Guantanamo Bay Company wants to run Private NZ Prisons

Guantanamo Bay firm puts in fresh bid to run Kiwi prisons
A US company that runs an immigration detention centre at the notorious Guantanamo Bay detainment facility in Cuba wants to work again in New Zealand by managing the combined Auckland Central Remand Prison and the new Mt Eden prison.

Open mouthed shocked look now shall we folks? The company running a detention centre in Guantanamo Bay wants to run private prisons in NZ? Let's all collectively shudder. GEO is the company who are currently trying to get the private prison contracts and their competition is a firm who are associated with Guantanamo Bay, it almost makes GEO look good. Almost.

GEO has a pretty bad reputation overseas...

The GEO Group has in the past been accused of abusing prisoners and inadequate care resulting in preventable deaths, especially since 2005 at its US facilities in Pennsylvania, Texas and Indiana.

...and at the select committee meeting last year looking into Private Prisons, GEO Group Australia managing director Pieter Bezuidenhout had this to say...

While National MPs had emphasised cost savings, that should not be the only driver, Mr Bezuidenhout said. "Privatisation is not about cost savings. If that's all you want to achieve I am saying that you are knocking at the wrong door. "Privatisation will bring an enhanced public service because you've got a mixed economy, and in a mixed economy both the private operator and the public service will improve and enhance service."

What? Mixed economy? Is that the fucking best they’ve got? We should have a company take the rights off citizens and allow them to make profit from incarceration at the risk of their profit motivation sending us into a prison nation all for the none-definable reward of a ‘mixed economy’? Oh come on, someone paid for this guys airfare for crying out loud and that’s the best he’s got? Jesus mate did you come up with that in the taxi ride in? Oh the joy of a mixed economy, let us flutter in the memorial garden of Adam Smith, we have a mixed fucking economy. Mana from heaven brothers and sisters, there is no depression in NZ. Is he for real?

Private Prisons WON'T save us a cent, the bloody CEO himself has pointed that out, yet we are opening ourselves up to having corporate profit margins warp social policy on an issue as important as imprisoning people.

Here's my favourite bit from the story today..

But the Act Party's spokesman for corrections matters, David Garrett, said the criticism aimed at privately run prisons appeared to be ideological because the evidence suggested they outperformed publicly run facilities. "Where is it written in stone that running prisons is a state function?

...now of course David comes from the Sensible Sentencing Trust, who may or may not receive funding from GEO, we don't know because the SST protects their funding with the same tenacity that the Mafia do. Overseas corporate prisons fund victims rights groups to create a shrill anger in the public debate so that longer and harsher sentences becomes the only mantra. This is great for the private prison company because they directly profit from more people in prison doing longer time, indeed the only one who truly benefits from the recent 3 strikes raw meat policy is actually the private prison industry.

So we are either handing private prisons to make a profit off the forced labour of prisoners to GEO with a record of overseas prisoner deaths or a company associated with Guantanamo Bay. How have we allowed things to get this bad this quick under National?