March 23, 2022 • 60 mins
CoreCivic’s purpose promotes “change,” “compassion,” and “community.” But can for-profit prisons truly be the change they wish to see in the world? In this episode, we explore the paradoxes and pitfalls of an industry with a murky history.
Guests:
Sharon Brett - Legal Director, ACLU Kansas
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández - Gregory Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University College of Law and Author
David Safavian - General counsel, American Conservative Union Foundation
We’d love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you’re inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with today’s bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at 212-505-2305. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode. Find out more at https://callingbullshitpodcast.com/.
Background Reading:
- Learn more about Sharon’s work at the ACLU Kansas.
- Read César’s book, ‘Migrating to Prison’.
- Learn more about David Safavian and the American Conservative Union Foundation.
If you love the show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Find out more at https://callingbullshitpodcast.com/.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
For more than thirty years. We've put service at the
center of everything we do, working side by side with government.
We serve people, we serve ideals, We serve the public good.
Corrections Corporation of America has been under screeting before, Bakers
(00:26):
sparred over the treatment of inmates and privately run cour
Civic jail watching while an enmy was beaten, failed to
turn over, understaffed, putting employees at risk people even keeping
people safe. We are cour Civic. Welcome to Calling Bullshit
(01:00):
podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what companies say
they stand for and what they actually do, and what
they would need to change to practice what they preach.
I'm your host, time onto you, and I've spent over
a decade helping companies define what they stand for, their
purpose and then help them to use that purpose to
(01:21):
drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot of
organizations today, they're still a pretty wide gap between word. Indeed,
that gap has a name. We call it bullshit. But,
and this is important, we believe that bullshit is a
treatable disease. So when the BS detector lights up, we're
(01:42):
going to explore things that a company should do to
fix it. In this episode, we're going to take a
look at Course Civic, a private risen company whose purposes
quote to provide high quality, compassionate treatment to all those
(02:06):
in our care. We operate safe facilities that provide education
and effective reentry programming to help individuals make positive changes
so they can return to the community successfully. That sounds
like a worthy purpose, but Course Civic operates in an
industry that raises some profound questions about the nature of
(02:27):
for profit incarceration. Questions like what happens when your purpose
and your business model are in direct opposition to one another,
what role does the government play in helping or hindering
Course Civic from achieving its purpose? And ultimately, do we
see any gaps between word and d. With the help
(02:50):
of an A c O. You attorney, a professor of
immigration rights, and the director of the Nolan Center for Justice,
We're about to find the answers to understand the story
of Course Civic. We first need to understand the story
of private prisons in America, and to do that, we
really need to understand our country's entire history of punishment
(03:12):
and incarceration. Historically, punishment for those convicted of a crime
tended to be direct, immediate and public convicts were shackled
and put on display in the town square or sometimes
whipped or in extreme cases, publicly put to debt. Some
(03:34):
would argue this was barbaric, but one redeeming quality was
it was completely transparent. Everybody knew what the state was
doing to its citizens. But in sev seven, the Pennsylvania
Prison Society implemented the separate confinement theory of punishment. Instead
of inflicting immediate pain or shame on a criminal, the
(03:56):
separate confinement theory emphasized isolated confinement of the prisoners to
give them ample time to ponder their mistakes and make
their peace with God, also known as penance, hence the
term penitentiary. Both a philosophical and architectural punishment strategy, separate
confinement quickly became the dominant practice in states throughout America.
(04:21):
This practice moved the punishment of citizens by the government
out of public view. It now took place behind paul
walls and locked gates. In eighteen sixty, with the Civil
War now over, the thirte Amendment finally abolished slavery. However,
(04:42):
within that amendment, the six word clause except as punishment
for crime, legally permitted prisons to lease out prisoners as
involuntary servants to private industry. This convict leasing clause resulted
in a dramatic increase of prisoner primarily black men, and
normalize the practice of prison labor. The concept of a
(05:07):
federal prison was established in eighteen ninety one with the
Three Prisons Act, and by nineteen thirty Congress stepped in
once more to create the Bureau of Prisons to manage
the growing number of federal penitentiaries. In the subsequent decades,
the Bureau of Prisons nearly doubled the number of inmates
and prisons. It also modernized its practices during this time,
(05:31):
making quote rehabilitation and treatment the leading doctrines in corrections. Then,
in the nineteen sixties, as a reaction to the Vietnam
War protests, uprisings in l a and in Harlem, and
the Watts Right, President Johnson called for a quote war
on crime. The American people have had enough of rising
(05:56):
crime and lawlessness in this country. President Nixon campaigned as
the law and order President. I pledged to you, the
wave of crime is not going to be the wave
of the future. In America and then President Reagan declared
his war on drugs our society. By the time President
(06:16):
Clinton left office, prison populations had risen more than under
the previous two administrations combined. Because each administration had doubled
down on who could be the toughest on crime, they
were now more prisoners than prisons to hold them. America
(06:39):
had a prison problem, and so three entrepreneurs from Tennessee
did what entrepreneurs do. They came up with an idea
to solve this problem, and the private prison was born.
The Corrections Corporation of America was founded in nineteen eighty
(07:02):
three by then chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party Thomas Beasley,
American Correctional Association President T. Don Huddo, and real Estate
CFO Robert Krantz. At the time, forty one states had
been declared by the federal courts to be operating their
prison systems in an unconstitutional fashion. Corrections Corporation of America
(07:26):
saw an opportunity to capitalize on what they said was
a complacent government operation that was overwhelmed with demand. The
system is and has been in a downwards viral for
many many years, overcrowding and virtually every facility at the federal, state,
and local level. Corrections Corporation of America was founded in
(07:47):
early nineteen eighty three with one goal in mind, provide
an innovative alternative to the administrative and budgetary constraints of
the existing corrections and detention systems. Their two years later,
with over one point eight billion dollars in annual revenue,
and now renamed Course Civic, the company is the largest
(08:09):
private prison corporation in the United States, operating approximately eighty
correctional and detention facilities. Until recently, I had never even
heard of Course Civic. They first caught my attention on
Newsweek's list of the most Responsible Companies of one that
(08:33):
made me curious, So I did a little googling issues
ranging from inadequate safety equipment to extreme procedural hundred grievances
alleging mistreatment and excessive force, from medical issues to alleged
officers claimed the conditions inside the detention identified serious concerns
(08:55):
regarding detainee care, and I was amazed at what my
research revealed. Increasing violence and deadly violence. That's Sharon Brett,
legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas.
When these things started to come to our attention and
we are tracking them. We said, it sounds like there's
something bigger going on here. Sharon's story of the a
(09:16):
c l U and other Kansas public defenders trying to
shut down Course Civics Leavenworth facility was only one of
a long list of alarming reports. Course Civic says its
purpose is to provide high quality, compassionate treatment to all
of those in their care, to operate safe facilities, and
(09:38):
to help individuals make positive changes so they can return
to the community successfully. So is that actually true or
is it just a bunch of bullshit? Get out your
BS detectors, folks and set them on high, because this
one gets deep. More on that right after this before
(10:00):
you head to the break. We'd love to hear what
you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to
take action, Maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating. Either way,
we want to hear about it. Leave us a message
at two one two five oh five three zero five,
or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co
collective dot com. You might even be featured on an
(10:22):
upcoming episode Welcome Back to better understand the private prison
business model and to figure out if it's even possible
for cour Civic to truly live their purpose. I first
(10:43):
spoke with an attorney with deep expertise in the criminal
justice system, Sharon Brett, legal director at the a c
l U Kansas. Okay, well, let's get into it. Sharon,
thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to
the Bullshit Podcast. Thanks for having me. I want to
(11:04):
start out by just delving into your experience with the
Leavenworth Prison, which is a Coursivic facility, and I wonder
if you could just talk about why you and other
public defenders decided to take action there. We heard from
a number of people through our legal intake system at
(11:25):
the a c l U of Kansas that there were
problems at Coursivic Love and Worth that were increasing over
the last eight to ten months or so. The facility
was getting more violent, there was more drugs and contraband
inside the facility. There are fewer staff members around, and
so it seemed like the facility was really struggling just
(11:49):
to cover the basic shifts. And when we talked with
our partners at the Federal Public Defenders Office in Kansas,
they have been hearing the same thing from their clients,
and they had atually had seen the same stuff from
their clients when they had gone to visit their clients
or speak with them over the phone, and that became
alarming to us. Right, So what did you discover as
(12:11):
a result of stepping in. We talked to some former
correctional officers at Percivic and they had talked about how
they had quit because they felt unsafe at their job.
We talked to what individual who had been stabbed multiple
times by people incarcerated at the facility. Yeah, he'd been
sent to local hospitals for treatment three different times, and
(12:33):
he finally said enough is enough. And there's a point
over the summer where the locks didn't work on a
lot of the cells inside the facility. What I mean,
whether they deserve to be in there or not is
a completely different issue. But once they're in there, it
seems like you want doors that have locks that work.
And you you mentioned something when you were relaying the
(12:57):
story that stuck out to me. Are there, in general
fewer guards in private prisons than in regular government facilities?
There certainly shouldn't be. There's no separate set of standards
that apply to correctional facilities that are run for profit.
(13:18):
I see, and but were there fewer at Leavenworth than
than they're needed to be? That's what we understand. And
this location, I understand is contracted with the US Marshalls Service.
Is that correct? Yes, So the facility run by Coursivic
and Love and Worth is under a contract with the U.
S Marshall Service, which means that it holds people who
(13:41):
are facing federal charges but who have not yet been
convicted or have pled guilty to those charges. So it's
all people who are pre trial on federal charges inside
that facility. I see. Okay, And could you just for
our listeners talk a little bit about how private prison
contracts generally work. They sort of work how any other
(14:05):
business contract would work. So you have an entity that
needs a service. In this case, the service is the
caging of human beings who are facing federal charges, and
they put in a bid for that contract, and there's
regulations on the federal government side that governed the type
(14:25):
of care that needs to be provided. And obviously, because
this private company is assuming the role of the jailer
for the federal government, the private company has to comply
with things like the United States Constitution just as the U. S.
Martial Service would. Can you tell us a little more
about the executive order from President Biden which prevents Courcivic
(14:49):
from renewing the leaven Worth contract and what that might
mean for cour Civic and other private prisons. So one
of the first things that President Biden did when he
took office was issued this executive order which called on
the U. S. Martial Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
which holds the post trial that convicted population on federal charges.
