FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 23, 2016; Updated February 29, 2016

Minnesota community, faith, labor & civil rights groups unite to spotlight private prison company’s troubling history

National Public Interest Organization Releases Issue Brief on Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)

(MINNEAPOLIS, MN) – A coalition of Minnesota-based community, faith, labor and civil rights organizations has come together to oppose the public lease of a long-shuttered facility in Appleton, MN, owned by Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), a private prison corporation.

The new coalition, led by ISAIAH, a faith-based organization of 100 congregations across Minnesota, launched today to raise awareness about CCA’s track record of cutting corners for the sake of profit. CCA’s history, summarized in a new issue brief released by In the Public Interest, a national non-profit resource and policy center, includes deadly riots, prisoner deaths, lawsuits, accidental releases, and high guard turnover.

CCA’s troubling history includes:

  • In 2013, CCA was held in contempt of the court for failing to fix a staffing shortage at the Idaho Correctional Center, a facility so violent that prisoners called it “Gladiator School.” The company had relinquished control of the facility to gangs to save money on employee wages.
  • In 2012, only a year into CCA’s control of the Lake Erie facility in Ohio, state audits found staff mismanagement, widespread violence, delays in medical treatment, and “unacceptable living conditions.” CCA has been fined over $500,000 by the state for these violations.
  • The CCA-run Eloy Federal Contract Facility in Arizona has the highest number of known deaths of any detention facility, including at least six suicides since 2003.

Click here to read the issue brief “Corrections Corporation of America’s Troubling Track Record”

“Minnesota’s incarceration rate is increasing, while most states are bending the curve in the other direction,” said Rev. Paul Slack, President of ISAIAH. “Profiting from human incarceration violates our faith values, and is even more troubling when the profiteers have such a heinous human rights record.”

The privately owned prison has been vacant for over six years and is located three and half hours by car west of the Twin Cities. Private prison operators often send prisoners to facilities far away from their homes. For example, in 1998, when it was operational, Prairie Correctional Facility only held 70 prisoners from Minnesota—the rest were shipped in from Colorado, Hawaii, and North Dakota.

“Placing prisoners so far from their families and communities is both cruel and counter-productive,” says Dr. Rebecca Shlafer, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. “There are more than 16,000 Minnesota children with a parent in prison. Recent research conducted by the MN Department of Corrections shows that prison visitation reduces recidivism up to 25%. We should be taking steps to remove barriers to visitation, not increase them.”

The coalition to oppose CCA in Minnesota includes ISAIAH, AFSCME Council 5, Centro Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha, Jewish Community Action, NAACP Minneapolis, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC), MN AFL-CIO, MAPE, MPIRG, TakeAction Minnesota, Minnesotans for a Fair Economy and the MN state chapter of Service Employees International Union.

“Giving Minnesota taxpayer dollars to CCA—even if it’s a lease—would give a foothold in our criminal justice system to a company that has shown itself to be a bad actor by repeatedly failing to follow basic regulations and standards,” said Eliot Seide, Executive Director of AFSCME Council 5.

“It would be a travesty of justice for our state government to reopen a CCA-owned prison facility. We don’t need more prison beds in Minnesota. Instead, we need to invest more resources in reducing recidivism and overhauling our probation system,” said Prof. Jason Sole, Chair, Criminal Justice Reform Committee, Minneapolis NAACP.

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ISAIAH is an organization of congregations, clergy and people of faith throughout Minnesota working for racial and economic justice.

In the Public Interest is a nonprofit research and policy center committed to promoting the values, vision, and agenda for the common good and democratic control of public goods and services.

AFSCME Council 5 is a union of 43,000 workers who advocate for excellence in services for the public, dignity in the workplace, and opportunity and prosperity for working families. The union includes 1,900 correctional officers who work in Minnesota’s state-run prisons.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha  (CTUL) organizes low-wage workers from across the Twin Cities to develop leadership and educate one another to build power and lead the struggle for fair wages, better working conditions, basic respect, and a voice in our workplaces.

Jewish Community Action Jewish Community Action brings together Jewish people from diverse traditions and perspectives to promote understanding and take action on social and economic justice issues in Minnesota.

Minnesota AFL-CIO is the state federation of labor representing over 300,000 members of over 1,000 local unions throughout Minnesota. The mission of the Minnesota AFL-CIO is to improve the lives of working families—to bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to our state and the nation.

Minnesota Association of Professional Employees: For more than 35 years, MAPE’s 13,000 state employees have made Minnesota a great place to live, work and play. The union represents professional employees including case workers, agents, therapists and psychologists in the Department of Corrections.

Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG) is a grassroots, nonpartisan, nonprofit, student-directed organization that empowers and trains students and engages the community to take collective action in the public interest throughout the state of Minnesota 

NAACP – Minneapolis Chapter  The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.

Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC) is a grassroots member-led organization building power in under-resourced communities and communities of color across the Twin Cities, focused on the intersection of race, the economy and public policy.

Service Employee International Union Minnesota State Council — By building the political involvement of 53,000 SEIU members throughout the state, the SEIU Minnesota State Council is working to improve the lives of all Minnesotans. 

TakeAction Minnesota is a statewide people’s network of individual and organizational members working together to motivate people to act publicly in order to advance economic and racial equity in our state. The organization has offices in St. Paul, Duluth and Grand Rapids.