Want to know where privatisation leads?
Especially in the prison service?
Well consider the case of the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre,Pennsylvania.
There youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer,given hearings that lasted a minute or two,found guilty and sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offences.
Nothing out of the ordinary except that two judges,Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in kickbacks to send the kids to two privately run youth detention centres.
Yes-they took graft from the owners of private facilities -whose names ironically were PA Child Care LLC and a sister company Western PA Child Care LLA-and thousands of youngsters were locked up illegally.
The judges have both cut a plea bargain deal and will probably get 7 years apiece, so far nobody from the companies has been charged.
Interestingly Conahan shut down the county run juvenile prison in 2002 and then helped the two companies secure contracts worth tens of millions of dollars,and at least some of the contracts depended on the numbers locked up!
My friend and fellow monkey-man Don over in SF sent me this little publicised story and his comment says it all:
"There's a special place in Hell waiting for these two bastards.Another glowing success for privatisation".
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ReplyDeleteI think that the state should put their detention out to tender.
ReplyDeleteThey could ask "USA Prisons Inc" and others to put competitive tenders in to see who could keep them the "most" miserably for the "least" public funds.
And then how about a souvenir shop at the prison where visitors can buy replica prison suits to do the gardening in? Or posters of their incarcerated loved ones with slogans such as "My man's in pokey"
Only in America? Let's hope so