Last year, a group of progressive activists convinced the Florida Democratic Party to stop accepting campaign donations from private, for-profit prison companies. The industry, which makes billions by keeping other human beings behind bars, immorally incentivizes cities to needlessly lock people up, many activists agree. One of America’s two largest private-prison firms, Boca Raton-based GEO Group, is a major donor to both political parties.
Most obviously, there’s the Future Democratic Majority PAC, which accepted a $25,000 contribution directly from GEO on October 23. Then on November 1, the PAC donated $5,000 to the Florida Dems. Future Democratic Majority was formed last year by a team of Democratic state senators including Sens. Randolph Bracy, Linda Steward, Darryl Rouson, and Lauren Book, who is the daughter of ultralobbyist Ron Book.
The elder Book has long worked as a lobbyist for GEO. And other PACs have contributed to the party after taking his money. One of these, the “Leadership for Florida” committee, accepted $25,000 from Book on September 14 and then donated $10,000 to the state party. Before 2018, the PAC had taken $100,000 directly from GEO.
There’s another group called Truth & Transparency, Inc., which took $40,000 from Book and $40,000 from the Future Democratic Majority PAC. Then, between October 3 and November 4, Truth & Transparency funneled a whopping $279,000 to the Florida Democratic Party in five separate donations.
Just think about this — Lauren Book, the profession child victim advocate, accepts money from an organization that allowed repeated rapes of juveniles in their private juvenile facility.
Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, a juvenile detention center in Mississippi had 1,225 prisoners. Cornell Companies operated the prison until August 12, 2010, when Cornell was bought by GEO Group, based in Florida.
In October 2010, United States Department of Justice officials informed Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour that the department had started a civil rights investigation concerning the prison, in relation to its treatment of prisoners, to assess whether constitutional standards of prisoner safety and humane treatment were being maintained.
In November 2010, plaintiffs represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU National Prison Project filed a federal class-action lawsuit against GEO (which had acquired Cornell and taken over its contracts in Mississippi and elsewhere) and MDOC, saying that the prison authorities allowed abuses and negligence to occur at WGYCF. The lawsuit stated that prison guards engaged in sexual intercourse with the prisoners, tolerated and encouraged violence, smuggled illegal drugs into the facilities, and that prison authorities denied required education and sufficient medical care. As of that month the prison had about 1,200 prisoners ages 13–22; the lawsuit said that half of the prisoners were incarcerated for non-violent offenses.By 2011 prisoners outnumbered Walnut Grove city residents by a 2:1 ratio. Two thirds of the prisoners had been convicted of non-violent offenses.
DOJ report – March 2012
The Justice Department Civil Rights Division delivered its March 20, 2012 report directly to the governor’s office and the court. It said that conditions at WGCF were “among the worst we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation,” characterizing both GEO and the MDOC’s lassitude as ignoring the safety of young inmates, allowing a denial of required health care, and hiring guards who were known to have gang affiliations. Press reports indicated the jail was run by gangs whose members included corrupt prison staff. The US Justice Department said that rapes of younger inmates was common.
The DOJ report said that the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility had “systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls”, and stated that sexual misconduct there was “among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation.”
Settlement and aftermath
Extensive testimony was heard in court related to the class action suit, including about the state’s oversight of the privately run prisons. The state’s Deputy Corrections Commissioner, Emmitt Sparkman, had testified in court hearings that the state lacked any authority to force GEO to upgrade security at the persistently short-staffed WGCF. He was questioned about the lines of authority for Mississippi corrections policy. “All we can do is make a request,” he said, adding GEO Group was “under no obligation” to provide sufficient staffing, according to the terms of its contract with the state. Judge Reeves found that state officials “repeatedly failed to monitor the contracts with GEO.”
Sparkman, who is now retired, had testified in federal court that the MDOC contracts at the time did not define requirements for standards of staffing. Judge Reeves asked him what incentives GEO had to ensure that inmates were properly supervised. Sparkman said, “It’s just standard terms of the agreement that they’re to provide a safe facility.” He continued, “Specific staffing requirements — no, sir, there’s not any in the agreement that we have right now.”
The US District Court, GEO Group, the state, and civil rights groups settled the federal class-action lawsuit with a court order dated March 26, 2012. In the court ruling, Judge Carlton W. Reeves of the Federal District Court wrote that an assessment of the WGYCF prison conditions “paints a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world,”…”a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.”
Operations at WGCF
On April 20, 2012, the State of Mississippi announced that it would end its contracts with the GEO Group, as required in the terms of the class action settlement. In contrast, GEO announced the change as its decision due to the “financially underperforming” character of the facility. The DOJ report noted that GEO Group had been investigated and strongly criticized during its management of the facility, and it failed to correct problems even after investigation started in relation to the 2010 class action suit. During the period of its contracts, GEO had donated more than $56,000 to Mississippi elected officials. Months after the settlement, reports of violence at the Walnut Grove prison continued.
One word defines this: corruption.
SMH (shaking my head). All I can do is chuckle to myself when I read this stuff. I’ve been telling you guys for years, WE ARE NOT going to get any relief from the system that is run by the people you just mentioned in the article above and their colleagues all over the state. They are ALL IN BED TOGETHER and the only thing that will change it is peaceful, non violent revolution. If enough people stormed Tallahassee and caused enough ruckus like the Parkland kids did in the Capitol building, then maybe we’ll get these people to think twice. But as you can see, BOTH parties are in bed with private prison groups, so the liberal Democrats don’t give a rats ass about anyone but themselves either. Please, please, please wake up you guys!! I’m not ranting and raving like a lunatic here because I enjoy it. I do it, because it’s the TRUTH! The govt doesn’t care about you, isn’t going to help you, and isn’t your friend, and wants you out of the way as much as possible and will do whatever they gotta do to lock you up, silence you, and make your life miserable to maintain their power and control. Again, I keep beating a dead horse with the founding fathers example, but they went to war over something as small as a tax on tea for crying out loud. That was the last straw for them. What is going to be the last straw for us??? Just something to think about. But this article shouldn’t surprise anyone.