(15:12):
Called on those two entities, which fall under the Department
of Justice, to end contracts with private detention companies like
cours Civic and the Geo Group and others, So once
they reach their term of expiration, the contract would be done,
that relationship would end, And Biden's executive order prevented the
Department of Justice from entering into any new contracts to
(15:36):
hold federal detainees or federal prisoners at a facility run
by a private corporation. Why did they do that. I
think it came from this recognition that private companies are
not going to place the constitutional rights of the people
that they detain over their profit votives. Yeah, that's a
(15:58):
big question. Mark for me when I read Course civics
stated mission. They say their mission is to operate safe
facilities that provide education and effective reentry programming to help
individuals make positive changes so they can return to the
community successfully, which is a great mission. It's just that
(16:19):
many of those tenants are in direct opposition to the
business model. In other words, there's so many incentives to
cut corners on safety, on mental and physical health, on nutrition,
on rehabilitation. I'm interested in how they justify that if
(16:39):
you have heard them speak to that, and I also
wonder how the government justifies that. Well. One thing I
think is unique about prison corporations is that the public
truly lacks access to what's actually happening inside the walls,
(17:00):
and the shareholders of that company lack access to what's
happening inside those facilities. So they can have such a bold,
beautiful mission statement like the one Course Civic has and
completely and utterly failed to live up to it, and
no one would have any idea. Frankly, there's a large
portion of America and a large portion of our politicians
(17:22):
who don't really care what's happening to people who are incarcerated.
That begs the question, do we know if Course Civic
is measuring any of these things? In other words, does
data exist that we don't have access to? Not that
I've seen, So I can't find data on their website
about a lot of things that I would typically look
(17:44):
for in measuring whether they're running a constitutional prison. And
maybe it's worth saying, for a moment, backing up a
little bit and talking about the work that I did
before I came to the sail you, because I think
it's a little bit relevant here, please do yes. So
for a while, I started my career as an attorney
with the Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division,
so not the part of the Department of Justice that
(18:06):
houses federal prisoners, but the part of the Department of
Justice that investigates state and local facilities for constitutional violations
within their prisons in jails. So I have years of
experience going into facilities that are under consent decrees with
the federal government because they run unconstitutional prisons and jails,
(18:27):
and there's you look at those consent decrees and there's
a whole list of things that the facility needs to
be measuring to show that they're in compliance with the
Constitution and you don't see that type of data or
that reporting on coursivis website, and it's certainly not stuff
that's talked about in their shareholder calls either, because what
they're trying to do in those calls is get people
(18:48):
to invest in their company. So if they were producing
data such as the numbers of incidents of force inside
the facility, the number of sexual assaults occurring inside a facility,
the number of complaints received by people incarcerated there, and
whether any of those had merit, they wouldn't be raking
(19:10):
in the profits. I think if they were actually reporting
on the numbers of what's up actually happening inside. Does
the Freedom of Information Act apply to cour Civic coursivis
a private entity, so there are some case law that
says that they don't have to respond to those foyer requests,
and I think this has been something that's been fought
(19:32):
in courts before, but it's a real concern. So there's
just this lack of access to what's actually happening inside
of there. And I will say even state agencies or
or state facilities that are subject to state based open
records laws, or the federal government which is subject to FOIA,
(19:53):
it still can be very, very difficult to get data.
Do for profit private prisons legally infringe on a person's
civil liberties? In other words, are they legal? I think
that they are legal entities. Right. The federal government has
the authority to contract out for services to private corporations.
(20:15):
They do that all the time for all sorts of
different things. Right. They do it in the military, they
do it in industry. I think it's how private prisons
run their business that's unconstitutional. Right, How how would you
say the government is implicated in the supply and demand
(20:36):
of this business model? In other words, have we created
a culture of mass incarceration without a doubt? And that's
not just on the private prison industries backs, right, that's
on politicians dating back decades. But mass incarceration is here.
It has been here for a long time. And I
want to take a moment to mention because I haven't
(20:58):
mentioned it yet here, but I think it's an important point.
The vast majority of people who are incarcerated across our
country are people of color, and this system disproportionately impacts
minorities and disproportionately impacts people without economic means, and so
(21:19):
there's an element of what these private corporations are doing here,
which is reinforcing white supremacy and reinforcing a deeply racist
criminal legal system in our country and allowing that to perpetuate.
Some of the statistics are eye popping. One out of
every three black boys born today can expect to go
(21:43):
to prison in his lifetime, one in every six Latino
boys compared to one of every seventeen white children. And
the fastest growing prison population is female. But I will
say that the prison population has begun to go down
overall in the country, and I think that's as we
(22:04):
recognize that prisons are not the answer to many of
the problems that plague society, and that we really need
to be reinvesting in our communities, in jobs, in education,
in housing. That's the way that you prevent crime, not
by incarcerating people. We will never incarceraate ourselves out of
(22:24):
a crime in the United States. It's not possible to
do that, and in fact, lots of studies have shown
that long periods of incarceration actually don't do a whole
heck of a lot for reducing the crime rate. What
we need to be doing is investing in communities instead.
I read also as a part of this, there are
a number of states that spend more on incarceration than
(22:45):
they do on education. And that's telling right, that's telling
you where our priorities are. So the famous saying is
that budgets are a moral document. And when you look
at a budget and you see how much money goes
towards policing and how much money goes to its corrections,
and you compare that to how much goes towards alleviating
(23:05):
food and security, towards education, towards transportation, it really shows
you where our values are. Now, I want to delve
into the realm of essentially your opinion around the morality
of these things, because I read a book called Inside
Private Prisons and American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration,
(23:26):
which was an amazing book, and in it there was
a quote from a prisoner and it reads, I realized
that someone has found a way to make money off
of my mistakes, my pain, my misfortune, and that right
there was the biggest blow to the head. It was, Oh,
(23:47):
my god, our country is so obsessed with incarcerating us
and thinks we are such bad people that they're now
making money off of us being bad, What sort of
hope for us is there? And that really, I don't know.
That just resonated with me. It's like it's it almost
adds to the punishment in a way, to know that
(24:10):
you are a commodity when you think about it. The
existence of private prison companies is an acceptance of the
idea that we can and should be profiting off the
caging of human beings, that we need to be putting
more people into the criminal justice system so that we
(24:31):
can fill the beds, and these private facilities in turn
a profit right. The facility makes money if all of
its beds are filled, and they make less money if
we as a country begin to decarceorate. So you see
the private prison lobby pushing back against what I think
has been a trend across the country of people saying
(24:53):
the war on drugs was a mistake. The tough on
crime mentality of these politicians is wrong, long and immoral,
and we need to be decarcerating. We need to be
thinking about ways to keep people out of the criminal
justice system. That doesn't help private prison companies. Private prison
companies want the machinery of incarceration to continue to churn
(25:16):
because that's what makes them money, and so there's something
inherently immoral about that at its base. One other topic
that I wanted to touch on was I've read arguments
for private prisons that that are along the lines of
the government tends to be bad at things like innovation
(25:39):
and private organizations. Private businesses are where innovation really happens.
And so Coursivic says its mission is better outcomes and
a safer society. That's a great mission. It's also an
invitation for innovation. But looking through all of the available data,
(26:01):
I didn't see very much innovation going on in Coursivic
facilities or any private prisons. Are you aware of any
innovation taking place? Not by course Civic, but I I
would push back on the idea that we should care
the most about. There's no innovative way to cage a
(26:25):
human being, right There's so there's nothing innovative about the
private prison model. I could understand innovation in other industries,
but we're talking about mass caging of human beings. When
you frame it in that light, and you're like, oh, well,
private prisons could innovate here, like you could hear how
ridiculous that sounds, right? I grant you that that sounds
(26:52):
sound ridiculous. However, just one idea. For instance, what if
governments mandated perform and space contracts with goals like recidivism reduction,
for instance, to truly incentivize the system, to try to
prevent people from winding up back in the system. Sure,
(27:13):
maybe there's a contract that could improve outcomes, but I
would posit that the private corporation would say that, well,
that's not the business I'm in, Like, that's that's not
going to help me maximize my profit. And they are
there to turn a profit. Whatever their mission statement is.
Businesses have to fulfill their mission statement in a way
(27:36):
that earns their shareholders money, and so I just don't
see them being willing to do something like that in
a meaningful way that actually changes outcomes for people. All right, Sharon,
is there anything else on this topic that you think
listeners ought to know. The one thing that I think
is worth mentioning here is that Biden's executive order only
(28:00):
applies to the Department of Justice contracts. So a trend
that we are seeing across the country right now is
that as these contracts expire and are not renewed, pursuant
to the executive order. Private corporations like Coursivic and Geo
Group are looking to other federal agencies for contracts to
try to fill those beds, such as ICE. So they
(28:24):
are looking to turn these empty facilities into immigration detention facilities,
which raises a whole host of additional concerns, one of
them being that we were able to know what was
happening inside of Courcivic in part because the people who
are incarcerated at that facility in leaven Worth were all
(28:44):
pre trial, meaning they had to be able to contact
their lawyers whenever they wanted, and their lawyers had to
be able to contact them to prepare for their defense.
So the federal public defenders were able to sound the
alarm on what was happening here because they had this
right of acts us that's inherent for pre child attention facilities.
If this turns into an ICE facility, that access goes away,
(29:08):
and that means we will have even less of an
idea of what's happening inside. And these are people who,
by many many arguments, should not be in a detention
setting at all, agreed, and that's that's a big part
of course civics business as I understand, of all the
private prison companies, Coursivic is the one that is biggest
(29:28):
into immigration detention. And we could just see it get
worse because of the ending of the contracts with BOP
and the US Martial Service and then turning those facilities
into ice facilities just so they can keep the beds
field and still have money made on that institution. And
why why do we put them in prison? What is
the rationale? That is a question for somebody who is
(29:52):
in favor of detaining people who are awaiting de quortation.
It's it's not the area of law that I have
expertise in, and I've feel deeply that that these individuals
can safely be in the community and should not be
detained in warehouses like they are right now. Sharon. We
have something on calling BS that we call the B
(30:12):
S scale. So on a scale of zero to one
hundred being the worst total BS and zero being the
best zero BS, what score would you give Course Civic.
I mean, so one fifty is not an option here?
Is that? Is that what you're saying? It max is
(30:33):
out at a hundred, But if you want to go
to a hundred fleas I think you know what I'm
gonna say here and it's and it's a hundred beautiful.
