Introduction

The primary focus is the seven county metropolitan area of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, but any fellow CO is welcome to post.

The reason this blog exists is an attempt to unify the pay, benefits and working conditions of all Metro-Area CO's.

This blog is not designed to be a bully pulpit for any one organized labor group, but rather a place for all of us who are united in the same field.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Private Prisons? For profit NOT safe!

With Only Your Wits and an Empty Can of Pepper Spray to Protect You

By Claire Gardner, Community Engagement Associate, ACLU of Tennessee at 12:27pm
Listen, Trousdale County, Tennessee, I get it: When a big, powerful corporation comes to town and promises 400 new jobs, that's a huge deal. Especially if you're a small, rural community of hardworking people trying to make an honest living.
So I get the impulse to be excited by the deal your commissioners just signed with the Corrections Corporation of America to open a new prison. But before y'all start submitting applications, let me tell you a little about working for the Corrections Corporation of America.
CCA has a track record of cutting corners to save money – often at the expense of their employees.
Just ask Sergeant Leonard King.
Like the people of Trousdale County, Leonard King just wanted to make an honest living working at a CCA prison over in Ada County, Idaho. At first, Sgt. King thought he'd work as a guard for CCA until he retired. Now he and his former co-workers are suing the private prison giant.
Sgt. King contends that staff were regularly put in harms' way so CCA could cut expenses – down to giving guards radios with dead batteries and containers of pepper spray with nothing inside, instructing them to "just fake it" if things got dicey. Understaffing was such a problem that at night, one guard would be expected to manage up to 300 prisoners by himself.

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