A little news from Florida.
The university called a special meeting of its Board of Trustees to formally accept a gift of $6 million from the Boca Raton-based GEO Group. In exchange for the gift, FAU Stadium be renamed GEO Group Stadium for the next 12 years.
GEO Group is a private correctional facilities company that owns or runs more than 100 properties, operating 73,000 beds across North America, and into Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The company holds just shy of $3 billion in total assets and brought in $1.7 billion in revenue in 2012. Locally, the GEO Group runs the nearly 2,000-bed South Bay Correctional facility and the 700-bed Broward Transition Center in Pompano Beach, which holds immigration detainees.
And that is not all.
Number of Inmate Workers: 14,200
Percent of Eligible Population Employed (medically-able/sentenced): 8%
Employment Goal: 25%
Inmate Pay Rates: 23 cents to $1.15 per hour
Number of Factories: 88
Distribution of FPI Revenues:
78% toward purchase of materials/supplies from private sector vendors;
19% for staff salaries;
3% for inmate pay
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100% returned to the private sectorFY 2011 Net Sales: $745 million
FY 2011 Net Loss: $1.8 million
FY 2011 Sales Dollars Spent on Purchases from Private Sector: $640 millionProducts: Currently FPI produces over 80 products and services for sale to the Federal Government.
I suppose it does make the deficit lower. So there is that.
Comments
4 responses to “And People Say The War On Drugs Is A Failure”
No comment.
Not because I disapprove but because I don’t know enough, and don’t have time to find out. 🙁
Hmmm… Does anyone know whether these slave laborers are counted as among the “employed” for statistical purposes? Because if they are not, then their existence threatens to raise the unemployment rate.
This is also hurting businesses that don’t use prison labor:
http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor#
***QUOTE***
Prison labor has already started to undercut the business of corporations that don’t use it. In Florida, PRIDE has become one of the largest printing corporations in the state, its cheap labor having a significant impact upon smaller local printers. This scenario is playing out in states across the country. In addition to Florida’s forty-one prison industries, California alone has sixty. Another 100 or so are scattered throughout other states. What’s more, several states are looking to replace public sector workers with prison labor. In Wisconsin Governor Walker’s recent assault on collective bargaining opened the door to the use of prisoners in public sector jobs in Racine, where inmates are now doing landscaping, painting, and other maintenance work. According to the Capitol Times, “inmates are not paid for their work, but receive time off their sentences.” The same is occurring in Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida and Georgia, all states with GOP Assembly majorities and Republican governors. Much of ALEC’s proposed labor legislation, implemented state by state is allowing replacement of public workers with prisoners.
“It’s bad enough that our companies have to compete with exploited and forced labor in China,” says Scott Paul Executive Director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a coalition of business and unions. “They shouldn’t have to compete against prison labor here at home. The goal should be for other nations to aspire to the quality of life that Americans enjoy, not to discard our efforts through a downward competitive spiral.”
***END QUOTE***
Don’t forget race!
http://baltimorechronicle.com/prison_labor_jun00.html
***QUOTE***
The 13th amendment abolished slavery in the U.S. except for people convicted of a crime. “Legally allowing [criminals] to be subjected to slavery and involuntary servitude opened the door for mass criminalization,” wrote Julie Browne in her thesis, “The Labor of Doing Time.” Ms. Browne traces the development of the so-called “Black Codes,” known as the “Slave Codes” before the Civil War, as a way to re-enslave freed African-Americans by criminalizing behaviors more likely to be found among them than among whites.
***END QUOTE***
The thesis is here:
http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/mplu/time.html
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