Symposium 2001

There Something Shady at the Marriott Besides the Meatloaf:

The Ethics of the U.S. Prison System and Goshen College's Interaction with It

 

Luke Miller, Junior

Goshen College and the U.S. Prison system appear to be worlds apart. But in the changing world where Mennonites are ever becoming more "in the world," and nations and corporations look more and more alike, rarely do two institutions stand completely separated. This paper explores the ethical implications of the prison system on Goshen and asks the question: Where should Goshen College draw the line on its interaction with the U.S. Prison System?

The Birth of the Prison

The general move in the direction of mass imprisonment "was an American invention for which the Pennsylvania Quakers may be justly credited-or blamed."1 The first institution to open in the U.S. that resembles the current types of prisons was the Walnut Street Prison in 1790. The system hoped to change the prisoners with solitude, work, and religious influences from weekly services and other interaction with local Christian groups that were allowed in to transform the mind of the offenders. The goal never stood to restore the break which had occurred between the juridical subject and the social pact. But rather to prevent the repetition of the crime and shape the individual with strict habits, rules, orders, and authority continually enforced around him.2

This experiment of a system was questioned from its very beginning. In 1831 Beaumont and Tocqueville from the French Government visited the U.S. penitentiary system that had arisen following the Walnut Street example and wrote, "We would say positively, if the penitentiary system cannot propose to itself an end other than the radical reformation (of a wicked person into an honest man) the legislature perhaps should abandon this system."3 The prison system never had a restorative or rehabilitating side to it. In fact the very opposite outcome of reformation has been pointed to in the system's design. "It is not unfair to say that if men had deliberately set themselves the task of designing an institution that would systematically mal-adjust men, they would have invented the large, walled, maximum security prison."4 Despite the opinions that the prison system did not reform or rehabilitate offenders, for the people in authority positions it continued to be the answer to the question of what should we do with those who break our laws.


What Is The Prison System Like Today

In the past couple decades the number of people behind bars has skyrocketed. One of the reasons behind the growing numbers is the get-tough approach to crime introduced in the sixties. This includes harsher prison terms, mandatory sentencing, "three strikes and you're out" laws, the war on drugs, and many other policies. In 1999 about 1.8 million people-one out of every 150 Americans-were behind bars. This population has doubled in the past 12 years. About 5 million are in prison, on parole or probation, or incarcerated in INS detention centers. The cost of keeping a prisoner has increased accordingly. The average annual cost of keeping an adult prisoner ranges from $30,000 to $75,000 annually, and the costs of building and maintaining prisons jumped from $7 billion to $38 billion between 1980 and 1996.5 Nancy Mahon, director of the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture in New York said, "What we've done is confuse accountability with incarceration. One of our concerns is that this heavy focus on incarceration as the way to address crime is incapacitating people without addressing the problem."6

The people that are incapacitated from incarceration tend to be the already oppressed people in society. The growth in prisons has not been racially proportional. African-Americans comprise about 12 percent of the national population and 13 percent of the drug users, yet they make up 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of those imprisoned.7 Black men are seven times more likely to be imprisoned than white men, and Native Americans are ten times more likely. Between 1985 and 1995 Latinos making up federal and state inmates increased from 10 to 18 percent.8 Women have also felt the sting of the get-tough laws. Amnesty International reports there are about 138,000 women prisoners in the U.S. This is an increase of 300% since 1985. African-American and Hispanic women make up the bulk of the increase of women inmates, and are jailed at 8 and 4 times respectively the rate of white women.9 Lower-class people face tougher sentences in most cases. In the case of cocaine, since 1986 95% of the crack dealers that have been sent to prison are low-level dealers. The federal focus on who gets sent to prison has been on dealers with 5 and 50 grams, not the dealers who ship cocaine by the ton.10

