White House blames Congress for Gitmo prison staying open

The White House on Monday blamed Congress for preventing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention prison amid a hunger strike and riots at the camp.

President Obama “remains committed” to closing Guantánamo Bay, something he said he would do in his first week in office in 2009, White House press secretary Jay Carney insisted.

“It is the president’s view that facility ought to be closed,” Carney said. “We have taken steps processing detainees, transferring them to third countries, but the obstacles to closing Guantánamo Bay have been raised by Congress.”

Violent riots broke out at one of the prison's camps this weekend after military authorities decided to end communal housing, instead moving prisoners to individual cells.

The Pentagon said the decision was made after detainees covered windows and surveillance cameras, a move that coincided with a hunger strike being staged by dozens of prisoners. At least one prisoner was injured by a rubber bullet in the clash with guards on Saturday.

The dispute reportedly began when inmates were angered by guards searching copies of the Quran issued by the military. The Pentagon said at least 11 inmates protesting their treatment were being force-fed.

Carney confirmed that the White House had been made aware of the planned move.

“We were informed by the Department of Defense by the steps it was going to take to move detainees from Camp Six communal situation to single cell living in order to ensure their health and security,” he said.

Saturday's violence has refocused attention on the administration’s failed attempt to close the entire detention facility in Cuba.

Congress has repeatedly attached provisions in military spending bills barring the White House from financing trials of Guantánamo captives on U.S. soil or opening a military prison on U.S. soil. Congress has also mandated military detention for most future al Qaeda cases, increasing the difficulty of closing the prison.

On Monday, Carney said Obama was trying to move forward with the prison’s closure.

“Congress has, as you know, raised obstacles to this legislatively,” he said. “And that has made it, obviously, more difficult to pursue this, but that does not change the fact that it is the president's objective, and we are, you know, constantly looking for ways to move forward on that objective.”

The Pentagon hasn’t allowed an extended visit to Guantánamo by defense attorneys for any of the prisoners.

In January, defense attorneys for the accused 9/11 hijackers requested a 48-hour visit to Camp Seven to examine the living conditions at the camp amid accusations of mistreatment by military officials.

Members of the International Red Cross were given special access to the Camp Seven compound in 2009, but their report was classified by the U.S. government and has yet to be released.

Officials at Guantánamo also came under criticism for revelations of covert surveillance of confidential attorney-client meetings between terror detainees and their defense teams at Guantánamo.

—This story was updated at 4:09 p.m.

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New Hampshire Rejects All Private Prison Bids

New Hampshire officials rejected all four bids to privatize its prisons, citing prison operators’ insufficient understanding of court-mandated standards of inmate care, and proposed wages that are half what prison security staff now earn. The decision comes following a recent vote by the state House of Representatives to prohibit private prisons in the state. For-profit prison operators’ interest in profiting off inmates leads to perverse incentives, and many private facilities have been cited for human rights abuses and violations of state law. The Concord Monitor reports:

“The proposals exhibited a lack of understanding of the overarching legal requirements placed upon the (corrections department) relating to the court orders, consent decrees and settlements which, in large part, dictate the administration and operation of their correctional facilities and attendant services to the inmate populations,” read the report. It concluded that meeting those requirements for inmates’ medical and mental health care “appeared to be too great a burden for the vendors.”

The state’s decision to cancel the bid puts prison privatization off the table for now unless Gov. Maggie Hassan or the Legislature directs the state to reissue the bid, said Michael Connor of the state Department of Administrative Services. That seems unlikely. […]

State corrections and administrative service officials began investigating prison privatization in 2011 at the direction of former governor John Lynch and the last Legislature. Four companies submitted 17 proposals that were so voluminous and complex that state officials hired a private consultant, at a cost of $171,000, to help them evaluate the bids.

New Hampshire’s now-governor has been vocal in opposition to private prisons, and her spokesman said this week that “the track record of such arrangements in other states has not demonstrated success in terms of protecting taxpayer dollars while maintaining the highest level of public safety.” The state could, however, solicit new proposals in future years if the House bill to prohibit the facilities is not also approved by the Senate.

Earlier coverage of the bids reports that the three national private prison companies each have at least two lobbyists in the state, reflecting the nationwide efforts of prison firms to lobby for privatization of prison facilities, prison health care, and laws that incarcerate more people in a country that already has the world’s highest incarceration rate. Legislators who support private prisons, many enriched by campaign contributions from these very companies, have claimed that they are a way to save money. But New Hampshire’s report confirms the experiences of other states – that these prisons cost more. New Hampshire spent $171,000 for a consultant to pore through proposals that, in spite of being too unwieldy to be reviewed in-house, failed to address basic state criteria. What’s more, New Hampshire’s report is the latest evidence that private firms’ attempts to cut costs come at the expense of adequate inmate treatment and good wages.

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Private Prison Firm Pulls Funding For College Stadium Naming Rights

Florida Atlantic University’s football stadium will no longer be named after a notorious private prison corporation, after GEO Group announced Monday it would withdraw its $6 million pledge to the university, saying it has “surprisingly evolved into an ongoing distraction.”

