Ex-Con Shareholder Goes After World's Biggest Prison Corporation

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/ex-con-alex-friedmann-cca-private-prison-rape


Courtesy Alex Friedmann

Tomorrow, at the annual meeting of Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison company, shareholder activist Alex Friedmann will have exactly two minutes to speak about the unconventional resolution he introduced earlier this year to the chagrin of CCA's board.

The resolution is unconventional because it concerns not corporate profits or dividends, but the well-being of the roughly 81,000 inmates in CCA's care. Friedmann, too, is unconventional, for although he holds just $2,000 or so worth of CCA stock, he has inside knowledge of the company's practices—because he served time at one of its prisons.

Indeed, Friedmann spent six years at CCA's South Central Correctional Facility in Clifton, Tennessee—part of his 10-year sentence for attempted murder, armed robbery, and attempted aggravated robbery. Since getting out in 1999, he has been an advocate for prisoners' rights and criminal justice reform. Now he's an editor with Prison Legal News and head of Private Corrections Institute, a nonprofit watchdog.

Friedmann's controversial resolution addresses the longstanding problem of rape in US prisons and jails. If it passes, CCA's board will have to submit twice-a-year reports to stockholders detailing the board's oversight of company efforts to curb rape and sexual abuse, and include detailed statistics on any such incidents. "If CCA has to report this information they will have a greater incentive to reduce rape and sexual abuse because it will make the company look bad if they have very high numbers," he says. "And if they have to report this, the public, i.e. CCA shareholders, will be able to judge the effectiveness."