Private Prisons Move Into Public Schools

lock·down /ˈläkˌdoun/

Noun:  The confining of prisoners to their cells, typically during a riot.

“At 9 a.m. on the morning of October 31, 2012, students at Vista Grande High School in Casa Grande were settling in to their daily routine when something unusual occurred.

Vista Grande High School Principal Tim Hamilton ordered the school — with a student population of 1,776 — on “lock down,” kicking off the first “drug sweep” in the school’s four-year history. According to Hamilton, “lock down” is a state in which, “everybody is locked in the room they are in, and nobody leaves — nobody leaves the school, nobody comes into the school.”

“Everybody is locked in, and then they bring the dogs in, and they are teamed with an administrator and go in and out of classrooms. They go to a classroom and they have the kids come out and line up against a wall. The dog goes in and they close the door behind, and then the dog does its thing, and if it gets a hit, it sits on a bag and won’t move.”

Read Full Story “Corrections Corporation of America Used in Drug Sweeps of Public School Student” By Beau Hodai, PRWatch | Report

How many parents imagine when they send their child off to school in the morning that there is a possibility of that child being placed on lockdown, unreasonably searched & exposed to drug dogs – as if they were a convicted criminal?

In the case above, there was no spike in drug use on campus and no justifiable reason for the school to bring in prison canine units to search the students. When asked about the raid, Principal Hamilton stated that, outside from this desire to send a “message to kids,” he had no knowledge of any particular drug use problem on his school’s campus.

Why disrupt classes to bring in prison employees simply to ‘deliver a message’? What is the REAL message Mr. Hamilton is sending here?

Most school districts ended the practice of sending kids to the principal’s office for a paddling years ago…general consensus was that violence begets violence and corporal punishment has no place in the school system. But now…we allow police stations and drug dogs in our schools and no objections are raised? Amazing…

Not only are we indoctrinating kids into believing that it is normal for police forces to march through the hallways conducting unjustifiable searches – we are allowing CHILDREN to be searched by PRISON EMPLOYEES.

In shocking CCTV footage of a prison riot, guards kicked and punched young inmates who were already in handcuffs.

 For those who still might not see the issue here or for those who would justify a search like this as a ‘necessary evil’ in our quest to keep kids safe, let me point out a few facts about the corporation that the city of Casa Grande brought in to ‘assist’ with this (unreasonable & unjustified) search of students –

Corrections Corporation of America is NOT a law enforcement agency and has ZERO AUTHORITY over our schools or our children.

CCA has a track record of human rights abuses dating back over 20 years and they are responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of prisoners. CCA operates for-profit prisons that have been sued and fined multiple times for instances of violence, negligence, rape & drug abuse in their prisons; if they were a single individual they would be serving over 500 years for their crimes. One CCA facility in Idaho has become known as a “Gladiator School” due to excessive violence among prisoners and staff. In spite of lawsuits ruling against CCA, the prison still violates policies and has yet to make the mandated improvements.

Inmate Hanni Elabed is beaten by a fellow inmate while guards watch at an Idaho prison run by CCA.

CCA has continually tried to avoid accountability for wrong-doings within their facilities & have spent a great deal of time looking for ways to avoid reporting incidents of rape at their prisons to CCA shareholders. In this document from the SEC, it is made clear that CCA went so far as to try to dismiss the importance of such reporting by claiming that the request was being made by a former convict with an ax to grind…which of course was found NOT to be the case. But it is a good example of just how desperate CCA is to keep a lid on their widespread misconduct and human rights’ abuses.

Would you really want a company willing to cover up physical abuses and rapes anywhere near your school aged children? Hell, would you want them around ANYONE in your family? I personally wouldn’t trust a CCA employee to babysit my cactus…

And if you wonder how it came to be that a corporation such as CCA was brought in to harass a bunch of high school kids, this tidbit from the article above sheds some light on the answer –

“In 2009, the Central Arizona Regional Economic Development Foundation listed CCA as the largest non-governmental employer in Pinal County. To boot, CCA is a “Board Level” member of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a powerful trade/lobby organization, and is active in the Eloy, Florence, and Casa Grande chambers of commerce. (For more on CCA’s political influence in Arizona, see “Brownskins and Greenbacks,” DBA Press, June 2010.)

…The corporation owns and operates a total of six correctional/detention facilities in the county, distributed through the towns of Florence and Eloy…”

It really is no wonder US incarceration rates have sky-rocketed over the past decade…and as long as we are willing to accept the increase of imprisoning people for profit; as long as we train our children to accept living in a police state as the normal way of life, I’m afraid things are only going to continue getting worse. Eventually we will have more incarcerated citizens than free ones…

Related News:

Corrections Corporation of America by Wesman Todd Shaw

Private Prisons Move Into Public Schools (wesmantoddshaw.wordpress.com)
Corrections Corporation of America Used in Drug Sweeps of Public School Students (prwatch.org)
Corrections Corporation of America Used in Drug Sweeps of Public School Students (blacklistednews.com)