The Truth About Private Prisons
Belief:
Are the "New Atheists" As Bad as Christian Fundamentalists?
Frank Schaeffer
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How a Public Jobs Program Could Put America Back on Track
Julianne Malveaux
DrugReporter:
Pot Is More Mainstream Than Ever, So Why Is Legalization Still Taboo?
Steven Wishnia
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Why We Need Bees and More People Becoming Organic Beekeepers
Makenna Goodman
Food:
The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights
Makenna Goodman
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New York May Stop Heartless Health Insurers from Dropping Coverage When It Stops Being Profitable
William Ehart
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NYC Marathon Raises Question of Who Is American Enough?
James E. Johnson, Jr.
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Focusing on Fort Hood Killer's Beliefs Is an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
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What Michelle and Barack's Marriage Has in Common with 56 Million Other Ones
Annabelle Gurwitch
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Fetus-Shaped Potatoes? Going Undercover Inside the Weird World of Right-Wing Abortion Foes
Ann Neumann
Rights and Liberties:
"My Kids Want to Hide Their Identity; They're Scared Someone Will Attack Us": U.S. Muslims Being Targeted
Jaisal Noor
Sex and Relationships:
Instant Sex: Has the Digital Age Destroyed Relationships or Made Them Better?
Vanessa Richmond
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Why Natural Gas Is Not a Clean Energy Panacea
Stan Cox
World:
With Unemployment at 40 Percent, Afghan Teens Enlist in Army, Police
Lal Aqa Sherin
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest operator of prisons for profit, is celebrating its 20th anniversary throughout this year "at both the company's corporate Nashville office and at all of the more than 60 prisons, jails and detention centers under CCA ownership and/or management."
No word on whether the prisoners will be celebrating with them. However, a new report from Grassroots Leadership sticks a pin in their birthday balloon with a very critical look at the company's management of both its financial affairs and its contract prisons.
It is no secret that CCA has had its financial problems over the years. It came close to insolvency in the late 1990s after it accumulated heavy debt building expensive speculative prisons and restructuring itself as a real estate investment trust. After restructuring again, shaking up its upper management and spending $120 million to settle investor lawsuits, the company now claims to be in better financial shape. The report concedes that there has been some improvement but remains unconvinced about the company's long-term viability especially as many states are trying to reduce the size of their prison populations.
For those who are more concerned about the public policy implications of the CCA story than the ups and downs of its investors, the company's failures as a prison operator and its successes in influencing penal policy at the state and federal level are the most worrying areas of the report.
For-profit prison companies like CCA have always presented themselves as both cheaper and better than the traditional publicly owned prisons, staffed by state employees. However, from the mayhem and murders at the prison in Youngstown, Ohio, which eventually led to the company paying $1.6 million to prisoners to settle a lawsuit, to a series of wrongful death civil suits, and numerous disturbances and escapes, the authors document in detail a staggering range of failures of prison management.
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With Unemployment at 40 Percent, Afghan Teens Enlist in Army, Police World: In a matter of weeks, Afghanistan's boys can go from high school students, to uniformed soldiers. By Lal Aqa Sherin, IPS News. November 7, 2009. |
New York May Stop Heartless Health Insurers from Dropping Coverage When It Stops Being Profitable Health and Wellness: The proposed Ian's law, named after a victim of muscular dystrophy who requires an electronic device to speak would protect the most vulnerable from losing coverage. By William Ehart, Washington Times. November 7, 2009. |
What Michelle and Barack's Marriage Has in Common with 56 Million Other Ones Politics: The first couple has tried to preserve their "date night tradition." So have my husband and I. By Annabelle Gurwitch, AlterNet. November 7, 2009. |
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