|
Connecticut Department of Corrections
February 8, 2005 AP
State prison officials have dropped a plan to have a private company run a drug
treatment and vocational training facility for female inmates. The New
Jersey-based Education and Health Centers of America initially won the
roughly $2.2 million contract in 2003 to run the program at the women's
prison in the Niantic section of East Lyme. But Attorney General Richard
Blumenthal forced correction officials to withdraw the contract after
concerns were raised. It was learned that the company had hired a lobbyist
close to former Gov. John G. Rowland, contributed to Rowland's campaign and
gave a free trip to state officials. about the
company's lobbying efforts. The state's decision may have no effect on a plan to build one
or more community justice centers for male offenders that would be operated
by a private company.
February 28, 2004
A private prison company from Tennessee has told the Department of Correction
it plans to bid on housing up to 2,500 prisoners in its facilities.
Connecticut must find a place to put 500 prisoners by October, after Virginia
officials canceled a contract to house the state's inmates this week.
Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America has submitted a
letter of intent to Connecticut, said company spokesman Steve Owen. He would
not reveal any proposed details. "We certainly are interested and
will be submitting a proposal," Owen said. The state Department of
Correction confirmed it received letters of intent but would not say which
providers had expressed interest. Private providers and states have until May
3 to submit proposals. Corrections Corporation of America is the
nation's largest private prison operator, holding 55,000 inmates in 64
facilities in 20 states. Company officials said last year their Youngstown,
Ohio, facility would be ideal for Connecticut inmates, but Owen said Friday they
could be placed in any of the company's 6,800 available beds. The
company also has hired a former a former chief of staff to Gov. John G.
Rowland, David O'Leary, to lobby for the company in Connecticut. Rowland is
currently enmeshed in a federal investigation into possible bid-rigging in
the administration, and a House committee is considering whether to recommend
impeachment. "We are not concerned," Owen said. "He is
being retained because of his ability to be kept up to speed with the
decision making, like all of our lobbyists around the states. That is why we
retain the individual." Connecticut had been looking for a private
or other state provider since the legislature last year authorized
out-of-state placements for 2,500 prisoners. Virginia has said it will
not accept Connecticut prisoners past Oct. 22, but it will be flexible in
allowing Connecticut to get its inmates out of the state. Marc Ryan,
Rowland's budget chief, said the state would not discuss anything with
providers until after the closing date for the proposals. He also said the
state was not leaning toward any particular provider, and was considering
entering into multiple contracts. A preliminary survey of the private
prison industry showed Connecticut could get rates as low as $10 per prisoner
per day, Ryan said. In Connecticut, it costs roughly $80 a day to house
prisoners, he said. The Virginia contract's demise is giving some
lawmakers that prison crowding reforms will move through the
legislature. The proposals include building up community based programs
and releasing prisoners more quickly when they become eligible for parole.
They would also fund the state's jail re-interview program, which assesses
whether inmates awaiting sentencing can be released into the community.
"We need a long-term solution to this problem, and it's got to be a
Connecticut solution. Not one that's going to be canceled with six months'
notice," said Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven,
chair of the legislature's Judiciary Committee. The proposed reforms do
not eliminate the state's ability to send inmates to other states. But
backers argue that the reforms will reduce the population enough so that it
won't even be a discussion. "I don't think it's a problem at all
creating that room in our system, so we can accept people coming back,"
said Rep. William Dyson, D-New Haven. Barbara Fair, an activist with
People Against Injustice and the mother of an inmate who was sent to
Virginia, said she doubted there would be any substantial change.
"As long as they're trying to fill up cells somewhere else, that's what
they're going to do," she said. (AP)
February 23, 2004
The next batch of inmates that Connecticut prison officials send out of state
is likely to end up in a private prison in Ohio. Correction Commissioner
Theresa Lantz told legislators this week that her department has issued a
request for proposals seeking a provider with enough beds to hold all the
inmates -which could number more than 2,000. But she said Corrections Corp.
of America, which operates the Ohio facility, might be the only provider able
to accommodate that many. Lantz assured lawmakers that like
Connecticut, many other states are turning to private prisons to address
their overcrowding issues. "Thirty-one states contract with private
prisons, so it is not a unique phenomenon," said Lantz. "And I'm
not saying that because I am trying to sell you on private
prisons." She told members of the legislature's judiciary and
appropriations committees during a joint hearing that she needs to find
housing for inmates because the state's contract to house inmates in Virginia
expires in 2005. She said the state's prison system does not have the
capacity to absorb the 500 inmates currently housed there, even though the
state's inmate population has significantly dropped since last year. As
of January 2004, the state's inmate population was 18,523, including 554
inmates being held for the federal authorities. Last year, the figure stood
at 19,216, including 368 federal detainees. John Ferguson, Corrections
Corp. of America's chief executive, was quoted in
the Tennessean newspaper in October claiming that his company's dormant
facility in Youngstown, Ohio, which has 2,016 empty beds, would be an ideal
site for Connecticut inmates. The company has roughly 6,800 empty beds in its
64 prisons around the country. His comments were in response to the
legislature's approval last year of the governor's plan to send 2,000 more
inmates out of state. Ferguson's firm is being represented in Connecticut
by Gov. John Rowland's former chief of staff David O'Leary. The company has
been paying O'Leary $4,500 a month plus expenses since January of last year.