All right, Well, thanks for thank you for coming on
the show. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it's
been great to be here. The conversation with Sharon confirmed
a couple of concerns that I initially had about privatization
(30:54):
of the prison system. Course Civic lacks transparency, and the
business model is pretty troubling. Ideally, in a purpose led company,
the purpose and the business model are aligned. In other words,
the more the company succeeds at delivering on its purpose,
the better it does financially. In the case of Courcivic,
(31:17):
and to be fair other private prison companies, that doesn't
seem to be the case, and that corrodes trust. So folks,
it's time to make the call. Is Courcivic a bullshitter?
Based on what I've heard so far? I got to
(31:38):
agree with Sharon and call BS. But remember, on this
show we believe b S is a treatable condition. So
after the break, we'll hear from two more experts in
incarceration and prison reform about some ideas that might just
help Courcivic actually deliver its purpose stick with us. Before
(32:16):
the break, we concluded that there is a pretty sizable
gap between word and deed at Core Civic. So we've
called b s now. The question is what should CEO
David Heineger and his leadership team due to fix it.
The cure is positive action. So I've asked two experts
(32:36):
in the law and in prison reform to join us
to propose some concrete things that cour Civic should change
to better practice what it preaches, says our Hernandez, and
David Sefabian says a welcome to the show. Could you
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Nand this
(33:00):
I'm professor at Ohio States at University, where I hold
the Gregory Williams Charing Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. And
I'm the author of Migrating to Prison, America's obsession with
locking up immigrants and the commigration law. Great to have
you here. Thank you. And David Sefabian, welcome to Calling Bullshit.
Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Well,
(33:20):
I'm David s. Fabian. I am the director of the
Nolan Center for Justice, the American Conservative Union Foundation. I
am a former White House official or former chief of
staff for a member of Congress and someone who has
spent a year in federal prison, and I've seen all
sides of the criminal justice debate, and my passion is
fixing the system. So let's get right into some ideas
(33:40):
for cour Civic. Say sorry, I'm going to ask you
to go first. In two minutes or less, what's the
number one thing that cour Civic should do to better
live up to their mission. I think Corsivic actually has
a lot of its disposal by providing wrap around services
that support people as they're going through what are, in
(34:03):
some circumstances, very high stakes legal proceedings. And this happens
um in the context of the migrants who are being
held by Course Civic on behalf of government agencies like
the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Those are individuals who
are in the midst of legal proceedings before the nation's
(34:24):
immigration courts, and so Course off it could, for example,
focus its resources on providing case management services, providing access
to social workers who would be able to help people
navigate the stress and the anxiety that goes along with
legal proceedings in which very meaningful, life changing, life altering
(34:47):
decisions are to be made, and also ensure that its locations.
Its facilities are located in places where others can access
them and by by others. And I'm talking about low years.
So so don't locate your facilities in the middle of
uh the Arizona Desert, for example, but instead and in
(35:07):
or near large metropolitan areas where legal services organizations are present,
where courts are located. And I also think that journalists
play an important role here in maintaining oversight of these facilities,
and so locating facilities in places where you do have
larger media markets would actually provide a separate and independent
(35:29):
source of eyes and ears to what's happening inside these facilities.
That would think ultimately improve the likelihood of success for
the government agencies with which course of your contracts thank
you say sorry? Okay, David, You're next in two minutes
or less. What is the number one thing cours Civic
should be doing better to deliver on what they say
(35:51):
that they stand for. Well, let me just before we
get to that, I think I want to challenge those
are on something, or maybe it's we're going to challenge
the topic. There are too fundamentally different missions for companies
like Course Civic and the solutions that says are and
others have suggested differ based on the mission set. So,
for example, when you're talking about detention based on criminal charge, right,
(36:15):
you know private prisons in the kind of way people
most think about them. You know my understanding and I
have two or course IT facilities. My understanding is that
they do provide wrap around services for people who are
serving a sentence based on criminal conduct. And they do
that for a number of reasons. One is they're often
contractually obligated to do so, and two because providing those
(36:38):
types of services healthcare, mental health, and hygiene education, those
wrap around services reduce recidivism, which goes directly to core
Civics mission statement. Right. That is a different value proposition
than immigration detention, where the end state is going to
be one of two things. Either the folks who were
(37:00):
being detained our return to their home countries or they're
going to be admitted to the United States under under
immigration procedures. In either case, the value proposition of providing
a full suite of wrap around services is different. All right,
what's the end goal? The end goal and the immigration
detention is to figure out what we do with people
A recidivism is not the driver in that circumstances, whereas
(37:22):
recidivism is the driver for people who are serving a
criminal sentence. So I think that that's an important point.
I came back from a trip in where we saw
European prisons, and what was fascinating about the way that
the Europeans handle their incarceration system is the same people
that are designated to guard inmates are also the people
(37:44):
that are providing social services, so their social workers first,
in their guard second. That is a totally different model
than what we have primarily in the United States. And
that is the type of thing where you know, people
who were detained can build bonds, can find mentors, and
the people that are paid to guard them and to
make sure that the facilities are safe are also contributing
(38:06):
to their potential rehabilitation. So that's where I see areas
were Corsific and other companies and quite frankly, other entities
government and non government can improve. I think that's an
interesting idea as well. So it's it's my turn, and
then we'll just see where the conversation takes us. You know,
as I've been reading about this and talking to folks,
it's become clear to me that you know, there are
(38:27):
lots of issues, but I think the main issue, the
issue that causes people to mistrust in many cases, the
whole idea of a private prison is the business model.
It is misaligned with the stated mission of the company.
If you say that you're trying to create safe environments
that emphasize education and safe return to society, it's pretty
(38:49):
hard to reconcile that with the profit motive. There are
just huge incentives to cut corners everywhere in safety, in
mental and physical health care, nutrition, education, or any other
rehabilitation services that you might want to engage in. So
one of the biggest complaints that I've heard about and
(39:11):
read about is lack of access to actual data about
conditions and about outcomes inside Course Civic facilities. Because these
are private facilities, they aren't subject to things like the
Freedom of Information Act, So as an act of altruism,
almost to build trust, Course Civic needs to get radically transparent,
(39:33):
more transparent than the law requires, more transparent than shareholders demand.
So my idea is for Course Civic to proactively publish
all of the data about their outcomes, good, bad, and ugly,
anonymized appropriately of course, rather than waiting for the government
to mandate it, or or some other group to complain
(39:56):
about it. Do it because it's the right thing to do,
and because to aligned with with the corsific mission. I
can I challenge and something before we go down at
rabbit hole, I encourage it. So I think that the
way you've set that up is not merely unfair, but
really inaccurate. I don't think that you can square the
(40:17):
statement that the traditional profit margin issues of a private
sector entity go to everything from the conditions of incarceration
or the quality of the food or the quality of
the healthcare. And let me just give you a couple
of examples. I was incarcerated. The food that we received
and I was in a federal federal facility. The food
(40:37):
that we received expired food out of femal warehouses. There
is no guarantee whatsoever that because the prisoners are being
imprisoned by federal employees that the circumstances are any better.
And and you know what really troubles me is, as
a former government contracts lare I understand how performance based
(40:58):
contracting works. And it's a simple concept. It sounds complicated
and it's simple. The idea is you set forward standards,
and if the contractor hits those standards, they're rewarded, and
if contractor doesn't hit those standards, they're penalized. And after
a certain point, if they continue not hitting those standards,
the contract is cut. You can't do that with unionized employees.
You cannot do that with government institutions. It is not
(41:22):
possible to do that. I hear that, But my idea,
to be clear, is for Coursivic to proactively publish all
of the data about outcomes, which I don't think they
do unless I've got that wrong. There there's been a
lot of coverage of it being very hard to get
information out of Coursivic. In two thousand and five, for instance,
(41:44):
there was a bill called the Private Prison Information Act,
which attempted to force any private entity contracting with the
government to agree to release information about its operations under
the same requirements as the Freedom of Information Act, and
course Civic actively lobbied against it, and it was defeated.
And so it's actions like that that leave you with
(42:05):
the strong impression that they have something to hide, even
if they don't. I totally agree with you that that's
a self inflicted wound that creates a trust gap. I
am all for transparency. It's pretty hard to advocate on
criminal justice matters, and I don't advocate on private prison
issues whatsoever, but it's hard to advocate criminal justice matters
when you don't have data to rely on. But I
(42:26):
will point out one thing, and since you know, kind
of the operating theme underneath all of this is private
prisons are worse than public prisons. That there's not a
whole heck of a lot of disclosure coming out of
the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Either. That's true, but you
can get it at it ostensibly through the Freedom of
Information Act. And and the problem there is fragmentation right
(42:47):
like it's it's there is no central database. I actually
think we have a lot of information about what course
if it does specifically explicitly, I should say, because of
the fact that it is a publicly traded corporation. As
a result, it files annual reports with the Securities and
Exchange Commission, It files quarterly reports with the SEC anytime
(43:09):
it's looking to to issue a new round of bonds,
it issues statements it's trying to lure investors. It holds
a conference cause that I've tuned into, and so as
a result, I actually think we have a lot of
information about coursifics operations, and FOYA is a meaningful transparency law,
(43:31):
but it's not the only transparency law in the United States.
The States also have transparency laws, and so when it
comes to coursifics operations, on behalf of states government agencies,
sometimes state transparency laws government secrecy laws actually allow access
to more information than does the Freedom of Information Act
at the federal level. But I'd say that that of
(43:54):
the many shortcomings with coursivics operations, it's not a lack
of nation about what is happening in its decision making processes.
And I would just jump on and actually take it
one step further, and that is all across the criminal
justice system, there is a lack of independent oversight regardless
of whether the operator of the facility is a private
(44:16):
sector entity or a public sector entity. There just is
an independent oversight. Yeah, that's a great point and much needed.
I agree, David. Can I follow up on your idea
around rethinking the role of guards. It seems very logical
to me that one possible advantage of privatizing government functions
like prisons is that private companies tend to be better
(44:39):
at innovation. Like if you say your mission is better
outcomes and a safer society, that's a great mission, and
it's also an invitation for innovation. But I don't see
much of it at core Civic. So a do I
have that right and and be what other kinds of innovations?
