Watch Detention Watch Network, and Join the Network

The member conference of the Detention Watch Network is coming up (Sept. 24-25), and many of its members believe it is time to organize to demand that the Obama administration establish enforceable minimum standards for immigrant detention. In this video, you can see why DWN is one of the most dynamic and effective instances of ongoing social issues networking. DWN is a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to educate the public and policy makers about the U.S. immigration detention and deportation system and advocate for humane reform so that all who come to our shores receive fair and humane treatment. DWN says:

"We believe that by working together we can effect greater change in the immigration detention system. Our members and supporters include organizations providing services to those in immigration detention and their families, and organizations and individuals advocating on behalf of those in immigration detention. We are lawyers, activists, social workers, national advocates, students, community organizers, faith communities, former detainees, and affected families from around the country."

You can join this inspirng network by going to: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/joinus And if you would like a tour of ICE immigrant detention centers and the community organizations working for detained immigrants, go to DWN’s helpful detention map: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/dwnmap

Speculative Prisons in Texas

(The Prison State of Texas, Part II)
ICE, USMS, and BOP all have contracts and agreements with county governments – most of them impoverished – that then subcontract the prison business to private prison companies in return for a small percentage of the per diem payments. Many of the immigrant prisons are financed by revenue bonds with lease-purchase contracts. They are revenue bonds rather than general obligation bonds because rather than being secured by the “full faith and credit” of the issuer, they are sold to investors based on assurances that the bonds will be paid through revenues generated by the projects the bonds finance, namely prisons. Revenue bonds aren’t issued by governments but by public corporations established by governments – in the Texas case, public facility corporations – that typically exist solely for the purpose of issuing revenue bonds. But rather than having these public facility corporations own the prisons, the corporation, which exists only on paper, leases the prison back to the local government. As it pays the lease, the government is also buying the prison from the corporation, and will own it when the bonds mature – usually in 15-20 years. The government entity usually enters into an agreement with a federal government agency or corrections institute from another state. Under this agreement or contract, the local government agrees to take responsibility for the care of inmates provided by the federal agency, and then the local government immediately turns around and signs a subcontract with the private operator to assume its prison responsibilities. When the bond comes to term, the local government will own the prison and the bond investors will have earned high, tax-exempt interest for 15-20 years. During this time, the commissioners’ court will, by way of contract with the private operator, receive a small fee – usually $1-3 per inmate per day – from the private operator. One problem is that after 20 years of occupancy, the prison building depreciates so it may be of little or no value when the county assumes ownership. Another problem is that there is a federal agency like ICE or USMS doesn’t provide any guarantee that it will provide any number of inmates over any period. The agency simply signs an intergovernmental agreement, which states that the county is authorized to receive federal prisoners. Because there is no guarantee that prisoners will be placed once the prison is open, most immigrant prisons are what are known in the prison trade as “speculative prisons.” Texas Counties and Prison Debt Data from the Texas Bond Review Board shows that 18 Texas counties are financing prisons through revenue bonds based on lease-purchase agreements. At a time when the state of Texas had finally started to stabilize its prison population, local governments were incurring more prison debt. The amount of prison debt outstanding rose from $573.7 million in FY 2007 to $622 million in FY 2008, “a substantial $48.4 million increase.” That 8 percent increase came following a 41 percent increase between fiscal years 2006 and 2007. Over the past ten years there has been a nearly six-fold increase in county prison debt in Texas.
Next: High Per Capita Debt Shows Long-Term Commitment to Prison Business

The Prison State of Texas

Texas is a national leader, having the nation’s highest percentage of residents who are uninsured, the highest percentage without a high school diploma, and the highest number of state-authorized executions.

It also leads the nation in the number of privately operated prisons and the number of prisons dedicated to immigrant detention. For decades it has been brandishing its “lock-‘em up” reputation, enthusiastically joining in the nationally declared wars on crime and drugs that were launched in the 1970s by the Nixon administration.

