An American Fairy Tale: Prison Industry Edition
Only in America could the head of the public prison system who retired in shame for breaking the law himself move onto a sinecure in the private prison industry. But that appears to be what Harley Lappin has done.
Mind you, both Lappin and the Bureau of Prisons claim that Lappin’s arrest for DUI had no connection with his retirement in March.
The director of the federal Bureau of Prisons has apologized to his staff for a February DUI arrest, which came to light after his announcement last Friday that he was retiring.
Harley Lappin had made no mention in his retirement statement Friday about his brush with the law in Annapolis, Maryland, after 3 a.m. on February 26.
[snip]
BOP spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said Lappin had decided “some months ago” to retire in the spring of 2011 and that his scheduled retirement date of May 7 has not changed.
That may well be true: after all, Lappin spent less than a month in retirement before joining the Corrections Corporation of America as Vice President. (h/t G.W. Schulz)
CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) (NYSE: CXW), America’s leader in partnership corrections, announced that effective June 1, 2011, Harley G. Lappin, 55, shall serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Corrections Officer (CCO). In this role, Mr. Lappin will be responsible for the oversight of facility operations, health services, inmate rehabilitation programs, purchasing and TransCor, the Company’s wholly-owned transportation subsidiary. He succeeds Richard P. Seiter, who announced his decision to step down as CCO earlier this year, effective May 31, 2011.
The timing sort of suggests that Lappin had no intention of retiring, but instead planned all along on joining the private prison industry.
Even if it weren’t for the fact that no one imprisons as many people as the United States, this seems like a remarkably American fairy tale, not just the move from a public position of trust to a capitalist position of exploitation, but the public fall as well.
Well, Lappin should fit right in with J. Michael Quinlan, another former Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (1987-1992). Quinlan is Senior VP for Quality Assurance at CCA. That’s a laugh, as it was under Quinlan that FBP continued their experimentation with high security isolation prisons. Quinlan’s baby was the women’s small-group isolation prison in Lexington, Kentucky, designed specifically for women political prisoners.
I highly recommend Susan Rosenberg’s book, An American Radical: A Political Prisoner in My Own Country. Rosenberg was a prisoner at Lexington and other prisons, and her narrative of the death in life that awaits prisoners in such supermax conditions will chill your bones. She was pardoned by President Clinton at the end of his term.
I recall how in the 1980s investors were making the rounds in small towns attempting to sell the concept of prisons as secure (hint: lifetime) jobs for locals. The ancestors were incensed and opposed the effort. So what’s going on here in contrast to the apparently burgeoning Federal level business CCA enjoys as compared with this new Commonwealth of Virginia prison?
(excerpt from “New Virginia prison sits empty, at a cost of more than $700,000 a year” (Washington Post, May 30, 2011)
It would be interesting to know at least what corporate entities were servicing the 250 contracts during Lappin’s tenure since 2003.
O/T Insight into yet another gravy train. Lists the 10 top Pentagon contractors, their lobbying costs and campaign contributions, and the number of times, with penalties, they’ve been penalized for misconduct.
The Pentagon’s Big Contractors Lobby Big and Get in Big Trouble LINK.
Thought I would chime in because I have been to prison (case still active). I was in one of two prisons for women in this state.
Well, things in the other women’s prison, the privatized one that is, began to deteriorate over time. BTW, at the time, the privatized facility housed Hawaiian inmates- that’s right- they were housed stateside.
Let’s see, as I write I am googling because I want to get this about right-yup. Among other things, in 2008 there was a security breech, where a guard (they hate being called that FYI) brought a loaded gun into the facility and killed herself with it.
Finally, the facility as it was known was closed and converted to a men’s facility, and the women were shipped to a former men’s facility. I do not know where the Hawaiian women were sent.
I asked my roommate at the time, “Why are they closing _____ ____?”
Her reply: “Guards is fucking the inmates.”
Google, google, yup: sexual misconduct in 2009.
Pathetic.
What really concerns me most about our incarceration system is that we are turning county jails into prisons for non-violent offenders. County jail time is the hardest time anyone can possibly do- and we are holding people there, for not months, but years at a time. Even as we cut education, training, and treatment, but not of course baptism rates. (we in the collective, of course)
But anyway, the private people cut the facilities to the bone, starting with food. Then they work their way to commissary and phone cards where they engage in some rape of inmates’ family finances (unless said inmate is a really good trick writer). Let us not forget free inmate labor. After all, there is next to no education or treatment available any more…might as well work ’em right? A little sex now and then…hey? They are just inmates, right?
BTW, a DUI had nothing to do with this guy’s pre-planned move, if you ask me. He is in the money now. With plenty of time for those DUI classes left over.
Thanks for sharing. Yeah, the rape of inmates is one of the most egregious human rights violations our country routinely lets happen.