Today is the national Day of Action Against the Prison Industrial Complex. Why on Valentine’s Day?
First, legend tells us St. Valentine both ministered to prisoners and suffered imprisonment.
Second, today marks the second anniversary of the nationwide “2 Million = 2 Many” protests designed to draw public attention to the millions of human beings incarcerated in the United States.
And finally, Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about love, and many believe love is the best way to defeat the cynicism and greed that turns human misery and absence of freedom into a commodity for gross profit.
Prisons operate to incarcerate, disenfranchise and debilitate — not rehabilitate — predominantly minority and impoverished populations in the United States. They also operate to generate millions of dollars in profits for private prison corporations like Cornell Corrections and Corrections Corporation of America.
Basically, state and federal governments pay these corporations to house their prisoners in private facilities all over the country. In return, Cornell and CCA make generous donations to politicians amenable to the private prison industry. To continue to reap profits from the industry, the companies build new facilities, and the government must maintain a supply of prisoners to fill the cells.
For more than 10 years, Lehman Brothers, a big business finance company, has functioned as a pioneer in what is known as the “execution” of private prison financing deals. Lehman Brothers rescues companies like CCA when they are bankrupt and going out of business. Recently, the firm served as lead underwriter for millions of shares of Cornell stock — to raise $50 million to settle over $40 million in debts and to finance the construction of a prison solely for immigrants.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has been contracting private prison companies to house “criminal aliens” since 1999. These “criminal aliens requirements” (CAR) prisons have secured $4.6 billion worth of contracts over the next 10 years.
These “criminal aliens” serve out their sentences, and upon release are promptly deported from the United States. And since the government pays for this, taxpayers pay for the segregated incarceration of “criminal aliens” primarily benefiting these private companies and stockholders who support them.
Sadly, business for these CAR prisons has been booming since Sept. 11.
Cornell’s CEO, Steve Logan, explained the situation this way: “I think it’s clear that since Sept. 11 there’s a heightened focus on detention (arrests have increased 66 percent since October) . . . I would say that’s positive . . . the federal government is the best business for us. It’s the most consistent business for us — and the events of Sept. 11 is increasing that level of business.”
Despite decreasing crime rates since the 1980s, companies like Lehman Brothers, CCA and Cornell work steadily with the government to fuel the profitable growth of prison populations. The War on Drugs, these new CAR prisons and the events of Sept. 11 have done much to ensure the growth of this industry, and to revive the industry in its moments of trouble.
In 1980, fewer than 475,000 people were in our prisons and jails. Today, more than 2,042,475 men, women and children fill these facilities. From 1990 to 1999, an average of 1,585 people faced incarceration each week.
Wisconsin’s own prison population has increased five-fold since Tommy Thompson became governor. Unable to adequately house its prisoners, the state has become one of the nation’s largest exporters of state prisoners.
UW-Madison is also profitably linked to the private prison industry. The university owns 2800 shares of Lehman Brothers stock, as well as a Lehman bond currently valued at $157,966. The bond is set to mature in 2004, at a 6.63 percent interest rate.
There are those of us on campus who find UW’s for-profit connection with Lehman Brothers unethical, and would like to see business relations between the two severed.
But our numbers are few. We believe this is attributable to a lack of community awareness of the powerful connections among the government, private prison corporations, investment firms, the stock market, mushrooming prison populations, exploitation and profit. Building awareness and understanding in communities is the first step to forcing a halt to these detrimental, yet highly lucrative practices.
By targeting university connections to prison profit, we can begin to exert pressure on public and private investors in the private prison industry, as well as raise community consciousness about the brutal means by which profit is reaped in the name of justice. It helps us identify a specific target against which to act, rather than feeling helpless against the “system.”
As taxpayers and customers of this university, our voices and consciences have the right to be heard.
Michelle Y. Gordon is a graduate student in Afro-American studies.
