Cheney indicted for prison profiteering
in Texas
Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
indicted for criminal conspiracy in private prison
profiteering, resulting in prisoner assaults
By Brenda Norrell
The Narcosphere, November 19, 2008
go to original
See Article III.3 Maintaining
an Unethical Business Relationship
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Gonzalez and Cheney:
Indicted by a Texas Grand Jury for prison abuses.
Source: Washington
Post |
WILLACY COUNTY, Texas -- US Vice President Dick
Cheney was indicted today for a prison profiteering
scheme and charged with abuse of prisoners. Cheney
invested millions in the Vanguard Group, an investment
management company with interests in the prison companies
in charge of detention centers. Former Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales was also indicted in the prison profiteering
scheme, resulting in ongoing prisoner assaults and
at least one murder.
Human rights activists urged a probe into prison profiteering
after the private prison corporation GEO Group, began
receiving enormous federal contracts to build detention
centers to imprison migrants, including ones in Laredo,
Texas and Jena, Louisiana.
Human rights activists said the fever-pitched racism
mounted in the US was induced for the purpose of prison
profiteering by US officials reaping enormous profits.
The increased arrests of migrants resulted in profits
and a long list of new prison construction contracts
for the GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut, both with a
long history of assaults and murders in prisons.
A Texas grand jury indicted Cheney today and accused
him of at least misdemeanor assaults of inmates by
allowing inmates to assault fellow inmates. Gonzales
was charged with having used his position to stop
investigations into assaults committed in a prison
for profit in Willacy County, Texas. Both Cheney and
Gonzales were charged with engaging in organized criminal
activity.
Last month, a Willacy County grand jury indicted the
GEO Group, on a murder charge in the death of a prisoner
days before his release in 2001. The indictment alleged
the GEO Group allowed other inmates to beat Gregorio
de la Rosa Jr. to death with padlocks stuffed into
socks. The death happened at the Raymondville facility.
A jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family
$47.5 million in a civil judgment in 2006. The Cheney-Gonzales
indictment refers to the de la Rosa case.
Human rights activists protested both Raymondville
and Hutto prisons in southwestern Texas in recent
years. At Hutto, migrant women and children were abused.
ICE refused to allow a UN Rapporteur into Hutto.
During the Bush-Cheney regime, prisons of torture
and prisons for migrants became synonymous with the
name GEO, from Guantanamo to migrant prisons in the
south and along the southwest border.
Cheney said Guantanamo was vital in 2005 and detainees
could expect to be treated better here than "by
virtually any other government on the face of the
earth."
Geo was awarded a contract for the continued management
of the Migrant Operations Center in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, in Nov. 2, 2006. Recently, GEO received a contract
for a migrant prison in Jena, La. GEO also received
a contract for housing "criminal aliens"
in the US, as stated on the GEO website.
GEO's migrant prisons were not restricted to the
US. GEO also assumed a management contract in the
Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center in England.
GEO was not the only one profiteering. The Wackenhut
Corp. was also profiteering from transporting migrants
from the border after their arrests. The two companies
split in 2003.
All along the border, while GEO was building prisons,
GEO's other half, Wackenhut Corp., was profiteering
from the arrest of migrants from the borders.
The United States Customs and Border Protection agency
entered into the contract with Wackenhut Corp., to
transport arrested migrants from the border. Wackenhut
is now the domestic subsidiary of the U.K.-based security
giant Group 4 Securicor.
While the US filled its prisons with migrants, with
a price on their heads, the number of Native American
prisoners soared.
The US Department of Justice recently released a study
showing that Native American inmates in Indian country
jails increased by 24 percent between 2004 and 2007.
The figures for Native Americans in all facilities
-- tribal, federal and state -- increased 4.5 percent.
Suicides, attempted suicides, deaths and escapes were
cited as the result of deteriorating prison conditions.
Human rights activists hope the indictments of Cheney
and Gonzales are the first of many indictments of
the Bush-Cheney administration.
