Private Prison Jails Reopen under Arnold

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons21jan21,1,4381779.story?coll=la-headlines-california

As Private Jails Reopen, Critics See Long Arm of the Lobbyists
After closures, a prison company retained consultants close to Schwarzenegger.

By Dan Morain
Times Staff Writer

January 21, 2005

SACRAMENTO — The Schwarzenegger administration has quietly moved to reopen two private prisons a year after mothballing them — and after a company that stands to profit retained consultants close to the governor and his inner circle. Administration officials attribute the reversal to an unexpected rise in the number of prisoners. Prisons Department critics point to the private prison company's lobbying.

The administration has decided to reopen two facilities, one of which is a 224-bed prison in the Central Valley town of McFarland. A Florida company ran the McFarland facility for 15 years until Dec. 31, 2003, when the state moved its last prisoners out.

Rather than abandon California, the company, the GEO Group Inc., retained a top Schwarzenegger campaign official and a lobby firm that has close ties to the Republican's administration to restore the company's standing in California. A company that is a spinoff of GEO and owns the prison at McFarland placed Donna Arduin on its board of trustees in October, 10 days after she left her job as Schwarzenegger's director of the Department of Finance, which oversees all state spending.

"This was an administration that said they weren't going to be influenced by special interests," said Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., the union that represents state prison guards and opposes private lockups.

"The private prison industry to us is a special interest."
continued

Fire departments and energy and wouldn't it all be great??? What? All were miserable, despicable failures the last time around?

Nevermind.

opening up more jails.

This doesn't sound good . . .

Joan Didion? The Prison Guard union is the
strongest in CA...I'm not sure that the private
prisons are using union workers though...

this story is really about who is whispering
in Arnie's ear and thrusting their dollars in
his pockets.

Where I was From, where she does an expose of the prison unions.

And, off the top of my head (pointed and small as it is, lol) the pattern has been for the neos to look at successful union strategies and co-opt them. Or so it has seemed to me.

So, this is not about using union workers; it's about using a network to appropriate the power that industry has had in the state house. (Does that make sense?)