Inside Private Prisons Lorenzo Komboa Ervin When I was in Australia this past July, and a politically motivated uproar began around my speaking tour, manufactured by Pauline Hanson and her fascist One (White) Nation party, I was thrown in Sir Arthur Gorrie "correctional" facility outside Brisbane for deportation (back to the US), which has a migration detention unit run by Wackenhut. I know firsthand that this prison is nothing but a control unit behavior modification jail, and that prisoners are abused by staff throughout the facility in a variety of ways. In fact, I was smacked around upon entry to the facility myself, having my face shoved so hard into a wall by government agents that my glasses broke, while still on my face! I was later dragged by handcuffs behind my back to the cell and bodily thrown into the damn thing. Much of this was reported in the media, so I won't belabor this, but the medical care in this facility itself was in fact substandard, and clearly security was more important than medical care. The truth is that they were not going to spend any more money on medical care than they had to, and now these people are taking over system-wide medical care in all Australian prisons! This is a joke, a bad one and it's on us! The poor, Koori and Murri peoples make up a large number of prisoners in Eastern Australia, and I have to believe the whole country's prison system is like that. Private Prisons for Profit however, is an evil I have been fighting for many years. Ever since the Corrections Corporation of America took over the Hamilton County Corrections Facility in Silverdale, outside Chattanooga, Tennesse in 1985. This was in fact the first such facility that it had ever run, and it didn't take long to make a mess of things. Corruption, mismanagement, abuse of prisoners and lack of medical care have caused needless suffering, and even nine deaths of prisoners, in fact one died just two weeks ago from complete lack of medical care. This crime happens while local politicians and CCA rake in the profits. CCA even had the governor of Tennessee himself on the payroll a few years ago, which caused a federal investigation which is still going on. This guy even had stock in the company, and CCA is on the American stock exchange so the big capitalist investors can buy in. Same with Wackenhut, which is #2 in the USA. In Australia, Sir Arthur Gorrie correctional facility is of course run by Wackenhut, which has become more powerful abroad in running prisons, while CCA takes over bit by bit the entire American prison structure. What is clear is that the prison movement, in America and in Australia, must understand that we are talking about the creation of a Prison-Industrial Complex, wherein the government and corporations change the entire focus of prisons from mere punishment to profits, where private industry exploits prison labor, and where a prison corporate support industry makes millions of dollars to provide security products like gun towers, fences, motion detectors, guns, and so on. In addition to all this, the economy of the government is distorted from social spending to create jobs, housing or community development to that of prison building alone. The poor are thus incarcerated, but not employed in decent jobs, while the state creates concentration camps for social control and to make a dollar, Australian or America. What do we do? Well we got to do more than verbally condemn it. We should go to the stockholder meetings and disrupt them, let the public know about the issue, and pressure the politicians to abrogate such agreements. But, the prison movement must join with the social change movement generally to fight for a new society where prison is not a option, rather than just for paltry reforms or the freedom of individual political prisoners. I mean the prison movement should join with the Liberation Movements of oppressed and indigenous peoples, radical sections of women, labor, students and other social movements to build a mass front of resistance. Yes, it must oppose private prisons and the state's use of them, but in fact call for the abolition of prisons generally and for a restorative justice system, rather than today's repressive one which uses prisons as its primary instrument. In my last few days in the country, I met with a group in Victoria, the People's Justice Alliance, which was working against private prisons and hope that the Anarchist Black Cross, Aboriginal anti-detention groups, and others can work with this group and come to a concensus on how to handle this issue. (If anyone can get me the PJA e-mail address, I will be thankful). As for me, I still intend to sue Wackenhut and the Australian government, whether in the courts of Australia or the United States. That latter matter has not been decided yet, but regardless of the venue, it is important for me to keep this issue of my unjust detention alive so that it won't happen to someone else, and to punish the government and private prison industry in the process. A large part of the money obtained from a successful conclusion of a such lawsuit would go into a radical social change fund so that groups like the ABC, Sundiata Acolia defense fund, Black Power fund and others could get some good out of it. I am of course still working on the boycott of the 2000 Olympic Games, but with a primary focus on Austrailian tourism and trade exports in the USA. I did want to comment on this matter of private prisons however, and begin a discussion among activists. Back to Anarchism And The Black Revolution