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Protecting Prison Jobs
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 12 — The protesters started before 7 a.m., marching, chanting and attracting media attention with street theater lampooning a former state official who made millions off prison privatization.
More than 200 representatives of at least 25 civil rights, student and religious organizations, inmate families, CWA and other unions paced for an hour and a half, shouting slogans and carrying signs, “Public Safety First — Not Private Profit,” or “CCA: How Many Inmates Escaped Today?”
All of the groups that came together for the protest and for dozens of other demonstrations around the country increasingly rely on information available over the Internet from “Privatization Watch,” a joint project of CWA, its National Coalition of Public Safety Officers and the Florida Police Benevolent Association.
Ken Kopczynski, legislative and political affairs assistant to the Florida PBA, was in Nashville that day, helping lead the charge. He also hosts “Privatization Watch,” which can be accessed through the NCPSO-CWA website. Go to www.ncpso-cwa.org, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Prison Privatization.”
CWA, with 40,000 members in law enforcement, including corrections officers in Florida, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona and other jurisdictions, has been fighting prison privatization for several years. Good union jobs are at stake when corporations such as CCA, Wackenhut and Cornell Corrections turn incarceration, traditionally a function of the state, into a for-profit venture, replacing professional corrections officers who are public workers with inadequately trained employees hired by a private company.
The “privateers,” as Kopczynski calls them, argue that they run a more efficient operation, saving the state money while turning a profit for shareholders. The truth is that taxpayers pay more for privately run prisons and shareholders lose on the value of their investment. Meanwhile, inmates suffer abuse and mistreatment and communities face increased risk as greater numbers of violent prisoners escape.
Big Rip-Off
The protesters in Nashville brought heightened attention to a public scandal. Kopczynski explained how in late 1998 an investment trust bought out CCA, one of the nation’s leading privatization firms, and reorganized the company as Prison Realty Trust. While the Nashville-based company had promised to save taxpayers money, within three months of the reorganization, Kopczynski said, its management claimed to have made a mistake: instead of $800 the cost of providing services would be $4,000 per bed.
On the day of the protest, PZN — as the company was listed in stock quotes — was seeking shareholder approval for yet another reorganization to shore up its stock price. Embroiled in a long-running securities suit, the company’s value plunged from $42 to $1 per share, Kopczynski said.
That same day, in Nashville, a federal judge was considering a temporary restraining order to quash the reorganization, based in part on an allegation that an insider, “Peaches” Simpkins, former chief of staff to Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist, profited illegally from a $120 million settlement with PZN stockholders, when she received an $8 million payout on PZN stock she had purchased for only $3 million.
Judge Todd Campbell rejected the restraining order, Kopczynski said, but pointed out that PZN/CCA — now trading as CXW on the New York Stock Exchange — could lose hundreds of millions of dollars and the corporation could go belly-up.
“This is important information to put into the hands of the public,” Kopczynski said.
Allies in the Cause
Several Florida PBA chapters have affiliated with CWA’s National Coalition of Public Safety Officers (NCPSO): Central Florida PBA, CWA Local 3196; Coastal Florida PBA, CWA Local 3193; State Probation Officers, CWA Local 3192; and State Correctional Officers, CWA Local 3191.
On prison privatization, Kopczynski reports frequently to Brooks Sunkett, CWA vice president for public and health care workers, who three years ago took steps to involve CWA in anti-privatization coalitions, and John Burpo, director of NCPSO-CWA.
CWA’s Public and Health Care Workers Sector conference in 1997 took up the subject of prison privatization, as well as privatization of other services provided by state and local governments. Subsequently, Si Kahn, founder of Grassroots Leadership — a South Carolina based community action group and a CWA ally through Jobs with Justice — invited CWA, through Sunkett, to participate in the Public Safety and Justice Campaign, a coalition to aggressively attack prison privatization.
“Prison privatization is wrong,” Sunkett said. “It’s wrong for government because it really does not save money, and it causes a loss of accountability. It’s wrong for employees for all the obvious reasons: they lose their jobs and are replaced by people less competent, working for low wages and few if any benefits. It’s wrong for communities because it leads to an erosion of their tax base and a general loss of safety.”
CWA’s involvement with the issue led to the union’s publication about a year later of an 18-page booklet making a strong case against the practice. Kopczynski is now working on an update of “The Truth about Prison Privatization,” originally prepared by CWA Research Economist Debbie Goldman.
Meanwhile, he continually updates the “Privatization Watch” website, which contains statistics on all the corporations involved in prison privatization, maps and background on every prison in the country that is privately run, a news archives, a “hall of fame” citing battles won by the coalition, and a “hall of shame” listing the locations of the most egregious violations of public trust and safety.
