Labor & Employment Law

AFSCME Blocks Prison Privatizing Profiteers

By Mike Hall

In Minnesota, AFSCME and its correction officer members won a major victory in the fight against privatizing the state’s prisons when the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) announced it is shutting down its 1,600-bed Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton next month.

Thanks to lobbying and pressure from AFSCME members, the state is placing more offenders in state-run facilities. The prison population at Prairie was down to just 250 at the end of 2009.  Those inmates are being transferred to state facilities.

Eliot Seide, AFSCME Council 5 executive director, says the union has been

pushing government to take responsibility for corrections, not pass the buck to private corporations that profit from prisons.

Tim Henderson, a corrections officer and president of AFSCME Local 2728, says the union successfully mobilized last year to block an attempt to shut down the state’s Moose Lake prison and transfer its inmates to Appleton. He says the state should not be “renting out its responsibilities.”

We’ve been at war with the privateers, and we won’t stop until Minnesota places all of its inmates in state-run corrections facilities. Our efforts are paying off. A growing number of legislators are now convinced that privateers shouldn’t profit from prisons.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 19, 2010 (boomark / email).