CoreCivic: Unlocking the Truth

people safe. We are cour Civic. Welcome to Calling Bullshit podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what companies say they stand for and what they actually do, and what they would need to change to practice what they preach. I'm your host, time onto you, and I've spent over a decade helping companies define what they stand for, their purpose and then help them to use that purpose to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot of

organizations today, they're still a pretty wide gap between word. Indeed, that gap has a name. We call it bullshit. But, and this is important, we believe that bullshit is a treatable disease. So when the BS detector lights up, we're going to explore things that a company should do to fix it. In this episode, we're going to take a look at Course Civic, a private risen company whose purposes quote to provide high quality, compassionate treatment to all those

in our care. We operate safe facilities that provide education and effective reentry programming to help individuals make positive changes so they can return to the community successfully. That sounds like a worthy purpose, but Course Civic operates in an industry that raises some profound questions about the nature of

for profit incarceration. Questions like what happens when your purpose and your business model are in direct opposition to one another, what role does the government play in helping or hindering Course Civic from achieving its purpose? And ultimately, do we see any gaps between word and d. With the help of an A c O. You attorney, a professor of immigration rights, and the director of the Nolan Center for Justice, We're about to find the answers to understand the story

of Course Civic. We first need to understand the story of private prisons in America, and to do that, we really need to understand our country's entire history of punishment and incarceration. Historically, punishment for those convicted of a crime tended to be direct, immediate and public convicts were shackled and put on display in the town square or sometimes whipped or in extreme cases, publicly put to debt. Some would argue this was barbaric, but one redeeming quality was

it was completely transparent. Everybody knew what the state was doing to its citizens. But in sev seven, the Pennsylvania Prison Society implemented the separate confinement theory of punishment. Instead of inflicting immediate pain or shame on a criminal, the separate confinement theory emphasized isolated confinement of the prisoners to give them ample time to ponder their mistakes and make their peace with God, also known as penance, hence the

term penitentiary. Both a philosophical and architectural punishment strategy, separate confinement quickly became the dominant practice in states throughout America. This practice moved the punishment of citizens by the government out of public view. It now took place behind paul walls and locked gates. In eighteen sixty, with the Civil

War now over, the thirte Amendment finally abolished slavery. However, within that amendment, the six word clause except as punishment for crime, legally permitted prisons to lease out prisoners as involuntary servants to private industry. This convict leasing clause resulted in a dramatic increase of prisoner primarily black men, and

normalize the practice of prison labor. The concept of a federal prison was established in eighteen ninety one with the Three Prisons Act, and by nineteen thirty Congress stepped in once more to create the Bureau of Prisons to manage the growing number of federal penitentiaries. In the subsequent decades, the Bureau of Prisons nearly doubled the number of inmates and prisons. It also modernized its practices during this time,

making quote rehabilitation and treatment the leading doctrines in corrections. Then, in the nineteen sixties, as a reaction to the Vietnam War protests, uprisings in l a and in Harlem, and the Watts Right, President Johnson called for a quote war on crime. The American people have had enough of rising crime and lawlessness in this country. President Nixon campaigned as the law and order President. I pledged to you, the wave of crime is not going to be the wave

of the future. In America and then President Reagan declared his war on drugs our society. By the time President Clinton left office, prison populations had risen more than under the previous two administrations combined. Because each administration had doubled down on who could be the toughest on crime, they were now more prisoners than prisons to hold them. America had a prison problem, and so three entrepreneurs from Tennessee

did what entrepreneurs do. They came up with an idea to solve this problem, and the private prison was born. The Corrections Corporation of America was founded in nineteen eighty three by then chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party Thomas Beasley, American Correctional Association President T. Don Huddo, and real Estate CFO Robert Krantz. At the time, forty one states had been declared by the federal courts to be operating their

prison systems in an unconstitutional fashion. Corrections Corporation of America saw an opportunity to capitalize on what they said was a complacent government operation that was overwhelmed with demand. The system is and has been in a downwards viral for many many years, overcrowding and virtually every facility at the federal, state,

and local level. Corrections Corporation of America was founded in early nineteen eighty three with one goal in mind, provide an innovative alternative to the administrative and budgetary constraints of the existing corrections and detention systems. Their two years later, with over one point eight billion dollars in annual revenue, and now renamed Course Civic, the company is the largest private prison corporation in the United States, operating approximately eighty

correctional and detention facilities. Until recently, I had never even

heard of Course Civic. They first caught my attention on Newsweek's list of the most Responsible Companies of one that made me curious, So I did a little googling issues ranging from inadequate safety equipment to extreme procedural hundred grievances alleging mistreatment and excessive force, from medical issues to alleged officers claimed the conditions inside the detention identified serious concerns regarding detainee care, and I was amazed at what my

