Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Jeremy Mohler’s recent In the Public Interest email described the recent shareholder report from CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) that:

bragged about their December 2018 acquisition of Recovery Monitoring Solutions Corp., which provides electronic monitoring and case management services to municipal, county, and state governments in Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Minnesota.

It’s bad enough that prisons are privatized, because once they are viewed as “profit centers” their “revenue stream” depends on a constant influx of prisoners which, in turn, depends on a constant flow of individuals who are arrested. But once “case managers” are added to the payroll the profitability will rely on “efficiency” which translates into the diminishment of services, the diminishment of living wages for employees, and, inevitably, the diminishment of qualifications. It would not surprise me to see the for-profit prisons “re-training” guards to become “case managers” who would view their assignment as remotely monitoring scores of ex-prisoners from a computer screen instead of interfacing with them and helping them navigate their way into the job market. Moreover, given the need for full prisons, I would not be surprised to see recidivism rise…. because the lifeblood of for-profit prisons is, well, prisoners.