It’s no secret that the same folks who defend the private prison industry are also defending Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Richard Sullivan, of the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel, is a bundler for the Clinton campaign, bringing in $44,859 in contributions in a few short months. Sullivan is also a registered lobbyist for the Geo Group, a company that operates a number of jails, including immigrant detention centers, for profit.
What is the business philosophy of the Geo Group? Well, here’s what this for-profit prison corporation thinks about America— the hubris is breathtaking.
A senior executive with the second-largest for-profit prison company in America assured investment bankers last summer that despite talk of drug policy and criminal justice reform, the country will continue to “attract crime,” generating new “correctional needs.”
“The reality is, we are a very affluent country, we have loose borders, and we have a bad education system,” said Shayn March, the vice president and treasurer of the Geo Group. “And all that adds up to a significant amount of correctional needs, which, thankfully, we’ve been able to help the country out with and states with by providing a lower cost solution.”
The previously unreported remarks were made during a presentation at the Barclays High Yield Bond & Syndicated Loan conference in June.
Some in our community may be comfortable with Hillary aligning herself with individuals earning millions as lobbyists defending this kind of immoral, predatory capitalism. I, however, am not.
But, sadly, because the Democratic Party seems intent to destroy the campaign of the only candidate who will seriously end private prisons— Bernie Sanders — folks like the Geo Group’s Shayn March can be the biggest assholes on the planet and know they will never, ever suffer any damage to their morally-repugnant “business.”