CA: As Private Jails Reopen, Critics See Long Arm of the Lobbyists

LA Times ^ | 1/21/05 | Dan Morain

[NormsRevenge]

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.

[Smogger]

Law enforcement is BIG BUSINESS in California.

And our year round legislature is always passing new laws to help keep them filled.

I doubt the average person knows halve of what is illegal now days.

[calcowgirl]

Schwarzenegger administration officials say they have not formulated an overall privatization policy. Rather, confronted by an immediate need for beds, officials awarded the contract to GEO and were preparing to make final a contract with a second company, Civigenics, without soliciting bids from other companies.

No bid contracts? If you're talking power plants in Iraq, okay. But prisons in California? There's plenty of competition in the private prison business. There's no need to award no bid contracts, IMO. It stinks.