The announcement in February that the university would rename its stadium garnered immediate outcry and protests, and the reaction should not have been so surprising. GEO Group, the second-largest operator of U.S. private prisons, has become known for reports of juvenile abuse, deaths, and riots at its facilities, and has poured money into Florida politics as the legislature considered proposals to privatize the state’s prison health care. GEO executives escalated the controversy over associating college football with prison by falsely denying reports that GEO had overseen a facility that a federal judge described as a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.” The $6 million pledge paid out over 12 years would have been the largest one-time gift in the history of FAU athletics, signaling both the monetary influence of the private prison industry, and its willingness to wield that influence to secure a better reputation. Instead, the company said it would make one $500,000 donation toward the school’s scholarship program.

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How A Straw Purchaser Allegedly Enabled The Colorado Prison Chief’s Murder

On Thursday, the Denver Post reported how Evan Ebel, the accused killer of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements, used a straw purchaser to acquire the 9mm semiautomatic handgun used in the shooting.

Ebel, a white supremacist gang member, was a felon and thereby was barred under federal law from possessing a gun.  Had he tried to go into a gun store a buy a gun, he would have failed the background check.  So instead Ebel used the most common method criminals use to acquire firearms: a straw purchaser.  In this case it is alleged that Stevie Marie Vigil, a 22-year-old woman, went in to High Plains Arms to buy a gun on Ebel’s behalf.

The pattern is remarkably similar to the Christmas Eve ambush-murder of two firefighters in Webster, NY.  In that case, a 62-year-old felon named William H. Spengler allegedly relied on a neighbor, Dawn Nguyen, to buy the Bushmaster semiautomatic assault rifle he would use.

In 2009, I led a New York City undercover investigation of illegal gun sales at out-of-state gun shows than showed how easy it is to get away with even a blatant straw purchase – and how some licensed gun dealers are complicit in the practice. The following video, from a gun show in Tennessee, shows a gun dealer enabling an obvious straw purchase where the buyer gets “my friend over here to do some paperwork for me.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), has reported that straw purchasing is the single most common method by which guns get diverted from the legal market to the illegal market.  An ATF study showed that fully 46% of guns related to illegal trafficking involved straw purchasers.

Criminals rely on straw purchases because it’s easy, it’s hard to get caught, and the penalties are light even when cases are brought.

It’s hard to get caught because under federal law, there are no background checks or record-keeping on gun transfers by unlicensed private sellers.  That means it’s legal in most states to buy one gun or 10 and later sell them to someone else.  It’s illegal to buy a gun with the intent of transferring immediately to someone else – but with no background checks, straw purchasers know they are very unlikely to be caught.

And, even if the straw purchaser is caught – which usually happens as in Colorado and Webster, NY after the gun was used in a prominent murder – the penalties are weak.

As Brad Beyersdorf, spokesman for the ATF Denver field division said speaking of the Ebel case, “There’s little-to-no punishment for being a straw purchaser. Gang members know it, drug trafficking organizations know it.”

What’s the solution?  Simple: pass the gun bill that that is coming up for a vote in the Senate next month, which would require universal background checks and substantially raise the penalties for straw purchasers and gun traffickers.

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Republicans With Influence On Immigration Debate Are Top Recipients Of Private Prison Contributions

As the immigration reform debate heats up, private prison executives have made it clear that they are monitoring how it will affect their rates of incarceration. During a call with investors last week, Corrections Corporation of America CEO assured investors that there will “always be demand for beds”, reflecting concern that incarceration rates will actually go down. With many elements of reform left on the negotiating table, the Columbia Journalism Review is showing just how much money the two major private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, have invested in the outcome:

Some of the politicians who have benefited most from this largesse are influential Senators who are now playing key roles in shaping proposed immigration reform legislation.

Among members of Congress, the top two recipients of contributions from CCA are its home-state senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee. The Republican lawmakers, each of whom has received more than $50,000 from CCA according to data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, represent important swing votes for advancing a reform bill through the Senate. Another top CCA recipient is Arizona Republican John McCain, who has gotten $32,146 from CCA and is a member of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” that is working to draft legislation. His fellow Gang of Eight member, Marco Rubio, ranks among the top recipients of contributions from the Florida-based GEO Group, receiving $27,300 in donations over the course of his career.

In recent years, each of these senators has sponsored bills that would have increased the detention and incarceration of immigrants. Legislation put forward by Alexander in 2009, for example, would have provided for “increased alien detention facilities.” And a 2011 bill cosponsored by McCain and Rubio sought to expand Operation Streamline, a federal enforcement program that makes illegal entry a criminal offense in some jurisdictions.

Skyrocketing immigration detention numbers are attributable in part to programs like Operation Streamline and Secure Communities, which link criminal activity to immigration status. But they are also linked to record deportations, as many facing removal subject to mandatory detention while proceedings are pending, leaving judges no discretion to decide whether to release them.