The government is overwhelmed by this growth in population and subsequent expenditure on prisons. It has tried to keep up by building more facilities but it has not been able to, despite fierce spending. This situation has led to one of the newest players in the criminal justice system arena: the privately owned or operated prison. The for-profit prison industry has been growing explosively in the last couple of years growing from $650 million in 1996 to about $1 billion in 1997. And it is estimated to be an industry worth $4 billion by 2002.11 The government basically auctions off prisoners to private facilities, which can build and run prisons cheaper than the federal government. These corporations are free of governmental red tape and other inefficient procedures that they say waste tax dollars.12 In 1998 the capacity of private prisons in the U.S. was 116,923 in 160 facilities owned or operated by 14 companies. The largest of these is Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). CCA runs more that 67,000 beds in the U.S., controlling more than half of all inmates in private prisons nationwide. This new market has been a gold mine for the corporations and their investors, and it is expected to double in the next five years.13

Private prisons make money usually on an inmate-occupancy per day payment from the government. Thus these companies make the most profit when they have the maximum prisoners and keep their overhead costs to a minimum. CCA, like other private prison companies has cut costs in a number of different ways. "The bulk of the cost savings enjoyed by CCA is the result of lower labor costs," Paine Webber assures investors.14 This is done by building their prisons so fewer guards can monitor more inmates. In Lawrenceville a CCA prison will open next year where five guards will supervise 750 prisoners during the day, and two will do the job at night. Another place costs are saved are by giving employees stock-ownership plans instead of guaranteed pensions that state employed workers receive, and leaving job positions vacant for longer than necessary. CCA Warden Kevin Meyers said, "I can save money on purchasing because there's no bureaucracy. If I see a truckload of white potatoes at a bargain, I can buy them. I'm always negotiating a lower price."15

The economic advantages for-profit prisons gain in this fashion save the companies money, but also lend themselves to inhumane treatment of the prisoners. Guards tend to be less trained, employees less screened, and turnover rates higher leading to an increased risk of poor treatment of inmates. Inspectors from the British Prison Officers Association who visited several CCA facilities said, "We saw evidence of inmates being cruelly treated. Indeed, the warden admitted that noisy and truculent prisoners are gagged with sticky tape, but this had caused a problem when an inmate almost choked to death." At a CCA-run immigration center the inspectors found inmates confined to warehouse-like dormitories for twenty-three hours a day. They concluded the facility had "possibly the worst conditions we have ever witnessed in terms of inmate care and supervision.16 Some specific incidents at CCA institutions include when one inmate was killed and six maximum-security inmates escaped in broad daylight. CCA refused to allow state and local officials to enter the prison and continued to deny that the facility housed maximum-security inmates until the day of the escape. At a CCA facility in Tennessee, prison officials delayed taking a pregnant woman to a hospital, allowing her to suffer for 12 hours until she died from an undiagnosed complication. "Rosalind Bradford died out there, in my opinion, of criminal neglect", the supervisor said in a deposition concerning the case.17 And the Colorado ACLU filed suit against CCA's private prisoner transport company on behalf of a woman who claimed that members of the all male transport crew sexually assaulted her repeatedly during her five-day trip from Texas to Colorado.18


The Ethical Implications of the Prison System for Goshen College

The ethical implications of private for-profit prisons are multi-faceted. Some feel it is not the same "justice" when a prisoner looks at a guard and does not see a federal emblem, but Corrections Corporation of America. Others feel morally apprehensive about making a private profit by incarcerating a human being and compare the idea to that of slavery. Many point to the cruel case examples mentioned above as reasons to why private prisons are unethical.


I believe these objections against private prisons are valid but to an extent they are one-sided. To me private prisons are just one symptom of a cancerous system. From its infancy the entire penitentiary system has failed in alleviating the problems of crime. And in its maturity it has blatantly been used as a tool to further oppress along racial, sexual, and socio-economic lines. Not only is there less justice in a private prison, there is not much justice in a federal prison. The victims of the crime are cut out of the picture, the offender is not reformed nor rehabilitated, nor is the broken social contract restored. Making a profit by incapacitating human beings is not only moral apprehensible in private prisons, but it is also morally apprehensible in the federal realm where the prison industry employees more than 523,000 full time workers, more than any other Fortune 500 company except for General Motors.19 The cruelty in private prisons mentioned above is humanitarianly unethical, but the same cruelties occurs in federal institutions.