From 1978 to 2004, the inmate population rose 573 percent, while the state’s population increased only 67 percent. The cost of imprisonment as strategy to address crime and drug use has recently forced the state government to reconsider continuing to grow its penal system. In 2007 the state projected that if its prison population continued to grow at the same rate, the state would need 17,000 more prison beds at the cost of nearly $1 billion.

However, as a recent Washington Post article reported, the state government has wised up with new policies that promote alternatives to sentencing that encourage probation, parole, and treatment instead of prison. According to the Pew Center on the States, it costs an average of $79 a day to keep an inmate in prison but about $3.50 a day to monitor the same person on probation or parole.

Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center’s Public Safety Performance Project, told the Post that more than half the states are trying to reduce the growth in their prison populations through alternative sentencing. "The economy is bringing a lot of states to the table," Gelb said, "and the research has pointed to a path for them to more public safety at less cost."

As a result, the prison population in Texas started dropping for the first time in 2007, gratifying state lawmakers concerned about rising correctional expenses in a state notoriously reluctant to raise taxes.

Prisons for Profit

But state prisons are just one part of Texas’ penal geography. The state has also seen an explosion of county prisons built to attract prison populations from other jurisdictions, largely other states and an array of federal agencies.

A 2004 study by the Urban Institute, "The New Landscape of Imprisonment: Mapping America's Prison Expansion,” found that Texas led all states in prison construction between 1979 and 2000. Texas opened 137 new prisons – a 706-percent increase.

"Texas is in a league of its own," explained the study’s coauthor Jeremy Travis. "Texas added the most prisons, saw the largest percentage increase in its network of prisons, entered the new century with the largest number of prisons, had the biggest growth in counties that are home to at least one prison, and had the most counties increasing their prison count by three or more facilities."

Instead of costing local taxpayers money, a still-expanding network of prisons and detention centers in Texas is earning new revenues for more than two dozen county and city governments. In conjunction with private prison firms, local governments in Texas have since the mid-1980s led the way in establishing prisons for profit.

It is still taxpayer money that paying the per diems of the inmates, but the costs of the new prisons doesn’t draw down local or state revenues. Rather the billion dollar business draws per-diem payments from other states attracted by the relatively low cost of imprisonment in Texas but mainly from the federal government.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) have all found Texas the most attractive state in the nation to place federal inmates. Most of the business that these three agencies do in the state involves immigrant prisoners and detainees.

Photo/Tom Barry: Border Patrol in Del Rio, Texas, waiting for immigrants to arrest and imprison under Operation Streamline

Next: Speculative Prisons in Texas

Former Bush Security Chiefs Find Terrorism Obsession Can Be Profitable

Contracts with the Department of Homeland Security are spewing billions of dollars into private industry, largely to companies that also rely on Pentagon military contracts. In this new variation of the military-industrial complex a new revolving door is now in full swing. A new policy report from the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC has released a new policy report on the homeland security businesses started by former DHS chiefs Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff.

