Business As Usual

BUSINESS AS USUAL

Business as usual is all those entities which have turned mass incarceration into money making Enterprises to benefit the few. These include: commissary companies, like Keefe, key supply companies, the phone companies, like global Tel Link and Securus, the food service companies like Aramark, the for-profit prison companies like Correction Corporation of America, their lobbyists, who write the laws that ensure long sentences and so fill up prisons and our politicians who pass these laws in exchange for campaign contributions. Corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, IBM, J.C. Penny, Sears, Wal-Mart, Eddie Bauer, Wendy’s, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Motorola, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Pierre Cardin and Target.

G4S is a worldwide company that describes itself as offering “a suite of products and services – risk consulting & investigations, systems irrigation, security professionals that align to deliver innovative, essential and scalable solution”. In addition to claiming more than 50,000 employees in the U.S., they operate in 28 European countries, 10 Middle Eastern Countries, 21 Asia/Pacific countries, 24 African countries and in 21 Latin American & Caribbean countries. G4S claims to work in over 2,200 prisons and jails in the United States and Canada. Wackenhut became part of this conglomerate in 2010.

To top it off, the United Nations has $22 million in contracts with G4S. Which also includes, among its accomplishments, providing services and equipment to Israeli occupation prisons where torture and detention of Palestinians is commonplace. Since 2000, the U.S. has been involved in prison construction in 25 different countries. It’s certainly Business As Usual for all involved/mentioned above.

By: Al Cunningham, Box E-22600 (1-EY-17), San Quentin, CA 94974