped from the facility and were apprehended soon after.
Texas is facing an epidemic of abuse reports in its prisons and jails, with thousands of separate reports of abuse (including medical neglect) under investigation by the Texas Jail Standards Commission and other state entities.
GEO Group’s infamous youth prison in Michigan, the Lake County was closed last year as a cost-saving measure by the state shortly after advocacy groups who had been examining conditions there filed a lawsuit. The investigations noted that staffing levels were inadequate, youth were not being housed based on security risk, and youth were attempting suicide at an increasing rate. The state’s argument for closing the prison was that they could save millions by locking up the youth in state-run settings.
One of the most notorious private youth prisons in the country was in Tallulah, Louisiana. Children were forced to fight over scraps of clothes and food, and regularly beaten by guards. A warden who was brought in to change things in 1998 said, “When I got here, there were a lot of perforated eardrums. Actually, it seemed like everybody had a perforated eardrum, or a broken nose.” Parents got together, organized, worked with attorneys, and finally forced the closure of the Tallulah prison in 2004. Unfortunately, it reopened as an adult prison.
Can We Afford to Lock Up Our Youth in Private Prisons?
These infamous youth prisons are especially appalling given that so many people want to see youth in the criminal justice system rehabilitated. The public is eager to see a system that transforms adjudicated youth so that they leave prison and never come back again.
But, it takes a commitment to youth and thoughtfulness to make that happen. A system committed to the rehabilitation of youth spends money in the short term to have a positive effect in the long-term. It can’t be a system focused on cash profit. And let’s remember: anyone who looks at a child and sees the potential for profit should be the last person put in charge of that child’s life.