(44:59):
My cour civic explorer, I would say that it is
difficult to drive innovation when the broader terms of custody
are governed not by the entity managing the people, but
are are governed by sets of rules and laws that
are imposed by Congress and by the Bureau of Prisons
or by the state direct corrections departments. For example. You know,
(45:22):
we know that people age out of crime, right We
know for a fact that the older you get, the
less likely that the person is going to reoffend. And
so one of the ways to leverage that, take advantage
of it, to reduce costs and reduce population is to
move people as they age beyond the walls, you know,
still holding them accountable, still putting restrictions on them, but
(45:44):
moving them outside of a traditional prison environment, whether it's
cour civic or anybody else. You cannot do that under
current law. They are charged with holding people until the
court says that they're no longer to be held, and
so those types of innovations are really stifled by what
I would argue is a flexible and desperately in need
of updating criminal justice system. I would add to that
(46:06):
that they're oftentimes there has to be a reason to innovate,
and so long as they're meeting the expectations of their
governmental partners, their governmental customers, and reaping the financial rewards
of that, then there is no reason to innovia. So
I actually think that the federal and state governments that
contract with Course Civic are actually very key actors in
(46:27):
the likelihood of Course Civic innovating. By demanding innovations, they
hold the keys to the government treasury, and as a result,
if they want to see Course Civic move in a
particular direction, then they have the power to do that. Right.
What if government's mandated performance based contracts with goals like
recidivism reduction, for instance, to truly incentivize innovation. Why isn't
(46:51):
that going on? Well, you're starting to see that. You're
starting to see that at some of the state levels.
I know they've implemented performance based contracting in Pennsylvania, for example,
with some of their private sector companies. You know, it
takes a little bit of time to put together meaningful
performance metrics to judge a company by how they're doing things.
You have all kinds of questions across the private prison
(47:13):
spectrum in terms of what is to be measured, how
it is to be measured, what are the stretch goals
versus regular goals versus penalty levels. It's not easy to
do performance based contracting, and it really requires somebody with
knowledge in the contracting space and somebody knowledge in the
criminal justice space. Now, I will tell you this, one
(47:33):
of the things that I think everybody would love to
see is performance space contracting based on recidivism numbers. And
the biggest challenge there is something very simple. Everybody defines
recidivism in a different way. So we need to be
able to compare apples to apples when it comes to corsifics,
largest contracts in of the company's revenue came from the
(47:54):
Immigration and Customs and forth mean agency. So we just
shy thirty of the company's entire revenue in each of
those years coming from a single government agency. So let
me talk a little bit about that single government agency
ICE and the standards that exist. So ICE actually has,
going back more than a decade now, issued what it
calls performance based National Detention Standards. This is a series
(48:19):
of rather long and detailed expectations that it imposes on
all of the government contractors, including Course Civic. And yet
the agency has never been willing to make these binding.
That is, it has never actually required these companies, including
cours Civic, to meet those detention standards and certainly not
imposing consequences for failing to meet those detention standards. Is
(48:43):
the agency is just unwilling to a contract. That's been
true under President Obama, that's been true under President Trump,
and you know, we'll see how things shake out under
President Biden. But I'm not holding my breath because the
politics have not changed sufficiently to turn the agency into
one that is willing to say two companies like Corcivic,
you actually have to meet these attention standards, and if
(49:04):
you don't, there are the severest consequences are coming for you,
and by that we mean we're cutting you off. Shocker
that a federal agency can't figure out how to do
good performance based contracting. I think though, that well two things.
One is, it's difficult to criticize a company for not
going beyond the terms of the contract if that's not
the measure by which the agency intends to hold them accountable. Right.
(49:27):
But I think the second point is, again, immigration is
a different set of metrics and performance for private prison companies.
The goal of incarceration for people who have been convicted
of the crime, one of the goals is rehabilitation. That's
arguably the most important after segregation and maintaining public safety.
(49:49):
That is a different matter than the goal of detention.
For immigration, which is purely a segregation matter. Is taking
people who have been identify fight as being here illegally
and holding them until they can determine what they do
with them. And re entry is is a different animal
altogether when you're talking about immigration detention versus criminal justice detention. Yeah,
(50:10):
I think when when we're talking about it, almost a
third right cent of revenue coming from the Immigration Customs
Enforcement Agency. Even if I'd say the position that David's
articulating that this is a different form of incarceration, it's
a it's a rather significant form of incarceration for for
this particular company. For Cours civic, and so I would
hope that they would be thinking about the complexities um
(50:33):
and the distinctions between this and other forms. I think
we all in the criminal justice community kind of get
caught up in the vernacular all the terms, you know,
justice impacted or ex offender or re entry. Here's what
we're really talking about. At the end of the day,
when that person walks out of prison, are they likely
to reoffend and revictimize people in their community. That is
(50:55):
a totally different matter than immigration, where the outcome at
the end of the incarceration is likely deportation. Yeah, I
would take issue with with that point, but I'm not
sure that it's actually relevant to what coursifc does, and
of Coursivic does what it's asked to do by the
government agencies that it contracts for, and so I would
(51:16):
agree with your earlier point, David, that it's a little
hard to criticize the company for not doing what it's
not being asked to do. I think here the criticism
is rightfully placed with those government agencies and with the
elect officials who ultimately make the policies, the laws and
the policies that direct the operations of those government agencies,
And so I'd prefer to focus on my energy on
(51:36):
thinking about to what extent is Congress as the bureau prisons, immigration, cousins,
Enforcement Agency, et cetera. You know what extent are they
poorly incentivizing Courcivic to live up to its desires to aspirations,
at least as articulated earlier by Thai referencing it's it's
it's missions. I want to build on the direction that
(51:57):
this this conversation has has taken in this movie of us,
maybe slightly away from course Civic, But I'll start with
just a question. Do we think that private prisons and
the privatization of the prison system is a result of,
or related to the US culture of of mass incarceration.
The reason I bring this up is because back in
(52:19):
nineteen sixty one when Dwight Eisenhower, when he was leaving office,
his final warning to the American people was about the
rising power of what he called the military industrial complex.
And today we see the U S engaged in what
have become called forever Wars. Do either of you worry
that we're seeing the rise of the prison industrial complex.
(52:41):
Government and the private sector wrapped together around the most
vulnerable members of society essentially feeding off their misery. I
think that that might have been a plausible narrative going
back into the early two thousand's, particularly the aspect related
to the private sector company. There is I won't use
(53:02):
the term collusion, but there's certainly alignment between incarceration and
economic development. It's perceived by local officials. Have you ever
tried to close a federal prison or even a state prison.
You get protesters all over the place because it's loss
of jobs. So it's not a prison industrial complex per se,
but certainly some of the actors in the criminal justice
(53:23):
system have a bias towards maintaining prisons that have to
be filled. And most of those actors are people who
are feeding at the trough, whether they are corrections officers,
prison administrators, vendors selling food to the commissaries, all the
way up and down the chain to prosecutors and law enforcement.
I would echo that m concerning I actually say at
(53:43):
the state level, this is actually a much more pressing
issue because there you're dealing would local elected officials, often
state legislators and county commissioners, sheriffs, who really quite clearly
is see prisons as economic development opportunity these or economic
development engines, and it's not at all abstract because those
(54:03):
are the people who live in those communities. And often
these are very rural communities, they're isolated communities. These are
places where well paying jobs, decent paying jobs, are hard
to come by. And so the thoughts that your two
hundred person private prison facility is about to close down
means that two hundred of your constituents are about to
go out of a job. And that's a concern for
(54:26):
any elected official who's thinking about re election. It's also
just a concern for a neighbor right, who's thinking about
livelihoods of the people who live down the street from them, right,
who make that community. Whatever, whatever the community is, they
are that community. Okay, this has been a great conversation, um,
but there are a couple of things that I need
to do to wrap us up. I want to each
(54:49):
of you to give Course Civic a B S score,
So on a scale of zero to one hundred being
the worst total b S and zero roal being the
best zero bs. What would you give Course Civic based
on how they are are delivering on their mission? Say sorry,
(55:09):
why don't you go first, Yeah, I think i'd say
they're they're sevent bs. We'll take it. And David, you know,
I don't think anybody in this space is perfect. I
think there's always room for improvement. But I don't think
the core Civic is the company that has been demonized,
or I don't think the company reflects some of the
(55:30):
allegations out there. I'd give him a fifteen. That's great.
Thank you so much for being here today, both of you.
This was this was a lot of fun. I really
appreciate you taking the times. So, folks, it's time to
(55:52):
give Course Civic our official BS score. As you've heard today,
this one is complicated, so actually a little hard to
make this call because our experts were so divided. Sharon
gave them a hundred, says are seventy and David gave
them fifteen. Because their business model doesn't align with their purpose,
(56:14):
and because they lack transparency, I've decided to give Course
Civic a sixty eight. To weigh in with your own
score or to leave us a message, visit our website
Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com. We'll track Course Civic's behavior
over time to see if they can bring that score
down you'll also be able to see where they rank
(56:36):
on BS compared to the other companies we feature on
this show. And if you're running a purpose led business
or you're thinking of beginning the journey of transformation to
become one, here are three things you should take away
from this episode. One, your business model and your purpose
(56:57):
need to align. That's one of the first principles of
being purpose led. It's why being purpose led is different
than engaging in corporate social responsibility. That old fashioned model
held that companies could make their money anyway they wanted
and then spend some of their profits on good causes
to solve their souls. In course civics case, they make
(57:21):
money on the number of prisoners in their facilities, not
on successfully rehabilitating them and reintroducing them to society. That's
a problem. Two. Action is always the cure. Today we
discussed actions for cour civic like actively engaging with the
(57:42):
government to create contracts that give them financial incentives to
achieve their purpose of successfully reintroducing people to society and
reducing recidivism, and ideas like hiring social workers as prison guards,
or ideas like becoming proactively transparent with their data and
(58:02):
holding themselves accountable for hitting the key metrics outlined in
their purpose, the actions for your company will undoubtedly be different.
The point is doing is believing and three hope is
not a strategy, and neither is hiding. Unlike many of
(58:23):
the organizations we've covered this season, cour Civic isn't a
household name, but that definitely does not mean that they
won't eventually be held accountable. Reform in this industry is inevitable.
So no matter what industry you're in, if you're hoping
to exist behind the scenes and under the radar and
(58:44):
get away with being accountable only to your shareholders and
not to your broader stakeholders, it's time for a new strategy.
And David Heineger, CEO of Course Civic, if you ever
want to come on this show to talk about any
of of topics and ideas we've discussed today, you have
an open invitation. I'd like to thank everyone who joined
(59:14):
us today, Sharon Brett, David Sefabian, and say Sar Hernandez.
You can find all of them on social media. We
have all of their handles on our website, Calling Bullshit
podcast dot com, and check out Saysar's books migrating to prison,
America's obsession with locking up immigrants, and the krimmigration law.
(59:38):
If you have ideas for companies or organizations we should
consider for future episodes, you can submit them on the
site too, And if we unlock something important for you today,
Subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
(01:00:00):
And thanks to our production team, Hannah Beal, Amanda Ginsburg,
Andy Kim d s Moss, Hailey Pascalites, MICHAELA. Reid, Parker Silzer,
Basil Soaper and me John Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created
by co Collective and is hosted by Me Time onto you.