research revealed. Increasing violence and deadly violence. That's Sharon Brett, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas. When these things started to come to our attention and we are tracking them. We said, it sounds like there's something bigger going on here. Sharon's story of the a c l U and other Kansas public defenders trying to shut down Course Civics Leavenworth facility was only one of

a long list of alarming reports. Course Civic says its purpose is to provide high quality, compassionate treatment to all of those in their care, to operate safe facilities, and to help individuals make positive changes so they can return to the community successfully. So is that actually true or is it just a bunch of bullshit? Get out your BS detectors, folks and set them on high, because this one gets deep. More on that right after this before you head to the break. We'd love to hear what

you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to take action, Maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at two one two five oh five three zero five, or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co collective dot com. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode Welcome Back to better understand the private prison business model and to figure out if it's even possible

for cour Civic to truly live their purpose. I first spoke with an attorney with deep expertise in the criminal justice system, Sharon Brett, legal director at the a c l U Kansas. Okay, well, let's get into it. Sharon, thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to the Bullshit Podcast. Thanks for having me. I want to start out by just delving into your experience with the Leavenworth Prison, which is a Coursivic facility, and I wonder if you could just talk about why you and other

public defenders decided to take action there. We heard from a number of people through our legal intake system at the a c l U of Kansas that there were problems at Coursivic Love and Worth that were increasing over the last eight to ten months or so. The facility was getting more violent, there was more drugs and contraband inside the facility. There are fewer staff members around, and so it seemed like the facility was really struggling just

to cover the basic shifts. And when we talked with our partners at the Federal Public Defenders Office in Kansas, they have been hearing the same thing from their clients, and they had atually had seen the same stuff from their clients when they had gone to visit their clients or speak with them over the phone, and that became alarming to us. Right, So what did you discover as

a result of stepping in. We talked to some former correctional officers at Percivic and they had talked about how they had quit because they felt unsafe at their job. We talked to what individual who had been stabbed multiple times by people incarcerated at the facility. Yeah, he'd been sent to local hospitals for treatment three different times, and he finally said enough is enough. And there's a point over the summer where the locks didn't work on a

lot of the cells inside the facility. What I mean, whether they deserve to be in there or not is a completely different issue. But once they're in there, it seems like you want doors that have locks that work. And you you mentioned something when you were relaying the story that stuck out to me. Are there, in general fewer guards in private prisons than in regular government facilities?

There certainly shouldn't be. There's no separate set of standards that apply to correctional facilities that are run for profit. I see, and but were there fewer at Leavenworth than than they're needed to be? That's what we understand. And this location, I understand is contracted with the US Marshalls Service.

Is that correct? Yes, So the facility run by Coursivic and Love and Worth is under a contract with the U. S Marshall Service, which means that it holds people who are facing federal charges but who have not yet been convicted or have pled guilty to those charges. So it's all people who are pre trial on federal charges inside that facility. I see. Okay, And could you just for our listeners talk a little bit about how private prison contracts generally work. They sort of work how any other

business contract would work. So you have an entity that needs a service. In this case, the service is the caging of human beings who are facing federal charges, and they put in a bid for that contract, and there's regulations on the federal government side that governed the type

of care that needs to be provided. And obviously, because this private company is assuming the role of the jailer for the federal government, the private company has to comply with things like the United States Constitution just as the U. S. Martial Service would. Can you tell us a little more about the executive order from President Biden which prevents Courcivic from renewing the leaven Worth contract and what that might

mean for cour Civic and other private prisons. So one of the first things that President Biden did when he took office was issued this executive order which called on the U. S. Martial Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which holds the post trial that convicted population on federal charges.

Called on those two entities, which fall under the Department of Justice, to end contracts with private detention companies like cours Civic and the Geo Group and others, So once they reach their term of expiration, the contract would be done, that relationship would end, And Biden's executive order prevented the Department of Justice from entering into any new contracts to hold federal detainees or federal prisoners at a facility run

by a private corporation. Why did they do that. I think it came from this recognition that private companies are not going to place the constitutional rights of the people that they detain over their profit votives. Yeah, that's a big question. Mark for me when I read Course civics stated mission. They say their mission is to operate safe facilities that provide education and effective reentry programming to help individuals make positive changes so they can return to the

community successfully, which is a great mission. It's just that many of those tenants are in direct opposition to the business model. In other words, there's so many incentives to cut corners on safety, on mental and physical health, on nutrition, on rehabilitation. I'm interested in how they justify that if you have heard them speak to that, and I also