Bigger and Badder Than Blackwater

Blackwater USA, the world’s largest private security firm (recently renamed Xe), is the subject of much public concern about the outsourcing of security to private companies because of the murders of 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians by its mercenaries. But there is a bigger story that is not being covered in the media or attracted public concern – let alone a new policy approach by the Democrats in Congress or the White House. That is the outsourcing of U.S. intelligence, which now constitutes an estimated 70% of the classified (but always increasing) intelligence budget. One of the companies that has benefited from this privatization of intelligence is CACI International, a major defense contractor, which is also a major homeland security and intelligence contractor. CACI recently was in the business press because of its latest revolving door success. It has brought former U.S. Navy Secretary and former DOD deputy defense secretary in the Bush administration into the folds of its board of directors. (See: Pentagon Official Returns) Homeland Security is CACI’s Business CACI, a major Pentagon contractor, now lists homeland security as a top focus. And it is being rewarded by a string of DHS contracts. CACI also lists intelligence as a core business activity. Specializing in information systems, CACI now relies on a new mix of defense, homeland security, and intelligence contracts related to cybersecurity and cyberwarfare. On July 29 CACI was awarded $94 million contract with the National Protection and Program Directorate of DHS. Under the contract, CACI provides “infrastructure protection,” work that, according to CACI, “expands CACI's presence in the DHS with wide-ranging mission support.” As a company with information systems and intelligence capacities, CACI is contracted to “enhance communications by managing, processing, and coordinating the flow of information across the DHS and with Protective Security Advisors (PSAs). The new project is an extension of CACI’s Automated Critical Asset Management System (ACAMS), an information-sharing project to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure. It is also related to CACI’s work since 2006 on DHS’ Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions (EAGLE) program, an IT planning and policy initiatives that spans most DHS agencies, including the Border Patrol. CACI says that its work on the EAGLE program makes its company motto, “Ever Vigilant,” “especially meaningful.” With respect to EAGLE and other homeland security operations, CACI asserts that its DHS contracts provide “the needed services and solutions that make us a national asset for national missions.” Over the past several years CACI has blossomed into a major homeland security company. According to CACI, its homeland security operations comprise: Business System Solutions; C4ISR Integration Services; Cyber Security, Information Assurance, Information Operations; Integrated Security, Intelligence Solutions; Program Management, SETA Support Services, and Data, Information, Knowledge Management Services. Intelligence for Sale CACI says that “effective information management drives the efficacy, interaction and ultimate success of intelligence collection and analysis.” This information management and IT capacity has make CACI a major “intelligence community” contractor. An estimated 70% of the government’s new work by the “intelligence community” (including 16 civilian and military agencies) is now contracted to companies like CACI, according to a classified study by the Director of National Intelligence. In his new book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, investigative journalist Tim Shorrock documents the surge in intelligence outsourcing during the Bush administration – and which continues into the Obama administration. Along with two other contractors, CACI was awarded on August 19 a five-year $900 million contract with the Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD). The new contract will extend CACI’ 21-year history with intelligence support for the Information Warfare Directorate and allow it to continue pursuing its goal “modernize the Army’s intelligence and information-warfare capabilities.” As CACI notes, the new defense/intelligence contract will bolster the company’s business in the expanding frontier of intelligence and information, growing CACI’s “business in command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programs.” Along with intelligence comes counterintelligence, and CACI boasts of its “industry-leading counterintelligence capabilities and innovative network surveillance and response technology.” Thus far in 2009 CACI has been awarded, or is designated prime contractor, federal contracts worth $3.5 billion with DOD, DHS, and the “intelligence community.” Many of CACI contracts are with unnamed “clients in the national security and intelligence communities.” Announcing $133 million in classified projects on August 3, CACI’s president of U.S. operations described CACI’s cross agency role in information systems and cybersecurity, stating: “CACI offers trusted and proven solutions to support critical missions in such areas as homeland security, defense and civilian intelligence, and law enforcement. Our uniquely qualified professionals enable us to provide a wide range of security and intelligence support services to help our clients counter threats both at home and abroad." In its new release of the intelligence contracts, CACI led the announcement with the statement: “Our intelligence business continues to expand.” Both the company’s description of combined defense, homeland security, and intelligence operations and its boast of expanding intelligence business could just as well be applied to scores of other companies in the emerging industrial complex serving the government’s national security agencies. As a New York Times (May 30) article on private-sector involvement in cyberwarfare observed: “Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.” Back through the revolving door, England’s dual roles as former Pentagon official and former defense industry executive place him and his new private-sector firms in a key position to take full advantage of the new defense/homeland security/intelligence complex. There’s no question that the new complex is good for business.

Homeland is a Battleground Without Liability

One of the earliest indications that the Department of Homeland Security was going to be a font contracts and opportunities for the defense and security industries was Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002, otherwise known as the SAFETY Act. Passed immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks as part of the legislation creating DHS, the Safety Act basically provides a liability shield to manufacturers of anti-terrorism technology. According to DHS, the Safety Act is intended to “encourage the development and deployment of new and innovative anti-terrorism products and services.” This government liability protection also covers software and other intellectual property.

