Casa Grande invited a private prison firm to help make a high-school marijuana bust. Can you spot the conflict of interest? If not, there is something wrong with your brain!
On 31 October 2012, a group of local law enforcement agencies
and approximately 20 trained sniffer dogs descended on the Vista Grande
High School in Arizona to perform a drug sweep. The officers and dogs
showed up in the early morning and the school was put on lockdown,
meaning all of the doors were locked and none of the children was
allowed to leave.
According to the school's principal, Tim
Hamilton, the dogs did not go near the children, who were made to wait
in the hallways for the hour or so that the officers and canines swept
through their classrooms. Ultimately, the dogs sniffed out three
personal stashes of marijuana, and the three kids who owned these
stashes were taken away by the police. Two of the kids have been put on
long-term suspension, one has been expelled and all three are facing
criminal charges.
Drug sweeps of schools are not uncommon
occurrences in the recent past in America, much to the chagrin of civil
rights advocates, who see such sweeps as an efficient means of diverting
certain kids to prison – in some cases, even before they make it to
adolescence, via the much-criticized
"school-to-prison pipeline".
What was unusual about this particular raid, however, is that, among
the team of law enforcement personnel and canines put together by the
local Casa Grande police department, there were prison guards employed
by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country's largest
for-profit prison company, which owns and operates several prisons in
the area. CCA was also kind enough to provide their sniffer dogs for the
raid.
What's even more unusual about this is that pretty much
nobody in a position of authority in and around Casa Grande seems to
think there's anything wrong with that.
"To invite for profit
prison guards to conduct law enforcement actions in a high school is
perhaps the most direct expression of the 'schools-to-prison pipeline' I
have ever seen," says
Caroline Isaacs of the American Friends Service Committee.
Aside from the fact that CCA is a private corporation whose driving
goal is to fill more prison beds because that is how it generates
revenue for its shareholders, prison guards are neither qualified, nor
legally entitled, to take part in law enforcement activities. According
the Arizona's administrative code, any individual engaging in the duties
of a "peace officer" must obtain certification from the
Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training (Post).
Prison guards are not Post-certified by default, because they are not
obliged to undertake the necessary training (since it's not their job to
go about making arrests).
To make matters worse, CCA's private
prison guards are not even Post-certified as correctional officers
because they are exempt from the Arizona state standards and training
requirements. Despite this, Post's executive director, Lyle Mann, could
see no problem with CCA sending its guards and sniffer dogs into the
high school. As far as he could see, CCA was just behaving as the good
corporate citizen he believes it to be (a view shared by many in
Arizona) by helping out its neighbors. This is how Mann explained this
view to me:
"CCA is one of the largest employers in
the area. They employ more people than anyone I know in the state in
that area. They try hard to be a good corporate citizen. They give money
to charity, sponsor leukemia runs and other things good corporate
citizens should do. So this government entity [the school] asked this
good corporate citizen to loan them their tools [the dogs and the
prisons guards], which they did, free of charge. The dogs are trained to
take part in law enforcement activities; whoever handles the dogs is
immaterial. So, although it is correct that those guards are not
certified to carry out law enforcement actions, what they did at the
school did not really require Post certification. They were just doing
what a good corporate citizen should do."
Officer
Thomas Anderson, spokesperson for the Casa Grande police department
shared the view that it was the dogs' qualification and not the guards
who handled them that counted, so there was no issue in his eyes with
the prison guards being present at the raid. He also indicated that this
was not the only time they have used CCA guards and dogs in local law
enforcement operations, but he refused to elaborate.
CCA did not
respond to queries regarding how frequently they donate the use of their
dogs and guards to local law enforcement efforts, or whether they do,
in fact, donate those services free of charge.
In response to
CCA's efforts on 31 October 2012 to be a good corporate citizen by
sending its sniffer dogs into the local high school, three school kids
are now facing drug charges, two for possession of marijuana and one for
possession of marijuana with intent to sell. Principal Hamilton
believes that two of the kids will probably be sentenced to probation;
the other may do jail time.
"In other states, they're legalizing marijuana," says
Alex Friedmann, editor of Prison Legal News.
"In Arizona, kids are being kicked out of school for possession." While
it is, of course, important to keep drugs out of school, surely
counseling and intervention would be more appropriate measures than
funneling children into prisons and landing them with criminal records.
Sadly,
in Casa Grande, the grownups charged with care of these kids care
appear to be more concerned about the well-being of CCA, the for-profit
prison company and "good corporate citizen", than they are for the
children who may end filling CCA's lucrative prison beds.
Major props to
the Guardian for sharing this news!
https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/2012/dec/13/arizona-business-cca-school-to-prison-pipeline
