Salon.com > Private Prisons

The truth in Kanye’s anti-prison rap

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:10:00 +0000

The backdrop to Kanye West's "Saturday Night Live" performance was a lie. Projected behind the rapper, as he let loose with two rage-filled and politically fueled tracks, were the words "Not For Sale."

Yeezy wouldn't have graced the set if he wasn't hawking a soon-to-be released LP. But his incendiary performance was peppered with damning truths: Angry and pointed condemnations of institutional racism and the prison industrial complex, which disproportionately jails young men of color to fill state budget holes and enrich private corporations.

In the final verse of "New Slaves," a track released Friday with the coordinated projection of a video on 66 buildings worldwide, and the second performance in his "SNL" set, West raps:

Meanwhile the DEA
Teamed up with the CCA
They tryn'a lock niggas up
They tryn'a make new slaves
See that's that private owned prison
Get your piece today

Football stadium named after private prison corporation

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 20:30:00 +0000

The GEO Group, a Florida-based multinational private prison corporation, has given $6 million to Florida Atlantic University to rename its football stadium "GEO Group Stadium."

As the New York Times pointed out, it's hardly the first instance of a major corporation with ties to a university (GEO Group's chairman is an FAU alum) buying naming rights to a building or sports stadium. "In recent years, where stadium naming rights could be sold, universities and professional sports teams have sold them — to airlines and banks and companies that sell beer, soda, doughnuts, cars, telecommunications, razors and baseball bats. This led to memorable examples like Enron Field, the KFC Yum! Center and the University of Phoenix Stadium," noted the Times' Greg Bishop.

Va. to decide on privatizing sex offender program

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:59:00 +0000

The nation’s second-largest private prison company says it expects Virginia to make a decision by next month on its bid to expand and operate the state’s detention facility for sexually violent predators who have completed their prison terms.

“In Virginia, we submitted an unsolicited proposal for the management of the state’s sexually violent predator treatment facility involving approximately 250 beds,” said GEO Group Senior Vice President Jorge Dominicis during a company earnings call last month. “The state has decided to move forward with this process and is expected to make a contract award by July 1st of this year.”

The detention and treatment of sex offenders represents a growing business opportunity for GEO and its competitors, who hope to score lucrative contracts from state officials looking to keep predators off the streets.