It fosters this development not through government contracts but through government guarantees—shielding technology providers from liability lawsuits in the event of product failure during a terrorist attack.

DHS has already put its liability-free stamp of approval -- the Qualified Anti-Terrorism Technology designation -- on more than 300 counterterrorism technologies.

The Safety Act product is the American Anti-Ram (AAR) vehicle barricade. It is a product of American Defense Systems (ADSI), which sells advanced transparent and opaque armor, architectural hardening and security products for defense and homeland security.

The business-friendly measure to boost the security industry has received little notice or criticism outside the booming homeland security industry. However, one legal critique of the Safety Act likens it the system used by the Pentagon to obstruct liability suits against defense contractors. According to a legal analysis in FindLaw:

“The government contractor defense used to simply mean this: When a soldiers is killed based on a product defect -- say, a faulty gun -- he cannot sue the Pentagon's suppliers. Now it also means this: When a civilian is killed based on a defect in a Qualified Anti-Terrorism Technology -- say, a gas mask -- he cannot sue the mask's manufacturer, even if it is a purely civilian company.

“The symbolic message is clear. America is a battlefield. We are all soldiers, even civilians. And civilian suppliers of antiterrorism technologies are like Pentagon suppliers, for they too prepare us for war -- the war on terror.

“We are no longer consumers buying products who can then file product liability suits. We are soldiers provisioning ourselves with supplies, and we do so at own risk; we cannot sue our suppliers, for this is war, and they must continue to produce our supplies at all costs….

“But there is a crucial problem with the way this logic plays itself out in the SAFETY Act. “If civilians are like soldiers, then the government is treating its "soldiers" shabbily, when it passes measures like the SAFETY Act. In the military, injured soldiers benefit from pensions and medical care (and are provided with protective technologies; they do not purchase them). Thus, what the government takes away with one hand -- the chance to sue -- it gives with the other.

“But civilians who are injured by defective products, under the SAFETY Act, have their rights to sue taken away, without getting anything in return. That's not right. By comparison, the September 11 Victims' Compensation Fund, though it limited the right to sue, gave the victims of that attack something in return: A compensation award.”

Bush DOD Official Returns to Business

Gordon England, the former deputy secretary of defense who replaced the controversial Paul Wolfowitz in 2005, has returned from whence he came. England came to the Bush administration from the defense industry, and at the end of the administration he passed back through the revolving door joining government and industry.

But the military-industrial complex is not what is used to be. Over the last eight years a new complex has emerged. It’s no longer simply a realm occupied by just Pentagon and defense contractors.

During the Bush administration the intelligence and security businesses have exploded with federal contracts, spurring the creation and evolution of corporations that depend on three income streams: defense, homeland security, and intelligence contracts.

Upon leaving government, England became president of E6 Partners, which is an international business company that has a “special emphasis in the defense and security sectors.” England’s two partners in this startup consulting firm also passed back through the revolving door to the private sector after leaving high positions at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, where they specialized in technology and procurement.

England recently made the news when he was appointed to the board of CACI International. CACI is a major homeland security, intelligence, and military contractor, which has been reaping in hundreds of millions of new contracts in the last year.

Not only does England bring his experience and contacts as deputy defense secretary to the private sector. He is also an attractive addition to the emerging defense/homeland security/intelligence complex because of his former position as secretary of Navy during the first George W. Bush administration.

England came to government from industry. His industry experience before being tapped by President Bush to be Navy secretary included being vice president at General Dynamic, president of Lockheed Ft. Worth, and space engineer at Honeywell.Following the Sept. 11 attacks, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) awarded Secretary of Navy England its Henry M. Jackson Service Award.

JINSA is a Washington, DC policy institute that represents the interests of Israel’s right-wing Likud party and the Israeli military, and it is closely associated with the U.S. neoconservative camp and U.S. military contractors.

Next: Intelligence Contracting Extends Far Beyond Blackwater