Slouching Towards Oblivion

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

One Example

Government as Business can be even more of a nightmare than what "conservatives" are always creamin' their jeans over.

A teenager in a For-Profit Prison in Mississippi turned up missing, and it took his dad more than a month to find him - in a local hospital, after suffering irreparable brain damage in a riot that was possibly instigated by at least one of the guards.  That's pretty fucked up right there.

From AlterNet via Democratic Underground:
On March 26, U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves issued a blistering court order approving the settlement of the lawsuit. He wrote that the GEO Group Inc., the company that runs Walnut Grove, “has allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate.”
Violence by youths and guards wasn’t the only problem. Neither were the gang affiliations of some guards. Or the grossly inadequate medical and mental health care. Or the proliferation of drugs and other contraband. Or the lack of educational and rehabilitative programs. Or the wild overuse of pepper spray on passive youths.
Indeed, the DOJ found that sexual abuse – including brutal youth-on-youth rapes and “brazen” sexual misconduct by prison staffers who coerced youths – was “among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation.”
What’s more, both the prison staff and the Mississippi Department of Corrections, which pays GEO $14 million each year to run the prison, showed “deliberate indifference” to these problems.
This hyper-macho, get-tough bullshit just ain't workin', guys.  We gotta figure out something else.

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