(01:00:21):
Thanks for listening before you go, we'd love to hear
what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired
to take action, maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating.
Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us
a message at two one two five oh five zero five,
(01:00:44):
or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co
collective dot com. You might even be featured on an
upcoming episode.
For more than thirty years. We've put service at the
center of everything we do, working side by side with government.
We serve people, we serve ideals, We serve the public good.
Corrections Corporation of America has been under screeting before, Bakers
(00:26):
sparred over the treatment of inmates and privately run cour
Civic jail watching while an enmy was beaten, failed to
turn over, understaffed, putting employees at risk people even keeping
people safe. We are cour Civic. Welcome to Calling Bullshit
(01:00):
podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what companies say
they stand for and what they actually do, and what
they would need to change to practice what they preach.
I'm your host, time onto you, and I've spent over
a decade helping companies define what they stand for, their
purpose and then help them to use that purpose to
(01:21):
drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot of
organizations today, they're still a pretty wide gap between word. Indeed,
that gap has a name. We call it bullshit. But,
and this is important, we believe that bullshit is a
treatable disease. So when the BS detector lights up, we're
(01:42):
going to explore things that a company should do to
fix it. In this episode, we're going to take a
look at Course Civic, a private risen company whose purposes
quote to provide high quality, compassionate treatment to all those
(02:06):
in our care. We operate safe facilities that provide education
and effective reentry programming to help individuals make positive changes
so they can return to the community successfully. That sounds
like a worthy purpose, but Course Civic operates in an
industry that raises some profound questions about the nature of
(02:27):
for profit incarceration. Questions like what happens when your purpose
and your business model are in direct opposition to one another,
what role does the government play in helping or hindering
Course Civic from achieving its purpose? And ultimately, do we
see any gaps between word and d. With the help
(02:50):
of an A c O. You attorney, a professor of
immigration rights, and the director of the Nolan Center for Justice,
We're about to find the answers to understand the story
of Course Civic. We first need to understand the story
of private prisons in America, and to do that, we
really need to understand our country's entire history of punishment
(03:12):
and incarceration. Historically, punishment for those convicted of a crime
tended to be direct, immediate and public convicts were shackled
and put on display in the town square or sometimes
whipped or in extreme cases, publicly put to debt. Some
(03:34):
would argue this was barbaric, but one redeeming quality was
it was completely transparent. Everybody knew what the state was
doing to its citizens. But in sev seven, the Pennsylvania
Prison Society implemented the separate confinement theory of punishment. Instead
of inflicting immediate pain or shame on a criminal, the
(03:56):
separate confinement theory emphasized isolated confinement of the prisoners to
give them ample time to ponder their mistakes and make
their peace with God, also known as penance, hence the
term penitentiary. Both a philosophical and architectural punishment strategy, separate
confinement quickly became the dominant practice in states throughout America.
(04:21):
This practice moved the punishment of citizens by the government
out of public view. It now took place behind paul
walls and locked gates. In eighteen sixty, with the Civil
War now over, the thirte Amendment finally abolished slavery. However,
(04:42):
within that amendment, the six word clause except as punishment
for crime, legally permitted prisons to lease out prisoners as
involuntary servants to private industry. This convict leasing clause resulted
in a dramatic increase of prisoner primarily black men, and
normalize the practice of prison labor. The concept of a
(05:07):
federal prison was established in eighteen ninety one with the
Three Prisons Act, and by nineteen thirty Congress stepped in
once more to create the Bureau of Prisons to manage
the growing number of federal penitentiaries. In the subsequent decades,
the Bureau of Prisons nearly doubled the number of inmates
and prisons. It also modernized its practices during this time,
(05:31):
making quote rehabilitation and treatment the leading doctrines in corrections. Then,
in the nineteen sixties, as a reaction to the Vietnam
War protests, uprisings in l a and in Harlem, and
the Watts Right, President Johnson called for a quote war
on crime. The American people have had enough of rising
(05:56):
crime and lawlessness in this country. President Nixon campaigned as
the law and order President. I pledged to you, the
wave of crime is not going to be the wave
of the future. In America and then President Reagan declared
his war on drugs our society. By the time President
(06:16):
Clinton left office, prison populations had risen more than under
the previous two administrations combined. Because each administration had doubled
down on who could be the toughest on crime, they
were now more prisoners than prisons to hold them. America
(06:39):
had a prison problem, and so three entrepreneurs from Tennessee
did what entrepreneurs do. They came up with an idea
to solve this problem, and the private prison was born.
The Corrections Corporation of America was founded in nineteen eighty
(07:02):
three by then chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party Thomas Beasley,
American Correctional Association President T. Don Huddo, and real Estate
CFO Robert Krantz. At the time, forty one states had
been declared by the federal courts to be operating their
prison systems in an unconstitutional fashion. Corrections Corporation of America
(07:26):
saw an opportunity to capitalize on what they said was
a complacent government operation that was overwhelmed with demand. The
system is and has been in a downwards viral for
many many years, overcrowding and virtually every facility at the federal, state,
and local level. Corrections Corporation of America was founded in
(07:47):
early nineteen eighty three with one goal in mind, provide
an innovative alternative to the administrative and budgetary constraints of
the existing corrections and detention systems. Their two years later,
with over one point eight billion dollars in annual revenue,
and now renamed Course Civic, the company is the largest
(08:09):
private prison corporation in the United States, operating approximately eighty
correctional and detention facilities. Until recently, I had never even
heard of Course Civic. They first caught my attention on
Newsweek's list of the most Responsible Companies of one that
(08:33):
made me curious, So I did a little googling issues
ranging from inadequate safety equipment to extreme procedural hundred grievances
alleging mistreatment and excessive force, from medical issues to alleged
officers claimed the conditions inside the detention identified serious concerns
(08:55):
regarding detainee care, and I was amazed at what my
research revealed. Increasing violence and deadly violence. That's Sharon Brett,
legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas.
When these things started to come to our attention and
we are tracking them. We said, it sounds like there's
something bigger going on here. Sharon's story of the a
(09:16):
c l U and other Kansas public defenders trying to
shut down Course Civics Leavenworth facility was only one of
a long list of alarming reports. Course Civic says its
purpose is to provide high quality, compassionate treatment to all
of those in their care, to operate safe facilities, and
(09:38):
to help individuals make positive changes so they can return
to the community successfully. So is that actually true or
is it just a bunch of bullshit? Get out your
BS detectors, folks and set them on high, because this
one gets deep. More on that right after this before
(10:00):
you head to the break. We'd love to hear what
you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to
take action, Maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating. Either way,
we want to hear about it. Leave us a message
at two one two five oh five three zero five,
or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co
collective dot com. You might even be featured on an
(10:22):
upcoming episode Welcome Back to better understand the private prison
business model and to figure out if it's even possible
for cour Civic to truly live their purpose. I first
(10:43):
spoke with an attorney with deep expertise in the criminal
justice system, Sharon Brett, legal director at the a c
l U Kansas. Okay, well, let's get into it. Sharon,
thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to
the Bullshit Podcast. Thanks for having me. I want to
(11:04):
start out by just delving into your experience with the
Leavenworth Prison, which is a Coursivic facility, and I wonder
if you could just talk about why you and other
public defenders decided to take action there. We heard from
a number of people through our legal intake system at
(11:25):
the a c l U of Kansas that there were
problems at Coursivic Love and Worth that were increasing over
the last eight to ten months or so. The facility
was getting more violent, there was more drugs and contraband
inside the facility. There are fewer staff members around, and
so it seemed like the facility was really struggling just
(11:49):
to cover the basic shifts. And when we talked with
our partners at the Federal Public Defenders Office in Kansas,
they have been hearing the same thing from their clients,
and they had atually had seen the same stuff from
their clients when they had gone to visit their clients
or speak with them over the phone, and that became
alarming to us. Right, So what did you discover as
(12:11):
a result of stepping in. We talked to some former
correctional officers at Percivic and they had talked about how
they had quit because they felt unsafe at their job.
We talked to what individual who had been stabbed multiple
times by people incarcerated at the facility. Yeah, he'd been
sent to local hospitals for treatment three different times, and
(12:33):
he finally said enough is enough. And there's a point
over the summer where the locks didn't work on a
lot of the cells inside the facility. What I mean,
whether they deserve to be in there or not is
a completely different issue. But once they're in there, it
seems like you want doors that have locks that work.
And you you mentioned something when you were relaying the
(12:57):
story that stuck out to me. Are there, in general
fewer guards in private prisons than in regular government facilities?
There certainly shouldn't be. There's no separate set of standards
that apply to correctional facilities that are run for profit.
(13:18):
I see, and but were there fewer at Leavenworth than
than they're needed to be? That's what we understand. And
this location, I understand is contracted with the US Marshalls Service.
Is that correct? Yes, So the facility run by Coursivic
and Love and Worth is under a contract with the U.
S Marshall Service, which means that it holds people who
(13:41):
are facing federal charges but who have not yet been
convicted or have pled guilty to those charges. So it's
all people who are pre trial on federal charges inside
that facility. I see. Okay, And could you just for
our listeners talk a little bit about how private prison
contracts generally work. They sort of work how any other
(14:05):
business contract would work. So you have an entity that
needs a service. In this case, the service is the
caging of human beings who are facing federal charges, and
they put in a bid for that contract, and there's
regulations on the federal government side that governed the type
(14:25):
of care that needs to be provided. And obviously, because
this private company is assuming the role of the jailer
for the federal government, the private company has to comply
with things like the United States Constitution just as the U. S.
Martial Service would. Can you tell us a little more
about the executive order from President Biden which prevents Courcivic
(14:49):
from renewing the leaven Worth contract and what that might
mean for cour Civic and other private prisons. So one
of the first things that President Biden did when he
took office was issued this executive order which called on
the U. S. Martial Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
which holds the post trial that convicted population on federal charges.