wonder how the government justifies that. Well. One thing I think is unique about prison corporations is that the public truly lacks access to what's actually happening inside the walls, and the shareholders of that company lack access to what's happening inside those facilities. So they can have such a bold, beautiful mission statement like the one Course Civic has and completely and utterly failed to live up to it, and

no one would have any idea. Frankly, there's a large portion of America and a large portion of our politicians who don't really care what's happening to people who are incarcerated. That begs the question, do we know if Course Civic is measuring any of these things? In other words, does data exist that we don't have access to? Not that I've seen, So I can't find data on their website about a lot of things that I would typically look

for in measuring whether they're running a constitutional prison. And maybe it's worth saying, for a moment, backing up a little bit and talking about the work that I did before I came to the sail you, because I think

it's a little bit relevant here, please do yes. So for a while, I started my career as an attorney with the Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division, so not the part of the Department of Justice that houses federal prisoners, but the part of the Department of Justice that investigates state and local facilities for constitutional violations

within their prisons in jails. So I have years of experience going into facilities that are under consent decrees with the federal government because they run unconstitutional prisons and jails, and there's you look at those consent decrees and there's a whole list of things that the facility needs to be measuring to show that they're in compliance with the Constitution and you don't see that type of data or that reporting on coursivis website, and it's certainly not stuff

that's talked about in their shareholder calls either, because what they're trying to do in those calls is get people to invest in their company. So if they were producing data such as the numbers of incidents of force inside the facility, the number of sexual assaults occurring inside a facility, the number of complaints received by people incarcerated there, and whether any of those had merit, they wouldn't be raking in the profits. I think if they were actually reporting

on the numbers of what's up actually happening inside. Does the Freedom of Information Act apply to cour Civic coursivis a private entity, so there are some case law that says that they don't have to respond to those foyer requests, and I think this has been something that's been fought in courts before, but it's a real concern. So there's just this lack of access to what's actually happening inside

of there. And I will say even state agencies or or state facilities that are subject to state based open records laws, or the federal government which is subject to FOIA, it still can be very, very difficult to get data. Do for profit private prisons legally infringe on a person's civil liberties? In other words, are they legal? I think that they are legal entities. Right. The federal government has the authority to contract out for services to private corporations.

They do that all the time for all sorts of different things. Right. They do it in the military, they do it in industry. I think it's how private prisons run their business that's unconstitutional. Right, How how would you say the government is implicated in the supply and demand of this business model? In other words, have we created a culture of mass incarceration without a doubt? And that's not just on the private prison industries backs, right, that's

on politicians dating back decades. But mass incarceration is here. It has been here for a long time. And I want to take a moment to mention because I haven't mentioned it yet here, but I think it's an important point.

The vast majority of people who are incarcerated across our country are people of color, and this system disproportionately impacts minorities and disproportionately impacts people without economic means, and so there's an element of what these private corporations are doing here, which is reinforcing white supremacy and reinforcing a deeply racist criminal legal system in our country and allowing that to perpetuate.

Some of the statistics are eye popping. One out of every three black boys born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, one in every six Latino boys compared to one of every seventeen white children. And

the fastest growing prison population is female. But I will say that the prison population has begun to go down overall in the country, and I think that's as we recognize that prisons are not the answer to many of the problems that plague society, and that we really need to be reinvesting in our communities, in jobs, in education, in housing. That's the way that you prevent crime, not by incarcerating people. We will never incarceraate ourselves out of

a crime in the United States. It's not possible to do that, and in fact, lots of studies have shown that long periods of incarceration actually don't do a whole heck of a lot for reducing the crime rate. What we need to be doing is investing in communities instead. I read also as a part of this, there are a number of states that spend more on incarceration than they do on education. And that's telling right, that's telling you where our priorities are. So the famous saying is

that budgets are a moral document. And when you look at a budget and you see how much money goes towards policing and how much money goes to its corrections, and you compare that to how much goes towards alleviating food and security, towards education, towards transportation, it really shows

you where our values are. Now, I want to delve into the realm of essentially your opinion around the morality of these things, because I read a book called Inside Private Prisons and American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration, which was an amazing book, and in it there was a quote from a prisoner and it reads, I realized that someone has found a way to make money off of my mistakes, my pain, my misfortune, and that right

there was the biggest blow to the head. It was, Oh, my god, our country is so obsessed with incarcerating us and thinks we are such bad people that they're now making money off of us being bad, What sort of hope for us is there? And that really, I don't know. That just resonated with me. It's like it's it almost adds to the punishment in a way, to know that

you are a commodity when you think about it. The existence of private prison companies is an acceptance of the idea that we can and should be profiting off the caging of human beings, that we need to be putting more people into the criminal justice system so that we can fill the beds, and these private facilities in turn a profit right. The facility makes money if all of its beds are filled, and they make less money if