The line between private and political is continuing to become more and more blurred in the prison realm as well as most other areas. The private prisons corporations spend ample amounts of their huge profits swaying political and public opinion to their benefit. The blurring of these lines has been intensified by the financial ties that international parent companies make to smaller corporations. The ties to other companies and institutions that crop up in CCA are numerous. The one of the biggest investors in CCA is Sodexho-Marriott who owns 16.9% of the company and 8.8% of CCA's sister company Prison Realty Trust, and joint ventures in other prison companies around the world. Sodexho-Marriott is the parent company that runs the food service here at Goshen College and in many other places around the globe.

Drawing from the feminist idea that the personal is political I have been unwillingly implicated in supporting private prisons, and thus the entire prison industry by choosing to come to Goshen College where a meal plan is mandatory for on-campus students. This link is a fairly easy one to make. But it is not a sufficient argument by itself because everything from where one shops to the clothes one wears can possibly be traced back to a transnational corporation supporting unethical practices. The web weaved by transnational corporations is near impossible to escape in its entirety. Thus the question in my mind becomes not how to cut all ties to corporations, but rather where should Goshen College realistically draw the line on their support for transnational companies with unethical pratices? In the case of Sodexho-Marriott, does the fact that they invest heavily in CCA create a situation of moral significance to the institution of Goshen College and its goals?


The Religious Implications

Goshen College is a Mennonite college functioning as an organ of the Mennonite Church. GC President Shirley Showalter explained how the church interweaves with college goals by saying, "when the church acts out of its deepest convictions, such as peacemaking and service, we in education benefit if we use that experience creatively. We must bring our interest in academic rigor together with the teachings of Christ as interpreted by the church. When we do this well, we do indeed create 'servant leaders' for 'the church and world,' as our mission statement says."20

This synthesis of Christian teachings and academic rigor has been expressed to me in my classes. I believe that as well as academically, this mission of combining academics and Christian teaching should manifest itself in the administrative decisions Goshen makes. The fact that our food service provider invests heavily in private prisons seem to be an issue of moral significance that needs to be addressed by Goshen College. Therefore on the purely religious level, when Goshen teaches values such as peacemaking and service that appear to contradict the unethical practices of the prison system and at the same time the institution itself has an enormous contract with a company that is tied to private prisons I think it is similar to giving a lecture on the dangers of lung cancer while at the same time smoking.


The Business Implications

On the flipside of the coin Goshen College, while being a part of the Mennonite Church, is also out in the world as an institution that wishes to remain "in business." J. Lawrence Burkholder, past President of Goshen College said, "No institution that I worked for was prepared to accept its own demise. Institutional policies, pragmatic criteria for success, legal considerations, government regulations, political realities, and competing powers demanded decisions based upon necessity as well as morality."21 Goshen College would be naïve if it thought it could uncompromisingly function in institutional reality without making certain sacrifices for the business side of things. In trying to balance Christian teachings and institutional reality the question of CCA and Sodexho-Marriott's link is still morally significant because businesses are not exempt from morals, but the question is now is the link strong enough to override the realities of business.

I believe Sodexho-Marriott's 16.9% piece of Corrections Corporation of America is a morally significant fact even on the business level that Goshen College must ethically address for themselves as a College. As I stated above I believe private prisons are one outcome of a tainted system of oppressive penal practices. Sodexho-Marriott not only implicitly, but furthermore profits from, what I see as the most racist and classist sides of the judicial system that has lead to the current over-crowding crisis, and in its wake private prisons. While doing business with a company who invests in private prisons, as Goshen is doing with Marriott, is yet a step further away in support, it is still a form of support. On Goshen College campus Sodexho-Marriott is the largest outside company that the students have to pay for. This contract holds a certain sway on campus. The raising of the allowed age from 21 to 22 when a student can live off campus, which was arguably influenced by the contract with Sodexho-Marriott, shows the company's strong influence on the college.