A McCain spokesman told CJR that McCain stands by Operation Streamline, and that he expects it to continue whether or not comprehensive immigration is implemented “because it works.” According to ColorLines, Democratic staffers are concerned that negotiations will lead to an expansion of Operation Streamline and other programs that detain and criminalize immigrants in exchange for support on other core elements of reform.

Immigration detention has more than doubled private prison profits since 1995, and these corporations have not been shy about using their influence to lobby for incarceration-friendly policies, despite claims from both Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group that they do not take official positiions on issues. Those sentenced for immigration offenses make up one of the fastest-growing segments of the United States’ overflowing federal prison population.

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How Ohio’s Plan To Privatize Prison Food Could Lead To Deadly Riots

In an effort to cut costs, Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) is planning to hire a private food vendor to feed 50,179 inmates in the Ohio prison system. The administration argues the decision to outsource prison food will save as much as $16 million a year.

Motivated by a huge state deficit, Ohio has become a laboratory in prison reform — with mixed results. The state sold a prison to Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company, in 2011, only to discover abysmal conditions far below state standards in sanitation, food quality, hygiene, and health care. However, Ohio’s new sentencing reforms are saving the state millions while diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison and into educational and rehabilitative programs.

Ohio’s taste for privatization is likely to make prison food even less appetizing than it already is. Private vendors can skimp on food quality, quantity, and staff in order to make a profit. Unlike state-run cafeterias, private vendors servicing juvenile detention facilities can skip the federal nutrition guidelines for school lunches:

The state Department of Youth Services, which has 469 youths at four detention facilities, spends $6.18 million a year, or $27.60 per inmate per day for food service, said spokeswoman Kim Parsell. The costs are higher because youths don’t help with food prep or cooking, the meals adhere to federal guidelines for school lunches and the teen-aged detainees have higher caloric needs, she said. The state receives $5.51 per day per youth as reimbursement from the national school lunch program. Switching to a private vendor is expected to save DYS about $1.2 million a year, she said.

The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents some 10,000 prison workers, warns that a contractor will pay lower wages, hire fewer people and dish out less food to make a profit. Roughly, 450 state workers in DYS and DRC could end up losing their jobs, though some could apply for other state jobs or perhaps be hired by the contractor.

Tim Shafer, OCSEA operations director, said complaints about inmate food may sound like whining but they contribute to the safety and security of a prison.
“As a former corrections officer, I can tell you one of the best things in the world is a full inmate. They want to sit down and chill out,” Shafer said. Inmates are fed a heart healthy diet that features a rotating menu of dinners such as sloppy joes, fajitas, and chicken and biscuits.

Poor food quality and sanitation have sparked multiple deadly riots at private prisons run by corporations like CCA and GEO Group. In one prison, inmates were fed soup filled with worms, while other prisons served burritos and brownies contaminated with human feces.

The cost-saving claim of the plan is also dubious; Ohio’s last flirtation with Aramark in 1998 ended because the company insisted on being paid by daily inmate count rather than by actual meals served, which drove up costs by $2 million.

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Federal Prison Agency Agrees To Examine U.S. Solitary Confinement Practice

The practice has been deemed torture, cruel and inhumane, and worse than being held hostage in Iran. Yet in the United States, the country with far more prisoners than any other in the world, solitary confinement remains a common practice even for holding juveniles and the mentally ill. In the wake of a Senate hearing on the human rights, fiscal, and safety impacts of confining a prisoner in isolation for months or years at a time, the federal agency tasked with overseeing prisons has agreed for the first time to undertake a close examination of the practice.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons will hire an independent auditor to examine U.S. use of solitary confinement, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced this week after meeting with officials from the National Institute of Corrections, which will carry out the study. There are more than 80,000 people in some sort of isolated U.S. confinement at any given time, and in Durbin’s home state of Illinois, 56 percent of the population has spent time in isolation. Since the Senate hearing spearheaded by Durbin, the Bureau of Prisons says it has reduced the federal segregated population by 25 percent, and that the national agency that oversees state prisons has worked with Mississippi and Colorado to reduce their isolated populations.

Solitary confinement often involves holding prisoners in isolation for 23 hours a day in a small, often windowless cell with a steel door. When prisoners are let out of the cell for showers at least 3 times a week, they are taken to another small, isolated space where they are sometimes locked for extended periods of time. 

This treatment is not reserved for the most dangerous offenders. Solitary confinement is applied to children as young as 13, some of whom are in prison for charges as minimal as nonviolent burglary or drug possession. Sometimes people are placed in isolation as punishment, but other times it is merely for their own protection from other prisoners or as a purported mental health treatment. While many prisoners are held for months or years at a time in solitary, studies show the treatment has detrimental long-term psychological impacts after just ten days. Shane Bauer, who was taken hostage while hiking in Iran, called his experience in isolation – whether in Iran or at the notorious California supermax facility Pelican Bay — a “a living death.” What’s more, a remarkable piece of reporting by Bauer for Mother Jones reveals the process by which inmates are placed in isolation to be arbitrary, secret and virtually irreversible.

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