we as a country begin to decarceorate. So you see the private prison lobby pushing back against what I think has been a trend across the country of people saying the war on drugs was a mistake. The tough on crime mentality of these politicians is wrong, long and immoral, and we need to be decarcerating. We need to be thinking about ways to keep people out of the criminal

justice system. That doesn't help private prison companies. Private prison companies want the machinery of incarceration to continue to churn because that's what makes them money, and so there's something inherently immoral about that at its base. One other topic that I wanted to touch on was I've read arguments for private prisons that that are along the lines of the government tends to be bad at things like innovation

and private organizations. Private businesses are where innovation really happens. And so Coursivic says its mission is better outcomes and a safer society. That's a great mission. It's also an invitation for innovation. But looking through all of the available data, I didn't see very much innovation going on in Coursivic facilities or any private prisons. Are you aware of any innovation taking place? Not by course Civic, but I I would push back on the idea that we should care

the most about. There's no innovative way to cage a human being, right There's so there's nothing innovative about the private prison model. I could understand innovation in other industries, but we're talking about mass caging of human beings. When you frame it in that light, and you're like, oh, well, private prisons could innovate here, like you could hear how ridiculous that sounds, right? I grant you that that sounds

sound ridiculous. However, just one idea. For instance, what if governments mandated perform and space contracts with goals like recidivism reduction, for instance, to truly incentivize the system, to try to prevent people from winding up back in the system. Sure, maybe there's a contract that could improve outcomes, but I would posit that the private corporation would say that, well, that's not the business I'm in, Like, that's that's not going to help me maximize my profit. And they are

there to turn a profit. Whatever their mission statement is. Businesses have to fulfill their mission statement in a way that earns their shareholders money, and so I just don't see them being willing to do something like that in a meaningful way that actually changes outcomes for people. All right, Sharon, is there anything else on this topic that you think listeners ought to know. The one thing that I think is worth mentioning here is that Biden's executive order only

applies to the Department of Justice contracts. So a trend that we are seeing across the country right now is that as these contracts expire and are not renewed, pursuant to the executive order. Private corporations like Coursivic and Geo Group are looking to other federal agencies for contracts to

try to fill those beds, such as ICE. So they are looking to turn these empty facilities into immigration detention facilities, which raises a whole host of additional concerns, one of them being that we were able to know what was happening inside of Courcivic in part because the people who are incarcerated at that facility in leaven Worth were all pre trial, meaning they had to be able to contact their lawyers whenever they wanted, and their lawyers had to

be able to contact them to prepare for their defense. So the federal public defenders were able to sound the alarm on what was happening here because they had this right of acts us that's inherent for pre child attention facilities. If this turns into an ICE facility, that access goes away, and that means we will have even less of an

idea of what's happening inside. And these are people who, by many many arguments, should not be in a detention setting at all, agreed, and that's that's a big part of course civics business as I understand, of all the private prison companies, Coursivic is the one that is biggest

into immigration detention. And we could just see it get worse because of the ending of the contracts with BOP and the US Martial Service and then turning those facilities into ice facilities just so they can keep the beds field and still have money made on that institution. And why why do we put them in prison? What is the rationale? That is a question for somebody who is in favor of detaining people who are awaiting de quortation.

It's it's not the area of law that I have expertise in, and I've feel deeply that that these individuals can safely be in the community and should not be detained in warehouses like they are right now. Sharon. We have something on calling BS that we call the B S scale. So on a scale of zero to one hundred being the worst total BS and zero being the best zero BS, what score would you give Course Civic. I mean, so one fifty is not an option here?

Is that? Is that what you're saying? It max is out at a hundred, But if you want to go to a hundred fleas I think you know what I'm gonna say here and it's and it's a hundred beautiful. All right, Well, thanks for thank you for coming on the show. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it's been great to be here. The conversation with Sharon confirmed a couple of concerns that I initially had about privatization of the prison system. Course Civic lacks transparency, and the

business model is pretty troubling. Ideally, in a purpose led company, the purpose and the business model are aligned. In other words, the more the company succeeds at delivering on its purpose, the better it does financially. In the case of Courcivic, and to be fair other private prison companies, that doesn't seem to be the case, and that corrodes trust. So folks, it's time to make the call. Is Courcivic a bullshitter? Based on what I've heard so far? I got to

agree with Sharon and call BS. But remember, on this show we believe b S is a treatable condition. So after the break, we'll hear from two more experts in incarceration and prison reform about some ideas that might just help Courcivic actually deliver its purpose stick with us. Before the break, we concluded that there is a pretty sizable gap between word and deed at Core Civic. So we've called b s now. The question is what should CEO David Heineger and his leadership team due to fix it.

