Thread by @ImmCivilRights

Thread

Today a federal judge in Nashville disclosed never before seen communications by execs at CoreCivic (previously known as Corrections Corporation of America or CCA).

Everyone concerned about #PrivatePrisons should see and share these shocking, crazy admissions. /1

For context, this case is a suit by a bunch of shareholders alleging CCA’s leadership defrauded them by saying one thing about the company’s relationship with its federal BOP contract partners, while they were saying quite different, much more negative stuff to each other. /2

Court noted in FN2 that many of these statements had been filed under seal pursuant to the parties’ agreed protective order but concerns about revealing the company’s sensitive business information to competitors overblown. Embarrassment of CCA didn’t justify sealing evidence. /3

So let’s look at what CCA was telling the public and compare to what its CEO and top brass saying to each other. /4

Mar 30, 2016 CEO Damon Hininger tells shareholders in an annual letter that CCA “consistently” meets the needs of its government partners.

/5

Jun. 8, 2016: CEO Hininger tells investor forum CCA is providing high quality and standard and consistent services to their partners and if they “continue to do a good job on the quality” they’ll continue to grow. /6

Now let’s look at what they were saying behind closed doors to each other . . .

/7

Oct. 22, 2015

CEO Hininger gets an email from another CCA exec saying “we had a bad day today with BOP medical audit at Cibola”

Sometime after October 2015, a separate email warned “This is going to kill us at both Cibola and Eden.”

/8

But that was not an isolated incident, says the Court.

June 2016 - Responding to the “not NOT GOLDEN” “silence” from the BOP after a review, a senior CCA exec puts it bluntly: “We’re dead.”

/9

Jul. 28, 2016

A CCA-affiliated lobbyist forwards an email chain warning the corporate brass in Nashville that BOP was calling around other private prison contractors to see about taking over facilities whose contracts CCA would soon lose. /10

When the DOJ Office of Inspector General issued what all agree was a scathing report regarding the comparative safety and operation of private prisons, including those run by CCA, versus publicly run BOP facilities, CCA execs were actually breathing a huge sigh of relief. Why?/11

That’s because, according to a “shocked” CCA executive who was speaking about an advance copy of the OIG report, the report “totally overlooked the “consequences” of the company’s staff vacancies.”

So the OIG report saying CCA doesn’t offer real value was a “false alarm.” /12

A key part of CCA’s eventual response to the critiques in the report: blame immigrants.

According to the company large number of foreign nationals in its private prisons due posed “unique security challenges.”

Keep in mind, internally, execs said it could have been worse. /13

Today’s ruling by Judge Trauger certifying a class of shareholders who can potentially recover for the fraud CCA execs are allegedly to have perpetrated on the company’s shareholders is only one form of accountability.

Govts who would do business w CCA can impose another.
/14

All of us—individually as citizens, investors, and voters, and collectively as democratically accountable institutions, might consider taking a step back and contemplating what “business” this company is doing when it takes taxpayer dollars to cage human beings for profit. /End

POST-SCRIPT #1:
CoreCivic lost its Cibola contract with BOP due to these medical and safety issues.
But guess who swooped in? ICE.

Cibola was Roxsana Hernandez’s final place of detention before being hospitalized last year.

#JusticeforRoxsana

POST-SCRIPT # 2:
Guess where the head of the BOP went shortly after being excoriated by the OIG’s office for management of private prison contracts?

CoreCivic.

nashvillepost.com/business/priso…