Corrections Corp. is the only prison provider with a lobbyist in the
state. Officials with the company said they were looking to break into
the Connecticut market and approached O'Leary after learning that he was one
of the most effective lobbyists in the state, said Steve Owen, the company's
director of marketing and communications. "It is common for [the
company] to retain lobbyists in both states where we currently do business
and states where we may be able to do business," said Owen. "This
allows us to monitor ongoing public policy discussions in corrections.
Additionally, lobbyists provide an avenue by which the company can inform and
educate decision-makers on the merits of our industry generally and our
company specifically." Officials with the union that represents
the state's correction officers said signs that the state is leaning toward a
private provider concern them. They say the decision will eventually cost the
state more than it saves. They say instead of sending inmates out of
state, the legislature should be pursuing measures that reduce the state's
prison population. "Council 4 and the corrections employees we
represent have consistently and publicly supported viable alternatives to the
management of the inmate population, such as diversion for first-time drug
offenders and the mentally ill," said Thomas Sellas,
a member of the union's executive board. "We have also strongly
advocated making better use of existing Department of Correction resources.
It makes no sense to send prisoners out of state when there are open beds
right here in Connecticut." (CTNow)
August 19, 2003
Following are highlights of three budget-related bills the Connecticut
General Assembly plans to vote on Saturday. The information is from drafts of
the bills. - Allow the Department of Correction to send an 2,000 more inmates to out-of-state public or private
prisons. (AP)
Connecticut Legislature
September
30, 2004 Fairfield Weekly
How much is the life of a troubled teenager worth? To the Tomasso
family, it was worth about $51.2 million. That's how much state money Tomasso companies made from the suicide of 15-year-old
Tabatha Ann Brendle, according to federal
prosecutors. A federal grand jury last week indicted Tomasso
and the family's inside man at the governor's
office, Peter Ellef, accusing Ellef
of handing massive state contracts to Tomasso in
exchange for elaborately disguised payoffs. Amid all its legalese, the
indictment stands as a powerful reminder that the corruption scandal that
brought down former Gov. John Rowland isn't just about no-bid contracts and
fishy credit card charges. It's about people's lives--and deaths. And it's
about the willingness of high-ranking government officials and respected
businessmen to profit from tragedy. The Rowland administration handed Tomasso a blank check--first to renovate Long Lane, then
to build a replacement. And Tomasso got the
multimillions without bidding because the jobs were an "emergency."
Never mind that the governor's office had for years neglected countless
emergencies at the Department of Children and Families--the agency charged
with preventing abuse and neglect, the agency that ran Long Lane. We do know, according to the
indictment, that Tomasso companies paid $86,500 to
a dummy corporation that Ellef and his deputy,
Lawrence Alibozek, set up.
That doesn't count the Tomasso-paid limousine rides
to New York and Boston. Or the gold, for that matter: Alibozek
admitted receiving gold coins and generously showed the feds where they were
buried in his yard. Ellef also got gold from Tomasso, the indictment charges.
May 11, 2004
Former Chief of Staff David O'Leary spoke on the third floor of the capitol
late Monday afternoon, questioned by an attorney for the House Committee of
Inquiry for a mere 15 minutes. The speech was a private deposition in
the old house judiciary room at the capitol. O'Leary served as Gov. Rowland's
first chief of staff after he was elected in 1994. The committee would not
say why it asked for O'Leary to appear or what he said in the
deposition. O'Leary has been a lobbyist for sometime.
