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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPrivate Prison Monopolies
http://www.nationofchange.org/private-prison-monopolies-1346418537As the late business historian Alfred Chandler, Jr. once said, the visible hand of the corporation has been of far greater importance to capitalism than has Adam Smiths so-called invisible hand of the market.
Although modern forms of capitalism are justified, and often sanitized, by rhetorical appeals to competition, competition contradictorily tends toward monopoly by eliminating weaker firms in any given market. Competition is integral to the rationalizing logic of capitalism writ large, but anathema to individual capitalist firms. The essential inconsistencies of modern capitalism, however, often serve as the fault lines from which social movements can emerge.
And what better place to begin than with the Tennessee-based private prison firm, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). CCA, in its own words, is the nations largest owner and operator of partnership correction and detention facilities and one of the largest prison operators in the United States, behind only the federal government and three states. [The company] currently operate[s] 67 facilities, including 47 company-owned facilities, with a total design capacity of approximately 92,000 beds in 20 states and the District of Columbia.
Very few corporations are more notoriously devoted to Chandlers visible hand theory than the Corrections Corporation of America. With less than one month remaining in FY 2012 CCA has thus far been awarded $373,355,264 in contracts with the federal government. Eighty-eight percent of federal contracts won by CCA this year have originated with the U.S. Department of Justice. The Department of Homeland Security accounts for the remaining 12 percent of allotments. During FY 2012 CCA competed for only 45 percent of its total federal procurement dollars. The remaining 55 percent of CCAs FY 2012 federal contractsworth close to $205 million-- were provisioned on a non-compete basis. So much for free-market competition
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Private Prison Monopolies (Original Post)
xchrom
Sep 2012
OP
annabanana
(52,791 posts)1. The "for profit" prison model is horrifying and just sucks corruption
into it's sphere like a black hole.
nanabugg
(2,198 posts)2. Ok, how do we find out who owns stock in GEO and MTC? nt
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)3. I read on here about a week ago
that the banks are investing in the private prison system among other things like ammunition. Don' t know if that is true or not.