The cure is positive action. So I've asked two experts in the law and in prison reform to join us to propose some concrete things that cour Civic should change to better practice what it preaches, says our Hernandez, and David Sefabian says a welcome to the show. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Nand this I'm professor at Ohio States at University, where I hold

the Gregory Williams Charing Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. And I'm the author of Migrating to Prison, America's obsession with locking up immigrants and the commigration law. Great to have you here. Thank you. And David Sefabian, welcome to Calling Bullshit. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Well, I'm David s. Fabian. I am the director of the

Nolan Center for Justice, the American Conservative Union Foundation. I am a former White House official or former chief of staff for a member of Congress and someone who has spent a year in federal prison, and I've seen all sides of the criminal justice debate, and my passion is fixing the system. So let's get right into some ideas for cour Civic. Say sorry, I'm going to ask you to go first. In two minutes or less, what's the number one thing that cour Civic should do to better

live up to their mission. I think Corsivic actually has a lot of its disposal by providing wrap around services that support people as they're going through what are, in some circumstances, very high stakes legal proceedings. And this happens um in the context of the migrants who are being held by Course Civic on behalf of government agencies like

the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Those are individuals who are in the midst of legal proceedings before the nation's immigration courts, and so Course off it could, for example, focus its resources on providing case management services, providing access to social workers who would be able to help people navigate the stress and the anxiety that goes along with legal proceedings in which very meaningful, life changing, life altering

decisions are to be made, and also ensure that its locations. Its facilities are located in places where others can access them and by by others. And I'm talking about low years. So so don't locate your facilities in the middle of uh the Arizona Desert, for example, but instead and in or near large metropolitan areas where legal services organizations are present,

where courts are located. And I also think that journalists play an important role here in maintaining oversight of these facilities, and so locating facilities in places where you do have larger media markets would actually provide a separate and independent source of eyes and ears to what's happening inside these facilities. That would think ultimately improve the likelihood of success for the government agencies with which course of your contracts thank

you say sorry? Okay, David, You're next in two minutes or less. What is the number one thing cours Civic should be doing better to deliver on what they say that they stand for. Well, let me just before we get to that, I think I want to challenge those are on something, or maybe it's we're going to challenge the topic. There are too fundamentally different missions for companies like Course Civic and the solutions that says are and

others have suggested differ based on the mission set. So, for example, when you're talking about detention based on criminal charge, right, you know private prisons in the kind of way people most think about them. You know my understanding and I have two or course IT facilities. My understanding is that they do provide wrap around services for people who are serving a sentence based on criminal conduct. And they do

that for a number of reasons. One is they're often contractually obligated to do so, and two because providing those types of services healthcare, mental health, and hygiene education, those wrap around services reduce recidivism, which goes directly to core Civics mission statement. Right. That is a different value proposition than immigration detention, where the end state is going to

be one of two things. Either the folks who were being detained our return to their home countries or they're going to be admitted to the United States under under immigration procedures. In either case, the value proposition of providing a full suite of wrap around services is different. All right,

what's the end goal? The end goal and the immigration detention is to figure out what we do with people A recidivism is not the driver in that circumstances, whereas recidivism is the driver for people who are serving a criminal sentence. So I think that that's an important point.

I came back from a trip in where we saw European prisons, and what was fascinating about the way that the Europeans handle their incarceration system is the same people that are designated to guard inmates are also the people that are providing social services, so their social workers first, in their guard second. That is a totally different model

than what we have primarily in the United States. And that is the type of thing where you know, people who were detained can build bonds, can find mentors, and the people that are paid to guard them and to make sure that the facilities are safe are also contributing to their potential rehabilitation. So that's where I see areas were Corsific and other companies and quite frankly, other entities government and non government can improve. I think that's an

interesting idea as well. So it's it's my turn, and then we'll just see where the conversation takes us. You know, as I've been reading about this and talking to folks, it's become clear to me that you know, there are lots of issues, but I think the main issue, the issue that causes people to mistrust in many cases, the whole idea of a private prison is the business model. It is misaligned with the stated mission of the company.

If you say that you're trying to create safe environments that emphasize education and safe return to society, it's pretty hard to reconcile that with the profit motive. There are just huge incentives to cut corners everywhere in safety, in mental and physical health care, nutrition, education, or any other rehabilitation services that you might want to engage in. So one of the biggest complaints that I've heard about and read about is lack of access to actual data about

conditions and about outcomes inside Course Civic facilities. Because these are private facilities, they aren't subject to things like the Freedom of Information Act, So as an act of altruism, almost to build trust, Course Civic needs to get radically transparent, more transparent than the law requires, more transparent than shareholders demand.