(15:12):
Called on those two entities, which fall under the Department
of Justice, to end contracts with private detention companies like
cours Civic and the Geo Group and others, So once
they reach their term of expiration, the contract would be done,
that relationship would end, And Biden's executive order prevented the
Department of Justice from entering into any new contracts to
(15:36):
hold federal detainees or federal prisoners at a facility run
by a private corporation. Why did they do that. I
think it came from this recognition that private companies are
not going to place the constitutional rights of the people
that they detain over their profit votives. Yeah, that's a
(15:58):
big question. Mark for me when I read Course civics
stated mission. They say their mission is to operate safe
facilities that provide education and effective reentry programming to help
individuals make positive changes so they can return to the
community successfully, which is a great mission. It's just that
(16:19):
many of those tenants are in direct opposition to the
business model. In other words, there's so many incentives to
cut corners on safety, on mental and physical health, on nutrition,
on rehabilitation. I'm interested in how they justify that if
(16:39):
you have heard them speak to that, and I also
wonder how the government justifies that. Well. One thing I
think is unique about prison corporations is that the public
truly lacks access to what's actually happening inside the walls,
(17:00):
and the shareholders of that company lack access to what's
happening inside those facilities. So they can have such a bold,
beautiful mission statement like the one Course Civic has and
completely and utterly failed to live up to it, and
no one would have any idea. Frankly, there's a large
portion of America and a large portion of our politicians
(17:22):
who don't really care what's happening to people who are incarcerated.
That begs the question, do we know if Course Civic
is measuring any of these things? In other words, does
data exist that we don't have access to? Not that
I've seen, So I can't find data on their website
about a lot of things that I would typically look
(17:44):
for in measuring whether they're running a constitutional prison. And
maybe it's worth saying, for a moment, backing up a
little bit and talking about the work that I did
before I came to the sail you, because I think
it's a little bit relevant here, please do yes. So
for a while, I started my career as an attorney
with the Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division,
so not the part of the Department of Justice that
(18:06):
houses federal prisoners, but the part of the Department of
Justice that investigates state and local facilities for constitutional violations
within their prisons in jails. So I have years of
experience going into facilities that are under consent decrees with
the federal government because they run unconstitutional prisons and jails,
(18:27):
and there's you look at those consent decrees and there's
a whole list of things that the facility needs to
be measuring to show that they're in compliance with the
Constitution and you don't see that type of data or
that reporting on coursivis website, and it's certainly not stuff
that's talked about in their shareholder calls either, because what
they're trying to do in those calls is get people
(18:48):
to invest in their company. So if they were producing
data such as the numbers of incidents of force inside
the facility, the number of sexual assaults occurring inside a facility,
the number of complaints received by people incarcerated there, and
whether any of those had merit, they wouldn't be raking
(19:10):
in the profits. I think if they were actually reporting
on the numbers of what's up actually happening inside. Does
the Freedom of Information Act apply to cour Civic coursivis
a private entity, so there are some case law that
says that they don't have to respond to those foyer requests,
and I think this has been something that's been fought
(19:32):
in courts before, but it's a real concern. So there's
just this lack of access to what's actually happening inside
of there. And I will say even state agencies or
or state facilities that are subject to state based open
records laws, or the federal government which is subject to FOIA,
(19:53):
it still can be very, very difficult to get data.
Do for profit private prisons legally infringe on a person's
civil liberties? In other words, are they legal? I think
that they are legal entities. Right. The federal government has
the authority to contract out for services to private corporations.
(20:15):
They do that all the time for all sorts of
different things. Right. They do it in the military, they
do it in industry. I think it's how private prisons
run their business that's unconstitutional. Right, How how would you
say the government is implicated in the supply and demand
(20:36):
of this business model? In other words, have we created
a culture of mass incarceration without a doubt? And that's
not just on the private prison industries backs, right, that's
on politicians dating back decades. But mass incarceration is here.
It has been here for a long time. And I
want to take a moment to mention because I haven't
(20:58):
mentioned it yet here, but I think it's an important point.
The vast majority of people who are incarcerated across our
country are people of color, and this system disproportionately impacts
minorities and disproportionately impacts people without economic means, and so
(21:19):
there's an element of what these private corporations are doing here,
which is reinforcing white supremacy and reinforcing a deeply racist
criminal legal system in our country and allowing that to perpetuate.
Some of the statistics are eye popping. One out of
every three black boys born today can expect to go
(21:43):
to prison in his lifetime, one in every six Latino
boys compared to one of every seventeen white children. And
the fastest growing prison population is female. But I will
say that the prison population has begun to go down
overall in the country, and I think that's as we
(22:04):
recognize that prisons are not the answer to many of
the problems that plague society, and that we really need
to be reinvesting in our communities, in jobs, in education,
in housing. That's the way that you prevent crime, not
by incarcerating people. We will never incarceraate ourselves out of
(22:24):
a crime in the United States. It's not possible to
do that, and in fact, lots of studies have shown
that long periods of incarceration actually don't do a whole
heck of a lot for reducing the crime rate. What
we need to be doing is investing in communities instead.
I read also as a part of this, there are
a number of states that spend more on incarceration than
(22:45):
they do on education. And that's telling right, that's telling
you where our priorities are. So the famous saying is
that budgets are a moral document. And when you look
at a budget and you see how much money goes
towards policing and how much money goes to its corrections,
and you compare that to how much goes towards alleviating
(23:05):
food and security, towards education, towards transportation, it really shows
you where our values are. Now, I want to delve
into the realm of essentially your opinion around the morality
of these things, because I read a book called Inside
Private Prisons and American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration,
(23:26):
which was an amazing book, and in it there was
a quote from a prisoner and it reads, I realized
that someone has found a way to make money off
of my mistakes, my pain, my misfortune, and that right
there was the biggest blow to the head. It was, Oh,
(23:47):
my god, our country is so obsessed with incarcerating us
and thinks we are such bad people that they're now
making money off of us being bad, What sort of
hope for us is there? And that really, I don't know.
That just resonated with me. It's like it's it almost
adds to the punishment in a way, to know that
(24:10):
you are a commodity when you think about it. The
existence of private prison companies is an acceptance of the
idea that we can and should be profiting off the
caging of human beings, that we need to be putting
more people into the criminal justice system so that we
(24:31):
can fill the beds, and these private facilities in turn
a profit right. The facility makes money if all of
its beds are filled, and they make less money if
we as a country begin to decarceorate. So you see
the private prison lobby pushing back against what I think
has been a trend across the country of people saying
(24:53):
the war on drugs was a mistake. The tough on
crime mentality of these politicians is wrong, long and immoral,
and we need to be decarcerating. We need to be
thinking about ways to keep people out of the criminal
justice system. That doesn't help private prison companies. Private prison
companies want the machinery of incarceration to continue to churn
(25:16):
because that's what makes them money, and so there's something
inherently immoral about that at its base. One other topic
that I wanted to touch on was I've read arguments
for private prisons that that are along the lines of
the government tends to be bad at things like innovation
(25:39):
and private organizations. Private businesses are where innovation really happens.
And so Coursivic says its mission is better outcomes and
a safer society. That's a great mission. It's also an
invitation for innovation. But looking through all of the available data,
(26:01):
I didn't see very much innovation going on in Coursivic
facilities or any private prisons. Are you aware of any
innovation taking place? Not by course Civic, but I I
would push back on the idea that we should care
the most about. There's no innovative way to cage a
(26:25):
human being, right There's so there's nothing innovative about the
private prison model. I could understand innovation in other industries,
but we're talking about mass caging of human beings. When
you frame it in that light, and you're like, oh, well,
private prisons could innovate here, like you could hear how
ridiculous that sounds, right? I grant you that that sounds
(26:52):
sound ridiculous. However, just one idea. For instance, what if
governments mandated perform and space contracts with goals like recidivism reduction,
for instance, to truly incentivize the system, to try to
prevent people from winding up back in the system. Sure,
(27:13):
maybe there's a contract that could improve outcomes, but I
would posit that the private corporation would say that, well,
that's not the business I'm in, Like, that's that's not
going to help me maximize my profit. And they are
there to turn a profit. Whatever their mission statement is.
Businesses have to fulfill their mission statement in a way
(27:36):
that earns their shareholders money, and so I just don't
see them being willing to do something like that in
a meaningful way that actually changes outcomes for people. All right, Sharon,
is there anything else on this topic that you think
listeners ought to know. The one thing that I think
is worth mentioning here is that Biden's executive order only
(28:00):
applies to the Department of Justice contracts. So a trend
that we are seeing across the country right now is
that as these contracts expire and are not renewed, pursuant
to the executive order. Private corporations like Coursivic and Geo
Group are looking to other federal agencies for contracts to
try to fill those beds, such as ICE. So they
(28:24):
are looking to turn these empty facilities into immigration detention facilities,
which raises a whole host of additional concerns, one of
them being that we were able to know what was
happening inside of Courcivic in part because the people who
are incarcerated at that facility in leaven Worth were all
(28:44):
pre trial, meaning they had to be able to contact
their lawyers whenever they wanted, and their lawyers had to
be able to contact them to prepare for their defense.
So the federal public defenders were able to sound the
alarm on what was happening here because they had this
right of acts us that's inherent for pre child attention facilities.
If this turns into an ICE facility, that access goes away,
(29:08):
and that means we will have even less of an
idea of what's happening inside. And these are people who,
by many many arguments, should not be in a detention
setting at all, agreed, and that's that's a big part
of course civics business as I understand, of all the
private prison companies, Coursivic is the one that is biggest
(29:28):
into immigration detention. And we could just see it get
worse because of the ending of the contracts with BOP
and the US Martial Service and then turning those facilities
into ice facilities just so they can keep the beds
field and still have money made on that institution. And
why why do we put them in prison? What is
the rationale? That is a question for somebody who is
(29:52):
in favor of detaining people who are awaiting de quortation.
It's it's not the area of law that I have
expertise in, and I've feel deeply that that these individuals
can safely be in the community and should not be
detained in warehouses like they are right now. Sharon. We
have something on calling BS that we call the B
(30:12):
S scale. So on a scale of zero to one
hundred being the worst total BS and zero being the
best zero BS, what score would you give Course Civic.
I mean, so one fifty is not an option here?
Is that? Is that what you're saying? It max is
(30:33):
out at a hundred, But if you want to go
to a hundred fleas I think you know what I'm
gonna say here and it's and it's a hundred beautiful.
All right, Well, thanks for thank you for coming on
the show. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it's
been great to be here. The conversation with Sharon confirmed
a couple of concerns that I initially had about privatization
(30:54):
of the prison system. Course Civic lacks transparency, and the
business model is pretty troubling. Ideally, in a purpose led company,
the purpose and the business model are aligned. In other words,
the more the company succeeds at delivering on its purpose,
the better it does financially. In the case of Courcivic,
(31:17):
and to be fair other private prison companies, that doesn't
seem to be the case, and that corrodes trust. So folks,
it's time to make the call. Is Courcivic a bullshitter?