University and college campuses have been locations where the connection between which companies colleges invest in and what those companies are doing has been brought to public attention. Student protests in the late 1970's against college and universities that held investments in banks that gave credit to the apartheid South African government on a revolving basis led not only to many colleges divesting, but was also a significant factor in persuading state and city legislatures to take action against corporations involved in South Africa. Recently student anti-sweatshop movements have persuaded many colleges and universities to change their sports apparel and clothing provider and simultaneously have brought the issue to national attention. In the vein of this precedent action against other colleges that hold contracts with Sodexho-Marriott have taken place at the State University of New York in Binghamton, Hampshire College in Massachusetts, Indiana's own Earlham College, and many more.

Because of this precedent of colleges impacting larger regional and national views, I think Goshen College could make a substantial statement by asking the question: who are we supporting and on what level? Goshen College's recent publicity buzzword has been "uncommon." How can we show of Anabaptist uncommonness in the homogeneity of competing businesses? J. Lawrence Burkholder said, "As Mennonites continue to penetrate the world of business, politics, and institutional development, they would do well to ponder the perennial issue of moral freedom and "tragic necessity."22 The way Goshen chooses to ponder this issue of Sodexho-Marriott can truly make it an uncommon institution. Stanley Green, president of Mennonite Board of Missions, said of institutions:
"Our institutions are an expression of our need to universalize our best hopes and wishes for our world. But we need to remind ourselves of the fallacy of confusing the wish with reality. The church should be the first place where this fallacy is recognized-the last place to confuse the hope of the Kingdom/Reign of God with the actual like and work of the institution. No institution can ever perfectly embody humanity's best hopes and dreams. However, we can learn to embody commitment to a continuous search for deeper wisdom, a fuller understanding, and the hope of healing flowing through us and the world."23

Thus, while no institution can be perfect, institutions can make big impacts on the world in and around them. For all the above reasons I recommend that Goshen College immediately make optional the requirement that students on campus have a meal plan, and form a task force to ask the question should Goshen College ethically continue its contract with Sodexho-Marriott.

End Notes
1. Foucault, Michael. Discipline and Punish. Editions Gallimard, Paris: 1975.
translation Second Vintage Books Edition: 1995, p. 120. p.3.
2. Ibid. p.128.
3. Beaumont, Gustave de and Tocqueville, Alexis de. On the Penitentiary System in the
United States and Its Application in France. translated by Francis Lieber. Southern
University Press: Carbondale, IL: 1964, p.87.
4. Mattick, Hans W. The Prosaic Sources of Prison Violence. Occasional Paper Series.
Chicago University Law School, 1972, p. 13.
5. Casa, Kathryn. "Prisons The New Growth Industry." National Catholic Reporter.
July, 2, 99.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Race Relations in Prison. www.prisons.org/racism.htm updated Oct. 29, 2000.
9. Casas. "Prisons The New Growth Industry"
10. Sterling, Eric. "Disparity in Crack, Powder Cocaine
Sentences." Chicago Tribune. Aug. 4, 1997.
11. Ibid.
12. Bates, Eric. "Private Prisons." Nation. Jan. 5, 1998. Is. 1
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Schade, Mike. email received Nov. 16, 2000 quoting information from
http://www.nomoreprisons.org/nwom.htm
19. Parenti, Christian. The Prison Industrial Complex: Crisis and Control. Corporate
Watch. September 1999. http://www.corpwatch.org/
20. Showalter, Shirley. "Power and Leadership." Conrad Grebel Review. Pandora
Press: Waterloo, Ontario Fall 1999. Vol. 17, Number 1.
21. Burkholder, J. Lawrence. "Personal Stories of Decisions and Dilemas." Conrad
Grebel Review. Pandora Press: Waterloo, Ontario. Winter 1999.
22. Ibid.
23. Green, Stanely. "The Church as Employer." Conrad Grebel Reviev. Pandora Press:
Waterloo, Ontario. Winter 1999.