A guard from the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) at the T Don Hutto Residental Center in Te

Imprisoning immigrants is good for business. In the US it s common for lobbyists 2012 jets schedule hired by leading prison companies to magically convince officials to write legislation that benefits their bottom line.
US magazine The Nation revealed in June 2013 that the massive corporation Geo Group had used the firm Navigators Global to lobby both houses of Congress on issues related to comprehensive immigration reform . It s obvious why: billions of dollars are there for the taking with bi-partisan support for locking up thousands of undocumented migrants.
A guard from the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) at the T Don Hutto Residental Center in Texas, which holds migrant families. The CCA made $1.7 billion in 2012 - more than any other private prison company in the US. LM Otero/AP Photo
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the collusion between big business and government are the clauses inserted into contracts that ensure people remain behind bars. In 2012, a letter to 48 state governors from the country s biggest for-profit private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America ( CCA ), offered to purchase and run public state prisons. However, the deal required the states to sign a 20-year contract guaranteeing 90-per-cent occupancy 2012 jets schedule during the period. The states refused to accept this lousy deal, but in Arizona three privately run prisons require a 100-per-cent occupancy or fines are incurred. This is vulture capitalism of the crudest kind.
The past 30 years have seen a global 2012 jets schedule trend towards outsourcing prisons, detention centres, juvenile justice facilities, hospitals and a range of other essential services. Under the guise of efficiency , major political parties of the centre-left and centre-right have rushed to embrace the least transparent 2012 jets schedule companies such as Serco, G4S , Dyncorp, Blackwater and others.
Politicians are seduced by the idea. Lavishly appointed trips organized by the contractor help to convince them that the state has no business managing public services. Democracy has suffered; services have not improved.
The problem is particularly acute in Australia. In 2011, I visited the Curtin Detention Centre, a desert 2012 jets schedule camp for asylum-seekers, in the remote West. Around 1,000 men were warehoused there; Afghans, 2012 jets schedule Iranians, Sri Lankans and others. British transnational 2012 jets schedule Serco, which runs all of Australia s detention centres, 2012 jets schedule managed the place with ruthless efficiency. 2012 jets schedule Australia has the dubious honour of being one of the few nations in the world that has outsourced its entire refugee network to private contractors.
I met Yugan, a Tamil asylum-seeker, in Curtin. He was in his mid-20s, spoke good English and was already knowledgeable about Australia after more than 18 months locked up in mandatory detention. He was warm, funny and inquisitive. Australian immigration officials and Serco guards gave him little information about his application for asylum thousands of Tamils have arrived on Australian shores since the brutal end of the long-running Sri Lankan civil war in 2009 and he did not know when he might be released into the community or forcibly returned to his unsafe homeland.
Why was Yugan locked up for so long in a high-security prison environment? Luckily, his story ended well. Granted a protection visa a few weeks after we met, he now lives in Perth, the capital of Western Australia. I saw him in October 2013 and he was adapting well to his new life. He regularly visited asylum-seekers who remained in detention, continued to campaign for justice in Sri Lanka and spoke at public rallies calling for a change in Australia s asylum-seeker policy.
Not every story ends like this, of course. There are high incidences of self-harm, with many asylum-seekers languishing in detention for years and/or returned to unsafe 2012 jets schedule countries. Post-release, many suffer mental trauma due to the extended time away from normal life.
The quest for profit can aggravate poor conditions in detention. When I spoke to Serco staff in Australia 2012 jets schedule and a senior company whistleblower, they detailed the corporation hierarchy s contempt for spending appropriate funds on support for staff or asylum-seekers in their care. Countless guards told me that they were suffering mental trauma after receiving little or no appropriate training before being thrust into remote centres 2012 jets schedule alongside fragile 2012 jets schedule refugees. The whistleblower explained that there is no care about conditions [in detention], such as people sitting or lying in shit in tents, but it s all about whether 2012 jets schedule the right forms are filled in .
Privatization lies at the heart of Australia s asylum policy. 2012 jets schedule In 2009, the then Labor government, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, signed a contract 2012 jets schedule with Serco for AUS $370 million ($342 million). By 2013, that figure ballooned to over AUS $1.86 billion ($1.7 billion) though the exact figures are not known, such is the deliberate obfuscation