Based on what I've heard so far? I got to
(31:38):
agree with Sharon and call BS. But remember, on this
show we believe b S is a treatable condition. So
after the break, we'll hear from two more experts in
incarceration and prison reform about some ideas that might just
help Courcivic actually deliver its purpose stick with us. Before
(32:16):
the break, we concluded that there is a pretty sizable
gap between word and deed at Core Civic. So we've
called b s now. The question is what should CEO
David Heineger and his leadership team due to fix it.
The cure is positive action. So I've asked two experts
(32:36):
in the law and in prison reform to join us
to propose some concrete things that cour Civic should change
to better practice what it preaches, says our Hernandez, and
David Sefabian says a welcome to the show. Could you
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Nand this
(33:00):
I'm professor at Ohio States at University, where I hold
the Gregory Williams Charing Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. And
I'm the author of Migrating to Prison, America's obsession with
locking up immigrants and the commigration law. Great to have
you here. Thank you. And David Sefabian, welcome to Calling Bullshit.
Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Well,
(33:20):
I'm David s. Fabian. I am the director of the
Nolan Center for Justice, the American Conservative Union Foundation. I
am a former White House official or former chief of
staff for a member of Congress and someone who has
spent a year in federal prison, and I've seen all
sides of the criminal justice debate, and my passion is
fixing the system. So let's get right into some ideas
(33:40):
for cour Civic. Say sorry, I'm going to ask you
to go first. In two minutes or less, what's the
number one thing that cour Civic should do to better
live up to their mission. I think Corsivic actually has
a lot of its disposal by providing wrap around services
that support people as they're going through what are, in
(34:03):
some circumstances, very high stakes legal proceedings. And this happens
um in the context of the migrants who are being
held by Course Civic on behalf of government agencies like
the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Those are individuals who
are in the midst of legal proceedings before the nation's
(34:24):
immigration courts, and so Course off it could, for example,
focus its resources on providing case management services, providing access
to social workers who would be able to help people
navigate the stress and the anxiety that goes along with
legal proceedings in which very meaningful, life changing, life altering
(34:47):
decisions are to be made, and also ensure that its locations.
Its facilities are located in places where others can access
them and by by others. And I'm talking about low years.
So so don't locate your facilities in the middle of
uh the Arizona Desert, for example, but instead and in
(35:07):
or near large metropolitan areas where legal services organizations are present,
where courts are located. And I also think that journalists
play an important role here in maintaining oversight of these facilities,
and so locating facilities in places where you do have
larger media markets would actually provide a separate and independent
(35:29):
source of eyes and ears to what's happening inside these facilities.
That would think ultimately improve the likelihood of success for
the government agencies with which course of your contracts thank
you say sorry? Okay, David, You're next in two minutes
or less. What is the number one thing cours Civic
should be doing better to deliver on what they say
(35:51):
that they stand for. Well, let me just before we
get to that, I think I want to challenge those
are on something, or maybe it's we're going to challenge
the topic. There are too fundamentally different missions for companies
like Course Civic and the solutions that says are and
others have suggested differ based on the mission set. So,
for example, when you're talking about detention based on criminal charge, right,
(36:15):
you know private prisons in the kind of way people
most think about them. You know my understanding and I
have two or course IT facilities. My understanding is that
they do provide wrap around services for people who are
serving a sentence based on criminal conduct. And they do
that for a number of reasons. One is they're often
contractually obligated to do so, and two because providing those
(36:38):
types of services healthcare, mental health, and hygiene education, those
wrap around services reduce recidivism, which goes directly to core
Civics mission statement. Right. That is a different value proposition
than immigration detention, where the end state is going to
be one of two things. Either the folks who were
(37:00):
being detained our return to their home countries or they're
going to be admitted to the United States under under
immigration procedures. In either case, the value proposition of providing
a full suite of wrap around services is different. All right,
what's the end goal? The end goal and the immigration
detention is to figure out what we do with people
A recidivism is not the driver in that circumstances, whereas
(37:22):
recidivism is the driver for people who are serving a
criminal sentence. So I think that that's an important point.
I came back from a trip in where we saw
European prisons, and what was fascinating about the way that
the Europeans handle their incarceration system is the same people
that are designated to guard inmates are also the people
(37:44):
that are providing social services, so their social workers first,
in their guard second. That is a totally different model
than what we have primarily in the United States. And
that is the type of thing where you know, people
who were detained can build bonds, can find mentors, and
the people that are paid to guard them and to
make sure that the facilities are safe are also contributing
(38:06):
to their potential rehabilitation. So that's where I see areas
were Corsific and other companies and quite frankly, other entities
government and non government can improve. I think that's an
interesting idea as well. So it's it's my turn, and
then we'll just see where the conversation takes us. You know,
as I've been reading about this and talking to folks,
it's become clear to me that you know, there are
(38:27):
lots of issues, but I think the main issue, the
issue that causes people to mistrust in many cases, the
whole idea of a private prison is the business model.
It is misaligned with the stated mission of the company.
If you say that you're trying to create safe environments
that emphasize education and safe return to society, it's pretty
(38:49):
hard to reconcile that with the profit motive. There are
just huge incentives to cut corners everywhere in safety, in
mental and physical health care, nutrition, education, or any other
rehabilitation services that you might want to engage in. So
one of the biggest complaints that I've heard about and
(39:11):
read about is lack of access to actual data about
conditions and about outcomes inside Course Civic facilities. Because these
are private facilities, they aren't subject to things like the
Freedom of Information Act, So as an act of altruism,
almost to build trust, Course Civic needs to get radically transparent,
(39:33):
more transparent than the law requires, more transparent than shareholders demand.
So my idea is for Course Civic to proactively publish
all of the data about their outcomes, good, bad, and ugly,
anonymized appropriately of course, rather than waiting for the government
to mandate it, or or some other group to complain
(39:56):
about it. Do it because it's the right thing to do,
and because to aligned with with the corsific mission. I
can I challenge and something before we go down at
rabbit hole, I encourage it. So I think that the
way you've set that up is not merely unfair, but
really inaccurate. I don't think that you can square the
(40:17):
statement that the traditional profit margin issues of a private
sector entity go to everything from the conditions of incarceration
or the quality of the food or the quality of
the healthcare. And let me just give you a couple
of examples. I was incarcerated. The food that we received
and I was in a federal federal facility. The food
(40:37):
that we received expired food out of femal warehouses. There
is no guarantee whatsoever that because the prisoners are being
imprisoned by federal employees that the circumstances are any better.
And and you know what really troubles me is, as
a former government contracts lare I understand how performance based
(40:58):
contracting works. And it's a simple concept. It sounds complicated
and it's simple. The idea is you set forward standards,
and if the contractor hits those standards, they're rewarded, and
if contractor doesn't hit those standards, they're penalized. And after
a certain point, if they continue not hitting those standards,
the contract is cut. You can't do that with unionized employees.
You cannot do that with government institutions. It is not
(41:22):
possible to do that. I hear that, But my idea,
to be clear, is for Coursivic to proactively publish all
of the data about outcomes, which I don't think they
do unless I've got that wrong. There there's been a
lot of coverage of it being very hard to get
information out of Coursivic. In two thousand and five, for instance,
(41:44):
there was a bill called the Private Prison Information Act,
which attempted to force any private entity contracting with the
government to agree to release information about its operations under
the same requirements as the Freedom of Information Act, and
course Civic actively lobbied against it, and it was defeated.
And so it's actions like that that leave you with
(42:05):
the strong impression that they have something to hide, even
if they don't. I totally agree with you that that's
a self inflicted wound that creates a trust gap. I
am all for transparency. It's pretty hard to advocate on
criminal justice matters, and I don't advocate on private prison
issues whatsoever, but it's hard to advocate criminal justice matters
when you don't have data to rely on. But I
(42:26):
will point out one thing, and since you know, kind
of the operating theme underneath all of this is private
prisons are worse than public prisons. That there's not a
whole heck of a lot of disclosure coming out of
the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Either. That's true, but you
can get it at it ostensibly through the Freedom of
Information Act. And and the problem there is fragmentation right
(42:47):
like it's it's there is no central database. I actually
think we have a lot of information about what course
if it does specifically explicitly, I should say, because of
the fact that it is a publicly traded corporation. As
a result, it files annual reports with the Securities and
Exchange Commission, It files quarterly reports with the SEC anytime
(43:09):
it's looking to to issue a new round of bonds,
it issues statements it's trying to lure investors. It holds
a conference cause that I've tuned into, and so as
a result, I actually think we have a lot of
information about coursifics operations, and FOYA is a meaningful transparency law,
(43:31):
but it's not the only transparency law in the United States.
The States also have transparency laws, and so when it
comes to coursifics operations, on behalf of states government agencies,
sometimes state transparency laws government secrecy laws actually allow access
to more information than does the Freedom of Information Act
at the federal level. But I'd say that that of
(43:54):
the many shortcomings with coursivics operations, it's not a lack
of nation about what is happening in its decision making processes.
And I would just jump on and actually take it
one step further, and that is all across the criminal
justice system, there is a lack of independent oversight regardless
of whether the operator of the facility is a private
(44:16):
sector entity or a public sector entity. There just is
an independent oversight. Yeah, that's a great point and much needed.
I agree, David. Can I follow up on your idea
around rethinking the role of guards. It seems very logical
to me that one possible advantage of privatizing government functions
like prisons is that private companies tend to be better
(44:39):
at innovation. Like if you say your mission is better
outcomes and a safer society, that's a great mission, and
it's also an invitation for innovation. But I don't see
much of it at core Civic. So a do I
have that right and and be what other kinds of innovations?
(44:59):
My cour civic explorer, I would say that it is
difficult to drive innovation when the broader terms of custody
are governed not by the entity managing the people, but
are are governed by sets of rules and laws that
are imposed by Congress and by the Bureau of Prisons
or by the state direct corrections departments. For example. You know,
(45:22):
we know that people age out of crime, right We
know for a fact that the older you get, the
less likely that the person is going to reoffend. And
so one of the ways to leverage that, take advantage
of it, to reduce costs and reduce population is to
move people as they age beyond the walls, you know,
still holding them accountable, still putting restrictions on them, but
(45:44):
moving them outside of a traditional prison environment, whether it's
cour civic or anybody else. You cannot do that under
current law. They are charged with holding people until the
court says that they're no longer to be held, and
so those types of innovations are really stifled by what
I would argue is a flexible and desperately in need
of updating criminal justice system. I would add to that
(46:06):
that they're oftentimes there has to be a reason to innovate,
and so long as they're meeting the expectations of their
governmental partners, their governmental customers, and reaping the financial rewards
of that, then there is no reason to innovia. So
I actually think that the federal and state governments that
contract with Course Civic are actually very key actors in
(46:27):
the likelihood of Course Civic innovating. By demanding innovations, they
hold the keys to the government treasury, and as a result,
if they want to see Course Civic move in a
particular direction, then they have the power to do that. Right.
