THE PLACE OF HOMELAND SECURITY'S TACOMA TIDEFLATS PRISON IN THE BIGGER PICTURE
By Mark Jensen
February 17, 2004
Below are a few pieces relating to the Homeland Security prison that will soon be opening in the Tacoma Tideflats, to be managed by the Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) of Sarasota, Florida. None of them mention the "Northwest Detention Center," as it is to be called, but they help set it in a larger context, and even suggest ways in which it is linked to the policies that led us into war in Iraq.
All these pieces were published in recent months in Prison Privatisation Report International (PPRI), which is published bi-monthly in England at the University of Greenwich with support from George Soros's Foundation Open Society Institute. PPRI is published by the Public Services International Research Unit, which monitors privatization of public services worldwide.
The pieces below from PPRI report:
-- that the U.S. government has ambitious plans for apprehending and deporting massive numbers of illegal aliens in the next five years[1];
-- that funds amounting to $10 million for sending U.S. private prison-building experts to Iraq for six months (at $100,000 per expert) were included in the Bush administration's late summer 2003 request for $20.3 billion toward rebuilding Iraq[2];
-- that Correctional Services Corp. (CSC) was ordered last year by a Texas court to pay $35 million plus $5.1 million in punitive damages in a case involving the death of an 18-year-old who fell ill but was denied treatment while in the corporation's care[3];
-- that CSC was being investigated by the New York State Board of Elections for providing unreported help to the campaigns of politicians in New York[4];
-- that in April 2003 Southern Catholic Bishops issued a statement calling for an end to all private prisons on the grounds that they are "not consistent with the need for our prisons to respect the human dignity of each and every person"[5];
-- that in early 2003 CSC was once again fined for over-contributing to politicians, this time being required to pay $300,000 in civil fine for failure to disclose gifts it made to New York politicians who helped the company obtain millions of dollars worth of business[6];
-- that a May 2002 Harvard Law Review article touting the virtues of private prisons turned out to have been indirectly funded by conservative libertarian think tanks[7];
-- and that a new organization dedicated to fighting prison privatization called "Citizens Against Private Prisons of North America (CAPP)" was formed in July 2002[8]. more...