For Profit Prisons Suck

In yet another fraud, this time involving at least two judges in Pennsylvania, we are learning more about how corrupting the transformation of essential government functions into private businesses for profit can be. This seems to have been one of the chief objectives of ideological Republican law making.

This time, however, the corruption becomes sickening, because it involves our children.

Operating under the rather benign name "Western PA Child Care" and "PA Child Care," these companies operate juvenile facilities for wayward teens. But the companies were wayward, kicking back $2.6 million to two judges to reward the jurists for sentencing kids to time rather than compel participation in programs that would keep families intact. The real pity is that the children sentenced to time in Child Care come from some of the most economically devoured communities in Western Pennsylvania.

As if Halliburton in Iraq and Blackwater, aka Xe, anywhere it operated, didn't provide enough evidence to warn us about the dangers of removing essential functions out of government into profit companies, especially companies whose stock might not be publicly traded and therefore shrouded in secrecy. Accountability, remember? Xe will now be shifting its work from providing security to training governments in security. And we know how much Blackwater aka Xe, appreciates those rules contained in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Remember New Orleans post Katrina? Remember Baghdad?