R E P R O O F
While everyone’s noses were to the grindstone the country was sold…as were the grindstones.

Issue 2009-4 © Jason Pecci









Continuing Inferior Subcontracting For Civil Services

Private prison corporation Wackenhut has had undeserved profitability in the U.S. Market as an Alternative budget incarcerator to state prisons. The wide flow of Government money for holding inmates decoupled from civil obligation of a penitentiary induced such a Halliburton Blackwater style of greed for public treasure that they spun off, embassy mall-cop subsidiary, Armor Group. Embassy protection is normally the purview of the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC). Because these shlubs have been able to copy Corrections Corp. Of America (CCA) in tapping public treasuries with private prisons and incurred no higher proportion of law suits for inferior performance, they presume to be plug-in replacements for the USMC.

Fresh recruits were taught to turn their baseball caps forward, hold a rifle and stand around unfortified embassies in central Asia with predictable results. Their hats returned to backwards and guns, clothes and memories were lost in extended booze blackouts.

Formal complaint was made to the U.S. State Dept. that the subcontractor had understaffed and was not meeting contractual obligation. Investigation revealed this to be true. Yet the majority of dangerous overwork and sleep deprivation resulted from mandatory hazing style parties in which demonstrating an alcohol poisoning death wish and aversion to clothes was required to remain employed – booze orgies as mandatory embassy guard duty.

Yet more evidence that subcontracting critical civil duties – like operating penitentiaries and guarding embassies – only serves to further demonstrate western cultural and political dereliction.

How about the attention health care gets lately? This is likely because citizens have a physical stake. Imagine acting this passionately on your stake in recusal of civil responsibility. The above described recusal to debauched corporate culture is endemic (see bank behavior in recent economics) and needs an assertive citizenry to resume responsibility.

Reproof’s Response to “New Approach to Crime/Punishment;”
This is a position piece by Dept. of Corrections and Dept. of Public Safety Directors Ari Zavaras and Peter Weir respectively, that addressed budget induce changes to prison and parole inmate population. (Denver Post, 8/30/2009)

The measures Mr. Zavaras and Mr. Weir propound to adjust the prison and parole populations are appropriate and well modulated. They are effectively initial compensation for the 1993 Mandatory Parole Act which artificially inflated the prison population, m likely to foster a private incarceration industry in Colorado. The Act created a recycle loop whereby inmates would complete their sentence in prison for any technical violation.

Confounding what constitutes completion of a sentence has a positive effect only on private prison stock values and no positive civil effect.
Hopefully Directors Zavaras and Weir can continue to readjust the executions of criminal sentences to civil, versus corporate, needs. – Reproof
(see “Who Writes Our Laws” Reproof 2009-1)

…Corporate Spokesmen Disagree
Despite Mr. Zavaras and Weir’s practical intentions to expedite transitions, from prison to parole ad parole to liberty, for maximal public benefit, county commissions in private prison districts are aggrieved. A Sept. 17th Pueblo Chieftain article cites concerns about Gov. Ritter’s “Accelerated Transition Pilot Program,” in which 2720 of 3400 parole eligible inmates will not be retained in physical incarceration.(1.) Bent County Commissioner,(2.) Bill Long voices concerns over income, employment and revenue loss from CCA corporate facilities in Bent, Huerfano and Crowley Counties (Kit Carson County has a CCA facility too but was not mentioned). How transitioning parole eligible inmates onto parole could be “an absolute disaster for Bent and Crowley County [sic]” was of course not supported and likely sour grapes at not being able to act as DOC executive director anymore.

Mr. Long did clarify how these CCA concerns could translate to the Huerfano County facility, which houses only Arizona inmates. (3.) He believes that “when Arizona gets its inmate situation straightened out they will return to that state.” He falsely presumes that there is not 40+ other states willing to send inmates, as Arizona had. If he had proper public concerns he would extol Colorado’s effort to get “its inmate situation straightened out,” after 15+ years of manipulation by the private prison industry. (Reproof 2009-1 ibid.)

1. Parole constitutes incarceration. One may not vote, and skipping out constitutes felony level escape. Should not overcoming physical restraint constitute felony escape?
2. The count commissioner is known for arrogating former Exec. Dir. Joe Ortiz’s authority by illegally sending 480 Colorado inmates to a CCA facility in Oklahoma. (see”…And So On An So On’ Reproof 2009-3)
3. Since the 2004 riot at the Crowley facility Colorado does not allow mixed state inmate populations to be incarcerated at any one facility.

Self Un-imposed Regulation
A democratic free market will, if not abused, find an effective solution for civil projects, problems and needs, with minimal central planning and oversight. It is the most organic, self-directing civil system Reproof knows of to achieve results for almost any scale of polity. By the nature of its minimal central planning and oversight it is also a tenuously balanced scheme, very sensitive to input.

Our western culture allows inputs to government systems to come from the most cohesive (and wealthy and politically connected) “voice” that wants to implement their operating hierarchy on the people’s business. A fragmented and complacent citizenry poses no resistance to direct and cohesive business inputs to what should be uninfluenced government operations, with output exclusively for the citizenry.

This establishes a tail wagging the dog scenario whereby a highly interested incorporated small group prevails over tragically uninterested (but not disinterested), citizenry. Concentrated attack at the control point of any system yields control of the system, and what corporate interest does not want control of its industry.

The current pre-eminent example is the investment banking system (Wall St.) operating with no feedback control to ensure public interest is preserved. That is – by controlling their industries with input to regulation mechanisms (SEC et.al.) deferent to corporate profit and detrimental to public interest in a continuing free market system, they self-serve and profit from civil suffering. (Compare/contrast your finances to Wall St. bonuses.)

An even more self-serving and subversive occurrence is the prison industrial complex. Private incarceration architects conceived and convened their own oversight in a pseudo-government agency called “American Correctional Association,” which preemptively validated private incarceration in perpetuity. To analogize to the financial system, this would be equivalent to the National Association of Hedge Fund Managers establishing and operating the S.E.C.

Great paradigm - Reproof proposes a U.S. Prisoners Union to establish the Sentencing Time Computation Integrity Agency and determine all sentences terminated, - Two million strong – Possible with some unity and good lobbying?
Yet again, the solution is for the citizenry to defragment and take the political handles away from the corporations – restore the polity to its intended functionality. You will have the luxury of fragmentation and disparate opinion upon regulatory policy only after you take the agencies back.

[How about introducing a bill that prohibits incarceration as a commercial enterprise, or at least limits non-civil custody of inmates to properly incorporated non-profit organizations?]

Living and Dying for Journalism
Congratulations to NYT reporter Stephan Farell, Kidnapped and rescued near Kuduz Afganistan. Sincerest condolences to his partners family; Sultan Mundi was killed during the rescue.
Correction to last issue: Journalist David Rohde escaped from three months of Taliban custody, not David Rhode.

Books
In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan. / Seth G. Jones
The Economic Naturalist’s Field Guide: Common Sense Principles for Troubled Times. / Robert H. Frank

Aphorisms
Obscenity is whatever gives a judge an erection. - Anonymous
Society is always diseased, and the best is more so. - Henry David Thoreau
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. – Nietzsche

Copyright Reproof Pamphlet / 2009 Issue 4 / Copy and Distribute Freely
Reproof is: Jason Pecci, # 111132 BCCF / 8-P 11560 Rd. FF 75 Las Animas, CO 81054