Let's talk about audacity today, specifically the audacity of the nation's largest private prison firm GEO Group, which is preparing to collect a windfall from Trump's election. From wild exec statements to indefensible legal stances, GEO's audacity has reached new levels. 🧵 Some context first: GEO Group emerged in the 1980s, when it got its first immigration detention contract. Since it has grown into a global corporation with over $2.4 billion in revenues annually, more than half of which comes from federal contracts, primarily with ICE.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS. Local media ran a story this week that is plainly irresponsible and harmful copaganda, parroting claims from the Bristol Country Sheriff that free calls have increased crime in his jail. Here's why that's ridiculous. 🧵
turnto10.com/i-team/inmate-… For context, this week marks the first anniversary of No Cost Calls implementation in Massachusetts, a legislative effort that made all calls across the state's prisons and jails free. Backed by a strong community coalition, it's been wildly successful.
wgbh.org/news/local/202…

Wellpath is the 3rd correctional healthcare provider to file for bankruptcy or liquidate in the last 2 years. It'll survive, but we need to be unpack this story. For-profit prison healthcare providers have been pocketing billions while, quite literally, killing people. THREAD

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1856421859593535871

We're still reading through the filings, which are quickly stacking up. But the multitude of reasons they are in this situation are becoming clear. Almost all of them are related to their inability, or unwillingness, to provide quality care, from staff retention to lawsuits.

There is something huge happening in the prison industry and no one appears to be paying attention: the correctional healthcare sector is collapsing. THREAD

https://twitter.com/worthrises/status/1852479724435509286

WellPath is the next in a line of prison healthcare corporations facing financial troubles. Despite billions in revenue, they can’t seem to stay afloat. Preliminary reporting claims that it’s because of increased labor costs, but that’s not the real story. So what is it?

THREAD 🧵 This game-changing legislation just introduced in NYC has been a long time in the works and has the potential to revolutionize correctional telecom by reversing its invasive reach into our privacy and uprooting the underlying justification for its egregious prices.

https://twitter.com/worthrises/status/1803836286878331068

This effort dates back to 2018, when we passed another first-of-its-kind bill in NYC that made all jail calls free and spurred a nationwide movement for free correctional communication. During the hearing, councilmembers began asking about the surveillance of jail calls.

A mother is no less a mother because she’s incarcerated or her child is. Here’s the story of one mother eager to know her child is safe. 🧵

“This Mother’s Day, do right by us so that we can do right by our children, no matter where they are.” - Susan (NJ)
nj.com/opinion/2024/0… “My son Evan often came home from school in tears. From the age of 5, he was bullied by classmates. Like every mother, my impulse was to hold him close… Now I look back on those days with longing. They were almost easy compared to my day-to-day life today. Evan is in prison.”

First it was, if you make prison calls free, the vendors will pull all their phones out of the walls. Now it's, if you make calls free, we need millions more for increased monitoring costs. These are industry lobbying points to block efforts to make prison calls free. 🧵 Predatory prison telecoms charge high rates for calls and use the concept of security to justify them. Yet, their rates vary dramatically from one jurisdiction to another. Why? Not because their services wildly differ, but because some states are better at negotiating.

THREAD. Predatory prison telecom Securus has just defaulted on over $1 BILLION in debt. After years of preying on incarcerated people and their families, driving many into debt, Securus can't pay its own. Here's the story about how advocacy made this happen.

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1775889114468090276

Securus, owned by Platinum Equity, and its competitor ViaPath (fka GTL) hold 80% of the prison telecom market. Their duopoly allows them to charge egregious rates: $8.25 for a 15-min phone call, $15 for a 25-min video call, and $0.50 for an "email."

Once upon a time, there was a prison telecom named Global Tel Link. It got bad press for exploiting incarcerated people + their families, so it changed its name to @ViaPathTech. Unable to shake its image, private equity owner, American Securities, tried to sell it and failed. 🧵 Global Tel Link is one of the nation's two largest prison telcoms. It is consistently admonished by families, advocates, legislators, and others for charging egregious rates for its subpar communications services: phone calls, video calls, text messages.

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1443611643003424770?s=20

There are initiatives to abolish slavery on ballots around the country today. Yes, we're still working to abolish slavery because of an exception in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But some are voting no due to misinformation.

A civics lesson is in order. (THREAD) This is specifically at issue in Louisiana, where efforts to end slavery are seriously in peril. Some, like the original sponsor who has now abandoned the bill, advocates, and thousands of incarcerated people in his state, have argued that the language on the ballot is confusing.

