Private Equity Is Using Prison Phone, Food and Health Systems to Rack Up Profits

[justaprogressive]

Private equity firms, one of the most powerful arms of Wall Street, have become key adversaries of movements from labor rights to climate action to housing justice. With their wealthy CEOs and aggressive cost-cutting tactics aimed at delivering big returns, these firms are one of the most rapacious expressions of financial profiteering today.

This makes it all the more alarming that private equity has a major foothold in the United States prison system. Private equity firms have nearly monopolized the market in areas like prison telecommunications. They control huge swaths of vital services like prison health care and food service. The lack of oversight around private equity, combined with the sector’s predatory tactics, has created a nightmare for captive prison populations, whose most basic needs are subjected to the whims of investors. Not surprisingly, this has produced numerous scandals and mounting lawsuits.

A new zine by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP), “From Dawn ‘Til Dusk,” lays out the granular, everyday ways that private equity infiltrates many aspects of prison life. Meant to be an educational and organizing tool, the zine draws from longer PESP reports on private equity and prisons. Other groups, notably Worth Rises, a nonprofit organization working to dismantle the prison industry, have published extensive research on the harmful relationship between private equity and prisons, and led campaigns to challenge it.

Truthout spoke to PESP and Worth Rises about private equity’s presence in the U.S. prison system and some of the impacts of its business practices on incarcerated people. While private equity’s power can seem daunting, there is reason for hope, as organizers have scored significant victories that push back against its most egregious behavior around mass incarceration.
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[Chainfire]

1. Every American has the Dog given right to be exploited by big money vultures.

It is the system we have chosen, protected and nurtured.

[redqueen]

2. Private equity is ruining everything.

Don't take my word for it

When Private-Equity Firms Bankrupt Their Own Companies

Private Equity is Out of Control and Looting America. This Prosecutor Says We Can Fix It.

Private Equity Is Gutting America — and Getting Away With It

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The search for oligarchs’ wealth in U.S. is hindered by investment loopholes

Plenty more evidence out there. This is a problem with EVERYTHING. This is the metastasization of Walmart's race to the bottom into every industry these parasites can get their claws into.

[redqueen]

3. Kick

Private equity is a huge problem