What if government's mandated performance based contracts with goals like
recidivism reduction, for instance, to truly incentivize innovation. Why isn't
(46:51):
that going on? Well, you're starting to see that. You're
starting to see that at some of the state levels.
I know they've implemented performance based contracting in Pennsylvania, for example,
with some of their private sector companies. You know, it
takes a little bit of time to put together meaningful
performance metrics to judge a company by how they're doing things.
You have all kinds of questions across the private prison
(47:13):
spectrum in terms of what is to be measured, how
it is to be measured, what are the stretch goals
versus regular goals versus penalty levels. It's not easy to
do performance based contracting, and it really requires somebody with
knowledge in the contracting space and somebody knowledge in the
criminal justice space. Now, I will tell you this, one
(47:33):
of the things that I think everybody would love to
see is performance space contracting based on recidivism numbers. And
the biggest challenge there is something very simple. Everybody defines
recidivism in a different way. So we need to be
able to compare apples to apples when it comes to corsifics,
largest contracts in of the company's revenue came from the
(47:54):
Immigration and Customs and forth mean agency. So we just
shy thirty of the company's entire revenue in each of
those years coming from a single government agency. So let
me talk a little bit about that single government agency
ICE and the standards that exist. So ICE actually has,
going back more than a decade now, issued what it
calls performance based National Detention Standards. This is a series
(48:19):
of rather long and detailed expectations that it imposes on
all of the government contractors, including Course Civic. And yet
the agency has never been willing to make these binding.
That is, it has never actually required these companies, including
cours Civic, to meet those detention standards and certainly not
imposing consequences for failing to meet those detention standards. Is
(48:43):
the agency is just unwilling to a contract. That's been
true under President Obama, that's been true under President Trump,
and you know, we'll see how things shake out under
President Biden. But I'm not holding my breath because the
politics have not changed sufficiently to turn the agency into
one that is willing to say two companies like Corcivic,
you actually have to meet these attention standards, and if
(49:04):
you don't, there are the severest consequences are coming for you,
and by that we mean we're cutting you off. Shocker
that a federal agency can't figure out how to do
good performance based contracting. I think though, that well two things.
One is, it's difficult to criticize a company for not
going beyond the terms of the contract if that's not
the measure by which the agency intends to hold them accountable. Right.
(49:27):
But I think the second point is, again, immigration is
a different set of metrics and performance for private prison companies.
The goal of incarceration for people who have been convicted
of the crime, one of the goals is rehabilitation. That's
arguably the most important after segregation and maintaining public safety.
(49:49):
That is a different matter than the goal of detention.
For immigration, which is purely a segregation matter. Is taking
people who have been identify fight as being here illegally
and holding them until they can determine what they do
with them. And re entry is is a different animal
altogether when you're talking about immigration detention versus criminal justice detention. Yeah,
(50:10):
I think when when we're talking about it, almost a
third right cent of revenue coming from the Immigration Customs
Enforcement Agency. Even if I'd say the position that David's
articulating that this is a different form of incarceration, it's
a it's a rather significant form of incarceration for for
this particular company. For Cours civic, and so I would
hope that they would be thinking about the complexities um
(50:33):
and the distinctions between this and other forms. I think
we all in the criminal justice community kind of get
caught up in the vernacular all the terms, you know,
justice impacted or ex offender or re entry. Here's what
we're really talking about. At the end of the day,
when that person walks out of prison, are they likely
to reoffend and revictimize people in their community. That is
(50:55):
a totally different matter than immigration, where the outcome at
the end of the incarceration is likely deportation. Yeah, I
would take issue with with that point, but I'm not
sure that it's actually relevant to what coursifc does, and
of Coursivic does what it's asked to do by the
government agencies that it contracts for, and so I would
(51:16):
agree with your earlier point, David, that it's a little
hard to criticize the company for not doing what it's
not being asked to do. I think here the criticism
is rightfully placed with those government agencies and with the
elect officials who ultimately make the policies, the laws and
the policies that direct the operations of those government agencies,
And so I'd prefer to focus on my energy on
(51:36):
thinking about to what extent is Congress as the bureau prisons, immigration, cousins,
Enforcement Agency, et cetera. You know what extent are they
poorly incentivizing Courcivic to live up to its desires to aspirations,
at least as articulated earlier by Thai referencing it's it's
it's missions. I want to build on the direction that
(51:57):
this this conversation has has taken in this movie of us,
maybe slightly away from course Civic, But I'll start with
just a question. Do we think that private prisons and
the privatization of the prison system is a result of,
or related to the US culture of of mass incarceration.
The reason I bring this up is because back in
(52:19):
nineteen sixty one when Dwight Eisenhower, when he was leaving office,
his final warning to the American people was about the
rising power of what he called the military industrial complex.
And today we see the U S engaged in what
have become called forever Wars. Do either of you worry
that we're seeing the rise of the prison industrial complex.
(52:41):
Government and the private sector wrapped together around the most
vulnerable members of society essentially feeding off their misery. I
think that that might have been a plausible narrative going
back into the early two thousand's, particularly the aspect related
to the private sector company. There is I won't use
(53:02):
the term collusion, but there's certainly alignment between incarceration and
economic development. It's perceived by local officials. Have you ever
tried to close a federal prison or even a state prison.
You get protesters all over the place because it's loss
of jobs. So it's not a prison industrial complex per se,
but certainly some of the actors in the criminal justice
(53:23):
system have a bias towards maintaining prisons that have to
be filled. And most of those actors are people who
are feeding at the trough, whether they are corrections officers,
prison administrators, vendors selling food to the commissaries, all the
way up and down the chain to prosecutors and law enforcement.
I would echo that m concerning I actually say at
(53:43):
the state level, this is actually a much more pressing
issue because there you're dealing would local elected officials, often
state legislators and county commissioners, sheriffs, who really quite clearly
is see prisons as economic development opportunity these or economic
development engines, and it's not at all abstract because those
(54:03):
are the people who live in those communities. And often
these are very rural communities, they're isolated communities. These are
places where well paying jobs, decent paying jobs, are hard
to come by. And so the thoughts that your two
hundred person private prison facility is about to close down
means that two hundred of your constituents are about to
go out of a job. And that's a concern for
(54:26):
any elected official who's thinking about re election. It's also
just a concern for a neighbor right, who's thinking about
livelihoods of the people who live down the street from them, right,
who make that community. Whatever, whatever the community is, they
are that community. Okay, this has been a great conversation, um,
but there are a couple of things that I need
to do to wrap us up. I want to each
(54:49):
of you to give Course Civic a B S score,
So on a scale of zero to one hundred being
the worst total b S and zero roal being the
best zero bs. What would you give Course Civic based
on how they are are delivering on their mission? Say sorry,
(55:09):
why don't you go first, Yeah, I think i'd say
they're they're sevent bs. We'll take it. And David, you know,
I don't think anybody in this space is perfect. I
think there's always room for improvement. But I don't think
the core Civic is the company that has been demonized,
or I don't think the company reflects some of the
(55:30):
allegations out there. I'd give him a fifteen. That's great.
Thank you so much for being here today, both of you.
This was this was a lot of fun. I really
appreciate you taking the times. So, folks, it's time to
(55:52):
give Course Civic our official BS score. As you've heard today,
this one is complicated, so actually a little hard to
make this call because our experts were so divided. Sharon
gave them a hundred, says are seventy and David gave
them fifteen. Because their business model doesn't align with their purpose,
(56:14):
and because they lack transparency, I've decided to give Course
Civic a sixty eight. To weigh in with your own
score or to leave us a message, visit our website
Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com. We'll track Course Civic's behavior
over time to see if they can bring that score
down you'll also be able to see where they rank
(56:36):
on BS compared to the other companies we feature on
this show. And if you're running a purpose led business
or you're thinking of beginning the journey of transformation to
become one, here are three things you should take away
from this episode. One, your business model and your purpose
(56:57):
need to align. That's one of the first principles of
being purpose led. It's why being purpose led is different
than engaging in corporate social responsibility. That old fashioned model
held that companies could make their money anyway they wanted
and then spend some of their profits on good causes
to solve their souls. In course civics case, they make
(57:21):
money on the number of prisoners in their facilities, not
on successfully rehabilitating them and reintroducing them to society. That's
a problem. Two. Action is always the cure. Today we
discussed actions for cour civic like actively engaging with the
(57:42):
government to create contracts that give them financial incentives to
achieve their purpose of successfully reintroducing people to society and
reducing recidivism, and ideas like hiring social workers as prison guards,
or ideas like becoming proactively transparent with their data and
(58:02):
holding themselves accountable for hitting the key metrics outlined in
their purpose, the actions for your company will undoubtedly be different.
The point is doing is believing and three hope is
not a strategy, and neither is hiding. Unlike many of
(58:23):
the organizations we've covered this season, cour Civic isn't a
household name, but that definitely does not mean that they
won't eventually be held accountable. Reform in this industry is inevitable.
So no matter what industry you're in, if you're hoping
to exist behind the scenes and under the radar and
(58:44):
get away with being accountable only to your shareholders and
not to your broader stakeholders, it's time for a new strategy.
And David Heineger, CEO of Course Civic, if you ever
want to come on this show to talk about any
of of topics and ideas we've discussed today, you have
an open invitation. I'd like to thank everyone who joined
(59:14):
us today, Sharon Brett, David Sefabian, and say Sar Hernandez.
You can find all of them on social media. We
have all of their handles on our website, Calling Bullshit
podcast dot com, and check out Saysar's books migrating to prison,
America's obsession with locking up immigrants, and the krimmigration law.
(59:38):
If you have ideas for companies or organizations we should
consider for future episodes, you can submit them on the
site too, And if we unlock something important for you today,
Subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
(01:00:00):
And thanks to our production team, Hannah Beal, Amanda Ginsburg,
Andy Kim d s Moss, Hailey Pascalites, MICHAELA. Reid, Parker Silzer,
Basil Soaper and me John Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created
by co Collective and is hosted by Me Time onto you.
(01:00:21):
Thanks for listening before you go, we'd love to hear
what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired
to take action, maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating.
Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us
a message at two one two five oh five zero five,
(01:00:44):
or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co
collective dot com. You might even be featured on an
upcoming episode.
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