Recently, @nysfocus reported on NYC's history with predatory jail vendor @JPay_com. Now, let me tell you a disappointing story about NYC's investment relationship with JPay & its parent corps that even progressive Comptroller @BradLander hasn't dropped. 🧵
nysfocus.com/2022/10/21/new… To start, JPay was founded by Ryan Shapiro (currently facing insider trading charges) as a costly prison & jail money transfer vendor. Over the yrs it grew to also sell tablets, tablet-based services, and debit release cards using predatory practices. nytimes.com/2021/10/19/bus…

THIS WEEKEND, outgoing @MassGovernor @CharlieBakerMA killed a bill, 3 years in the works, that would've connected thousands of MA families because the legislature blocked him from expanding pretrial detention. Only a special session can save the bill now. Here's what happened. 👇 Context first. Families pay egregious call rates to speak to incarcerated loved ones. These rates, which run up to $0.14 per minute in MA, help drive 1 in 3 families dealing with incarceration into debt. And 87% of those who are incarcerated are women.

As a multiple rape survivor, let me say that exiling ppl who have caused sexual harm is counterproductive.

81% of women, 43% of men, and many who are GNC have experienced sexual harm. We must stop pretending there’s just 1 or 2 ppl causing this harm. It’s the ppl we love. 🧵

https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1503720979792646148

Of all violence, sexual harm is perhaps what we should be talking about the most because it's incredibly common but also the most taboo and underreported -- and that's not a coincidence. We can't fix something that we don't talk about -- it isn't helping victims, it's hurting us.

$Prison 11: @SCRAMsystems

We wrap up our foray into e-carceration with the leading manufacturer and distributor of electronic monitors, SCRAM Systems. Its monitors have caused those forced to wear them grave health issues. 🧵

(Pictures included with permission, TRIGGER WARNING) SCRAM started in alcohol monitoring in 2003. Over the next decade, it worked with legislators to include its "Continuous Alcohol Monitoring" in DUI laws across the country and adoption quickly grew. In 2010, SCRAM expanded into house arrest and broader correctional monitoring.

$Prison 10: @TrackGroupInc

Track Group (founded as SecureAlert in 2007 and rebranded in 2014) is yet another major player in e-carceration. The IL-based, publicly traded corp reported a record $40 million in revenue in 2021. I won't recount the travesties that this corp imposes on people on its electronic monitors, they're the same as those we've already discussed with BI, Attenti, STOP, and Sentinel.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…

$Prison 9: Satellite Tracking of People (STOP) owned by @PlatinumEquity

Meet e-carerator STOP, another major electronic monitoring corp that contracts with over 700 law enforcement agencies in 43 states. In 2020, STOP brought in $34M in revenue, and likely even more in 2021. STOP was founded in 2004 and acquired by prison telecom giant @SecurusTech (the subject of a future thread) in 2013 for an undisclosed amount. Then, in 2017, Securus was acquired by @PlatinumEquity, which is owned by @DetroitPistons owner @TomGores.

$Prison 8: Sentinel Offender Services owned by Bison Capital

CA-based Sentinel Offender Services is another major electronic monitoring corp and the proud pioneer of the "offender-funded" model that allows law enforcement to pass the cost of e-carceration onto people it tracks. So, what is the financial cost of e-carceration? It can vary widely agency to agency, ranging from no cost to hundreds of dollars per month.

issuu.com/gwlawpubs/docs…

$Prison 7: @AttentiUS owned by @apax_partners

Meet e-carcerator Attenti, an Israeli-based corp that prides itself on being "the global leader in electronic monitoring for over 25 yrs." Attenti does electronic monitoring in over 30 countries, tracking over 200,000 people. Founded in 1994, Attenti has changed hands several times. Most recently, in 2017, major conglomerate @3M sold Attenti at a loss to private equity firm @apax_partners for $200 million. 3M had bought the corp in 2010 for $230 million.
haaretz.com/israel-news/bu…

$Prison 6: BI Incorporated

Transitioning from private prisons, let's talk about e-carceration (aka electronic monitoring). BI, a subsidiary of private prison giant @GEOGroup, is now the nation's largest e-carcerator with 155,000 people on their monitors. As their business falls out of public favor, private prisons have diversified their revenue streams into community corrections. GEO Group made a specific bet and major investment in e-carceration when it acquired CO-based BI in 2011 for $415M in cash.
businesswire.com/news/home/2011…

$Prison 5: @AkimaGlobal Services (AGS)

This is dark. The next private prison corp we'll look at is a subsidiary of Akima, an Alaska Native Corp dedicated to creating "a long-lived asset for our Iñupiat shareholders." Akima is #63 on Bloomberg's top federal contractors list. With 8,000 employees, Akima is actually a portfolio of 8(a) companies. These are companies that qualify as small disadvantaged businesses. The federal government aims to award at least 5% of all federal contracting dollars to 8(a) companies.

akima.com/our-company/

$Prison 4: LaSalle Corrections

Meet the nation's 4th largest private prison operator. These names are likely becoming less and less familiar, but no less harmful. Once a nursing home operator, LaSalle now operates private prisons in Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, and Arizona. LaSalle has made plenty of headlines for the deplorable conditions in its jails, prisons, and detention centers, but none quite as horrific as the stories out of the Irwin County Detention Center that led ICE to remove all the people it detained there.
ajc.com/news/all-ice-d…