“We’re building up a critical mass of people who have been fighting by themselves against the industry,” Kopczynski said. “The incarceration of human beings is a state function. It should not be a money-making enterprise.”
More than 200 representatives of at least 25 civil rights, student and religious organizations, inmate families, CWA and other unions paced for an hour and a half, shouting slogans and carrying signs, “Public Safety First — Not Private Profit,” or “CCA: How Many Inmates Escaped Today?”
All of the groups that came together for the protest and for dozens of other demonstrations around the country increasingly rely on information available over the Internet from “Privatization Watch,” a joint project of CWA, its National Coalition of Public Safety Officers and the Florida Police Benevolent Association.
Ken Kopczynski, legislative and political affairs assistant to the Florida PBA, was in Nashville that day, helping lead the charge. He also hosts “Privatization Watch,” which can be accessed through the NCPSO-CWA website. Go to www.ncpso-cwa.org, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Prison Privatization.”
CWA, with 40,000 members in law enforcement, including corrections officers in Florida, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona and other jurisdictions, has been fighting prison privatization for several years. Good union jobs are at stake when corporations such as CCA, Wackenhut and Cornell Corrections turn incarceration, traditionally a function of the state, into a for-profit venture, replacing professional corrections officers who are public workers with inadequately trained employees hired by a private company.
The “privateers,” as Kopczynski calls them, argue that they run a more efficient operation, saving the state money while turning a profit for shareholders. The truth is that taxpayers pay more for privately run prisons and shareholders lose on the value of their investment. Meanwhile, inmates suffer abuse and mistreatment and communities face increased risk as greater numbers of violent prisoners escape.
Big Rip-Off
The protesters in Nashville brought heightened attention to a public scandal. Kopczynski explained how in late 1998 an investment trust bought out CCA, one of the nation’s leading privatization firms, and reorganized the company as Prison Realty Trust. While the Nashville-based company had promised to save taxpayers money, within three months of the reorganization, Kopczynski said, its management claimed to have made a mistake: instead of $800 the cost of providing services would be $4,000 per bed.
On the day of the protest, PZN — as the company was listed in stock quotes — was seeking shareholder approval for yet another reorganization to shore up its stock price. Embroiled in a long-running securities suit, the company’s value plunged from $42 to $1 per share, Kopczynski said.
That same day, in Nashville, a federal judge was considering a temporary restraining order to quash the reorganization, based in part on an allegation that an insider, “Peaches” Simpkins, former chief of staff to Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist, profited illegally from a $120 million settlement with PZN stockholders, when she received an $8 million payout on PZN stock she had purchased for only $3 million.
Judge Todd Campbell rejected the restraining order, Kopczynski said, but pointed out that PZN/CCA — now trading as CXW on the New York Stock Exchange — could lose hundreds of millions of dollars and the corporation could go belly-up.
“This is important information to put into the hands of the public,” Kopczynski said.
Allies in the Cause
Several Florida PBA chapters have affiliated with CWA’s National Coalition of Public Safety Officers (NCPSO): Central Florida PBA, CWA Local 3196; Coastal Florida PBA, CWA Local 3193; State Probation Officers, CWA Local 3192; and State Correctional Officers, CWA Local 3191.
On prison privatization, Kopczynski reports frequently to Brooks Sunkett, CWA vice president for public and health care workers, who three years ago took steps to involve CWA in anti-privatization coalitions, and John Burpo, director of NCPSO-CWA.
CWA’s Public and Health Care Workers Sector conference in 1997 took up the subject of prison privatization, as well as privatization of other services provided by state and local governments. Subsequently, Si Kahn, founder of Grassroots Leadership — a South Carolina based community action group and a CWA ally through Jobs with Justice — invited CWA, through Sunkett, to participate in the Public Safety and Justice Campaign, a coalition to aggressively attack prison privatization.
“Prison privatization is wrong,” Sunkett said. “It’s wrong for government because it really does not save money, and it causes a loss of accountability. It’s wrong for employees for all the obvious reasons: they lose their jobs and are replaced by people less competent, working for low wages and few if any benefits. It’s wrong for communities because it leads to an erosion of their tax base and a general loss of safety.”
CWA’s involvement with the issue led to the union’s publication about a year later of an 18-page booklet making a strong case against the practice. Kopczynski is now working on an update of “The Truth about Prison Privatization,” originally prepared by CWA Research Economist Debbie Goldman.
Meanwhile, he continually updates the “Privatization Watch” website, which contains statistics on all the corporations involved in prison privatization, maps and background on every prison in the country that is privately run, a news archives, a “hall of fame” citing battles won by the coalition, and a “hall of shame” listing the locations of the most egregious violations of public trust and safety.
“We’re building up a critical mass of people who have been fighting by themselves against the industry,” Kopczynski said. “The incarceration of human beings is a state function. It should not be a money-making enterprise.”