So my idea is for Course Civic to proactively publish all of the data about their outcomes, good, bad, and ugly, anonymized appropriately of course, rather than waiting for the government to mandate it, or or some other group to complain about it. Do it because it's the right thing to do, and because to aligned with with the corsific mission. I can I challenge and something before we go down at rabbit hole, I encourage it. So I think that the way you've set that up is not merely unfair, but

really inaccurate. I don't think that you can square the statement that the traditional profit margin issues of a private sector entity go to everything from the conditions of incarceration or the quality of the food or the quality of the healthcare. And let me just give you a couple of examples. I was incarcerated. The food that we received and I was in a federal federal facility. The food

that we received expired food out of femal warehouses. There is no guarantee whatsoever that because the prisoners are being imprisoned by federal employees that the circumstances are any better. And and you know what really troubles me is, as a former government contracts lare I understand how performance based contracting works. And it's a simple concept. It sounds complicated

and it's simple. The idea is you set forward standards, and if the contractor hits those standards, they're rewarded, and if contractor doesn't hit those standards, they're penalized. And after a certain point, if they continue not hitting those standards, the contract is cut. You can't do that with unionized employees. You cannot do that with government institutions. It is not

possible to do that. I hear that, But my idea, to be clear, is for Coursivic to proactively publish all of the data about outcomes, which I don't think they do unless I've got that wrong. There there's been a lot of coverage of it being very hard to get

information out of Coursivic. In two thousand and five, for instance, there was a bill called the Private Prison Information Act, which attempted to force any private entity contracting with the government to agree to release information about its operations under the same requirements as the Freedom of Information Act, and course Civic actively lobbied against it, and it was defeated. And so it's actions like that that leave you with the strong impression that they have something to hide, even

if they don't. I totally agree with you that that's a self inflicted wound that creates a trust gap. I am all for transparency. It's pretty hard to advocate on criminal justice matters, and I don't advocate on private prison issues whatsoever, but it's hard to advocate criminal justice matters when you don't have data to rely on. But I will point out one thing, and since you know, kind of the operating theme underneath all of this is private

prisons are worse than public prisons. That there's not a whole heck of a lot of disclosure coming out of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Either. That's true, but you can get it at it ostensibly through the Freedom of Information Act. And and the problem there is fragmentation right like it's it's there is no central database. I actually think we have a lot of information about what course if it does specifically explicitly, I should say, because of

the fact that it is a publicly traded corporation. As a result, it files annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, It files quarterly reports with the SEC anytime it's looking to to issue a new round of bonds,

it issues statements it's trying to lure investors. It holds a conference cause that I've tuned into, and so as a result, I actually think we have a lot of information about coursifics operations, and FOYA is a meaningful transparency law, but it's not the only transparency law in the United States.

The States also have transparency laws, and so when it comes to coursifics operations, on behalf of states government agencies, sometimes state transparency laws government secrecy laws actually allow access to more information than does the Freedom of Information Act at the federal level. But I'd say that that of the many shortcomings with coursivics operations, it's not a lack of nation about what is happening in its decision making processes.

And I would just jump on and actually take it one step further, and that is all across the criminal justice system, there is a lack of independent oversight regardless of whether the operator of the facility is a private sector entity or a public sector entity. There just is an independent oversight. Yeah, that's a great point and much needed. I agree, David. Can I follow up on your idea

around rethinking the role of guards. It seems very logical to me that one possible advantage of privatizing government functions like prisons is that private companies tend to be better at innovation. Like if you say your mission is better outcomes and a safer society, that's a great mission, and it's also an invitation for innovation. But I don't see much of it at core Civic. So a do I have that right and and be what other kinds of innovations?

My cour civic explorer, I would say that it is difficult to drive innovation when the broader terms of custody are governed not by the entity managing the people, but are are governed by sets of rules and laws that are imposed by Congress and by the Bureau of Prisons or by the state direct corrections departments. For example. You know, we know that people age out of crime, right We know for a fact that the older you get, the

less likely that the person is going to reoffend. And so one of the ways to leverage that, take advantage of it, to reduce costs and reduce population is to move people as they age beyond the walls, you know, still holding them accountable, still putting restrictions on them, but moving them outside of a traditional prison environment, whether it's cour civic or anybody else. You cannot do that under

current law. They are charged with holding people until the court says that they're no longer to be held, and so those types of innovations are really stifled by what I would argue is a flexible and desperately in need of updating criminal justice system. I would add to that that they're oftentimes there has to be a reason to innovate, and so long as they're meeting the expectations of their governmental partners, their governmental customers, and reaping the financial rewards

of that, then there is no reason to innovia. So I actually think that the federal and state governments that contract with Course Civic are actually very key actors in the likelihood of Course Civic innovating. By demanding innovations, they hold the keys to the government treasury, and as a result, if they want to see Course Civic move in a particular direction, then they have the power to do that. Right. What if government's mandated performance based contracts with goals like

recidivism reduction, for instance, to truly incentivize innovation. Why isn't that going on? Well, you're starting to see that. You're starting to see that at some of the state levels. I know they've implemented performance based contracting in Pennsylvania, for example, with some of their private sector companies. You know, it takes a little bit of time to put together meaningful performance metrics to judge a company by how they're doing things.