He is the president of his own company. Some of his clients include
Corrections Corporation of America, a company involved in privatizing
prisons. (WSFB Channel 3)
Yale
University
New Haven, Connecticut
CCA
May 19, 2006 Yale Daily News
Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund that
invests a portion of Yale's endowment, has sold all of its stock in a private
prison company that has been criticized for alleged human rights abuses,
though such criticisms have not been cited as a factor in the sale. The
fund's May 12 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission included no
investment in the Corrections Corporation of America, the target of a
yearlong campaign for divestment by Yale's Graduate Employees and Students
Organization. But while GESO leaders said they believe their campaign to have
affected the move, members of the University's investment ethics committee
said they did not advise divestment before the hedge fund sold its shares. At
several rallies during the past year, GESO members criticized CCA for alleged
cases of prisoner abuse and for lobbying for harsher sentences. GESO
spokesman Evan Cobb GRD '07 said he believes Farallon's
sale of CCA stock demonstrated the impact of the organization's opposition to
"insidious" private prisons. "At this point, we're just very,
very pleased," Cobb said. Farallon sold two
thirds of its then-$1.5 million share of CCA in March, prompting GESO leaders
to claim that their pressure on the University was working. But Yale's
Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility has maintained that CCA does
not merit divestment under the University's ethical policies, as private
prisons are a regulated industry. ACIR chair Geert Rouwenhorst has said that CCA does not appear to cause
"grave social injury," Yale's standard for divestment. That policy
is based on the 1972 book "The Ethical Investor," which was written
by a group of Yale professors and graduate students. "Divestment is an
action of last resort for the endowment," Rouwenhorst
said at the last public ACIR meeting, held in March. "We believe that
selling the shares to someone who cares less than us
[does] not necessarily [make] a good world." Zachary Bagdon,
who heads the School of Management's International Center for Finance, said Farallon most likely made its decision with profit in
mind. If activism did a play a role, he said, it was because fund managers
thought public opposition would hamper the stock's performance. "When
people rally to get people to divest in something, that
puts downward pressure on the stock," Bagdon
said. A Farallon spokesman declined to comment. But
Cobb said that since CCA's stock has been rising, public opinion must have
had more of an impact than a perceived lack of profit. GESO has not decided
whether it will continue to campaign for Yale to take a public, policy-based
stand against CCA, Cobb said. "It would obviously be nice for the
University to actually talk about this and weigh in on the issue," he
said. "In terms of where we go from here, I'm not really certain."
When Yale officially divested from companies tied to the Sudanese government
in February, it blacklisted several companies in which it did not hold stock
but would exclude from its portfolio in the future.
March 7, 2006 Yale Daily
News
Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund that
invests a portion of Yale's endowment, has sold about two thirds of its stock
in a private prison company that campus activists have criticized for alleged
human rights abuses. According to an analysis of public filings released
Tuesday by the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, Yale's indirect
holdings in Corrections Corporation of America decreased from $1.5 million to
approximately $500,000 in the fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31. GESO activists
said their on-campus campaign against CCA likely influenced the decision, but
University officials denied any change to their divestment policy. GESO chair
Melissa Mason GRD '08 characterized Farallon's move
as a partial divestment that should be followed up with a new formal policy.
"It's clear that there has been a step in a right direction, with Yale
dropping two thirds of its share," Mason said. "Now Yale needs to
make an official statement to finish off the divestment.""I don't
think that this university should be investing in a corporation that is in
the business of incarceration, that sees an interest in seeing a greater
number of people being incarcerated in this country," she said. CCA
representatives did not return calls for comment on Tuesday.
December 2, 2005 Yale
Daily News
Around 100 Yale students and faculty members gathered at Beinecke
Plaza on Thursday afternoon to hear faculty members denounce Yale's
investment in the Corrections Corporation of America, a private
prison-operating company. The demonstration, which was organized by the
Graduate Employees and Students Organization and featured four faculty
speakers, was organized to protest Yale's $1.5 million investment in CCA, the
sixth-largest prison operator in the nation, behind the federal government
and four states. Protestors said they want the University to divest from the
company because there are a disproportionate number of minorities
incarcerated and inmates are allegedly inhumanely treated in CCA prisons.
Critics also accused CCA of lobbying for harsher sentencing in order to
generate more revenue. Yale invests in CCA through Farallon
Capital Management, which was founded by two Yale alumni. Farallon
is a hedge fund that controls almost $10 billion in assets and owns 5.5
percent of CCA. Yale alone has around $500 million invested through Farallon, according to GESO.
December 2, 2005 Hartford
Courant
A small part of Yale University's $15 billion endowment has been invested in
the largest private prison company in the country - a revelation that has led
to calls from some students and professors for Yale to divest for ethical
reasons. The United States puts more people behind bars than any other
country in the world, according to a report by Yale's unions. And more than
ever, private companies such as Corrections Corporation of America have been
hired to run public prisons to cut costs. The unions' recently published
report revealed Yale's tie to the company based in Nashville, Tenn. The
report details several inmate abuse scandals at that company's prisons and
accuses the for-profit company of advocating public policies that put more
people away, for longer. Several Yale professors demonstrated in front of
Yale President Richard Levin's office Thursday. Matt Jacobson, a history
professor, drew heavy applause and a catcall "Jacobson!" from the
crowd. The afternoon rally started with about 50 people but doubled in size
as the impassioned rhetoric, heavy on its critique of privatization, drew
passersby. A Yale police officer wearing a neck warmer and
dark glasses stood at the steps of Woodbridge Hall that houses Levin's
office. A helmet hung from the handlebars of his mountain bike, as he
evaluated the scene without expression. Yale's investment in Corrections
Corporation came to light after the union that represents Yale graduate
students analyzed the university's most recent federal tax forms, which
showed that as of June 2004, Yale owned an 88 percent stake in a hedge fund
called Farallon Capital Institutional Partners II.
The hedge fund, managed by Farallon Capital
Management LLC in San Francisco, in turn held 47,000 shares in CCA as of May
2005, according to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. The union
estimates Yale has about $1.5 million invested in Corrections Corporation.
|
