October 24, 2004

Abu Ghraib team bids to run UK prisons
posted by Wibbleflex 20 years ago
  • It will probably be an improvement.
  • And yet still a deterrent.
  • I don't see the point here, beyond the issue of privately run prisons in general. So MTC opened Abu Ghraib (and, I assume, other prisons in Iraq that haven't made the news) and hired the Iraqi support staff. To my knowledge - and as the article clearly states - it was members of US military who were the jaliers and abused prisoners. This story has been investigated intensely and so far there has been no indication that the private contractors were in any way involved in the mistreatment and torture of prisoners. Hmm indeed. What is your point here? Is Dick Cheney's third cousin on the board at MTC?
  • McCotter, a Vietnam veteran, has a chequered record of running US jails. In 1997 he was forced to resign as a senior prison official in Utah after a scandal surrounding the death of a mentally ill inmate strapped naked to a chair for 16 hours. This year, Schumer wrote to Ashcroft, asking why someone with McCotter's controversial history was sent to Iraq. Last year MTC was criticised by the US Justice Department over its management of Santa Fe prison in New Mexico which was found to have unsafe conditions and lack adequate medical care for inmates. The company said the problems have been resolved and it has had its contract renewed. Unless they never set foot in the building, it doesn't seem possible for the company running Abu Ghraib to not know what was going on. Abu Ghraib is bad enough, but it looks like McCotter and MTC also have a history of prison abuse complicity, if not participation.
  • The torture will be efficient and cost-effective. This will fund future tax cuts to the voting demographic.
  • It's possible that MTC have entirely clean hands. I would have thought that the government would err on the side of caution though.
  • I'm just thinking that if there was any kind of involvement by MTC in the abuses - on any level - the Bush administration, the Pentagon, the DOJ, etc. would have played it up big time to at least partially take the heat off the soldiers and the military chain of command. This is the first I've heard of MTC. I wonder if their involvement in Abu Ghraib was "running" it as shinything says, in which case they undoubtedly bear some responsibility, but the article states that they "set [it] up" and implies that that was the extent of their involvement. I wonder what that task involved and how it might have contributed to the abuses. Were MTC administrators still in place when the abuses took place? And how much MTC contributed to GOP coffers?
  • Good questions, Jerry G. And you're right. I used "running", but "setting up" appears closer to the truth. Sorry 'bout that. :)
  • Jerry: Given the levels of prison rape and brutality which appear to be commonplace in US prisons, I don't think their record in Iraq really matters, except by way of providing a conveninent icon for people to point at.
  • They could well have contributed to the behaviour of the MPs, shinything, and MTC employees might still be working there. The article isn't too clear on that given the bald thesis the headline suggests: MTC = Abu Ghraib = a nightmare for British prisons. And yes, rogerd, I kept hoping after the story broke that it would lead to an open discussion about the violence that many US prisoners live with on a daily basis, but that dirty little secret doesn't get much play in the US media.
  • Fox tires of current henhouse job: transfers to another guard position overseas.