You have all kinds of questions across the private prison spectrum in terms of what is to be measured, how it is to be measured, what are the stretch goals versus regular goals versus penalty levels. It's not easy to do performance based contracting, and it really requires somebody with knowledge in the contracting space and somebody knowledge in the criminal justice space. Now, I will tell you this, one of the things that I think everybody would love to

see is performance space contracting based on recidivism numbers. And the biggest challenge there is something very simple. Everybody defines recidivism in a different way. So we need to be able to compare apples to apples when it comes to corsifics, largest contracts in of the company's revenue came from the Immigration and Customs and forth mean agency. So we just shy thirty of the company's entire revenue in each of

those years coming from a single government agency. So let me talk a little bit about that single government agency ICE and the standards that exist. So ICE actually has, going back more than a decade now, issued what it calls performance based National Detention Standards. This is a series of rather long and detailed expectations that it imposes on all of the government contractors, including Course Civic. And yet the agency has never been willing to make these binding.

That is, it has never actually required these companies, including cours Civic, to meet those detention standards and certainly not imposing consequences for failing to meet those detention standards. Is the agency is just unwilling to a contract. That's been true under President Obama, that's been true under President Trump, and you know, we'll see how things shake out under

President Biden. But I'm not holding my breath because the politics have not changed sufficiently to turn the agency into one that is willing to say two companies like Corcivic, you actually have to meet these attention standards, and if you don't, there are the severest consequences are coming for you, and by that we mean we're cutting you off. Shocker that a federal agency can't figure out how to do good performance based contracting. I think though, that well two things.

One is, it's difficult to criticize a company for not going beyond the terms of the contract if that's not the measure by which the agency intends to hold them accountable. Right. But I think the second point is, again, immigration is a different set of metrics and performance for private prison companies. The goal of incarceration for people who have been convicted

of the crime, one of the goals is rehabilitation. That's arguably the most important after segregation and maintaining public safety. That is a different matter than the goal of detention. For immigration, which is purely a segregation matter. Is taking people who have been identify fight as being here illegally and holding them until they can determine what they do with them. And re entry is is a different animal

altogether when you're talking about immigration detention versus criminal justice detention. Yeah, I think when when we're talking about it, almost a third right cent of revenue coming from the Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency. Even if I'd say the position that David's articulating that this is a different form of incarceration, it's a it's a rather significant form of incarceration for for

this particular company. For Cours civic, and so I would hope that they would be thinking about the complexities um and the distinctions between this and other forms. I think we all in the criminal justice community kind of get caught up in the vernacular all the terms, you know, justice impacted or ex offender or re entry. Here's what we're really talking about. At the end of the day, when that person walks out of prison, are they likely

to reoffend and revictimize people in their community. That is a totally different matter than immigration, where the outcome at

the end of the incarceration is likely deportation. Yeah, I would take issue with with that point, but I'm not sure that it's actually relevant to what coursifc does, and of Coursivic does what it's asked to do by the government agencies that it contracts for, and so I would agree with your earlier point, David, that it's a little hard to criticize the company for not doing what it's

not being asked to do. I think here the criticism is rightfully placed with those government agencies and with the elect officials who ultimately make the policies, the laws and the policies that direct the operations of those government agencies, And so I'd prefer to focus on my energy on thinking about to what extent is Congress as the bureau prisons, immigration, cousins,

Enforcement Agency, et cetera. You know what extent are they poorly incentivizing Courcivic to live up to its desires to aspirations, at least as articulated earlier by Thai referencing it's it's it's missions. I want to build on the direction that this this conversation has has taken in this movie of us, maybe slightly away from course Civic, But I'll start with

just a question. Do we think that private prisons and the privatization of the prison system is a result of, or related to the US culture of of mass incarceration. The reason I bring this up is because back in nineteen sixty one when Dwight Eisenhower, when he was leaving office, his final warning to the American people was about the rising power of what he called the military industrial complex. And today we see the U S engaged in what

have become called forever Wars. Do either of you worry that we're seeing the rise of the prison industrial complex. Government and the private sector wrapped together around the most vulnerable members of society essentially feeding off their misery. I think that that might have been a plausible narrative going back into the early two thousand's, particularly the aspect related

to the private sector company. There is I won't use the term collusion, but there's certainly alignment between incarceration and economic development. It's perceived by local officials. Have you ever tried to close a federal prison or even a state prison. You get protesters all over the place because it's loss of jobs. So it's not a prison industrial complex per se, but certainly some of the actors in the criminal justice system have a bias towards maintaining prisons that have to

be filled. And most of those actors are people who are feeding at the trough, whether they are corrections officers, prison administrators, vendors selling food to the commissaries, all the way up and down the chain to prosecutors and law enforcement.

I would echo that m concerning I actually say at the state level, this is actually a much more pressing issue because there you're dealing would local elected officials, often state legislators and county commissioners, sheriffs, who really quite clearly is see prisons as economic development opportunity these or economic development engines, and it's not at all abstract because those are the people who live in those communities. And often

these are very rural communities, they're isolated communities. These are places where well paying jobs, decent paying jobs, are hard to come by. And so the thoughts that your two hundred person private prison facility is about to close down means that two hundred of your constituents are about to go out of a job. And that's a concern for

any elected official who's thinking about re election. It's also just a concern for a neighbor right, who's thinking about livelihoods of the people who live down the street from them, right, who make that community. Whatever, whatever the community is, they are that community. Okay, this has been a great conversation, um, but there are a couple of things that I need

to do to wrap us up. I want to each of you to give Course Civic a B S score, So on a scale of zero to one hundred being the worst total b S and zero roal being the best zero bs. What would you give Course Civic based on how they are are delivering on their mission? Say sorry, why don't you go first, Yeah, I think i'd say they're they're sevent bs. We'll take it. And David, you know, I don't think anybody in this space is perfect. I

think there's always room for improvement. But I don't think the core Civic is the company that has been demonized, or I don't think the company reflects some of the allegations out there. I'd give him a fifteen. That's great. Thank you so much for being here today, both of you. This was this was a lot of fun. I really appreciate you taking the times. So, folks, it's time to give Course Civic our official BS score. As you've heard today, this one is complicated, so actually a little hard to

make this call because our experts were so divided. Sharon gave them a hundred, says are seventy and David gave them fifteen. Because their business model doesn't align with their purpose, and because they lack transparency, I've decided to give Course Civic a sixty eight. To weigh in with your own score or to leave us a message, visit our website

Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com. We'll track Course Civic's behavior over time to see if they can bring that score down you'll also be able to see where they rank on BS compared to the other companies we feature on this show. And if you're running a purpose led business or you're thinking of beginning the journey of transformation to become one, here are three things you should take away from this episode. One, your business model and your purpose

need to align. That's one of the first principles of being purpose led. It's why being purpose led is different than engaging in corporate social responsibility. That old fashioned model held that companies could make their money anyway they wanted and then spend some of their profits on good causes to solve their souls. In course civics case, they make money on the number of prisoners in their facilities, not on successfully rehabilitating them and reintroducing them to society. That's

a problem. Two. Action is always the cure. Today we discussed actions for cour civic like actively engaging with the government to create contracts that give them financial incentives to achieve their purpose of successfully reintroducing people to society and reducing recidivism, and ideas like hiring social workers as prison guards, or ideas like becoming proactively transparent with their data and holding themselves accountable for hitting the key metrics outlined in

their purpose, the actions for your company will undoubtedly be different. The point is doing is believing and three hope is not a strategy, and neither is hiding. Unlike many of the organizations we've covered this season, cour Civic isn't a household name, but that definitely does not mean that they won't eventually be held accountable. Reform in this industry is inevitable.

So no matter what industry you're in, if you're hoping to exist behind the scenes and under the radar and get away with being accountable only to your shareholders and not to your broader stakeholders, it's time for a new strategy. And David Heineger, CEO of Course Civic, if you ever want to come on this show to talk about any of of topics and ideas we've discussed today, you have

an open invitation. I'd like to thank everyone who joined us today, Sharon Brett, David Sefabian, and say Sar Hernandez. You can find all of them on social media. We have all of their handles on our website, Calling Bullshit podcast dot com, and check out Saysar's books migrating to prison, America's obsession with locking up immigrants, and the krimmigration law.

If you have ideas for companies or organizations we should consider for future episodes, you can submit them on the site too, And if we unlock something important for you today, Subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks to our production team, Hannah Beal, Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim d s Moss, Hailey Pascalites, MICHAELA. Reid, Parker Silzer,

Basil Soaper and me John Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created by co Collective and is hosted by Me Time onto you. Thanks for listening before you go, we'd love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at two one two five oh five zero five, or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co collective dot com. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode.