My name is Vince, and I know where it began and how i addict and a convicted felon. I have been out of the prison system for three years now, and my life keeps getting better every day. It all came with realizing that I deserved better, and reaching out to something greater than me to get out of the hole I was buried in. But that’s another story for another day. Today, I am  writing to tell you about my personal experience with the serious human slavery of privatized prisons and their counterpart, the state owned prison. 

It all started on a day I still regret, with a note and a bank. Yes, a bank. I am not proud of this. I will say that I deserved to go to prison, and I was screaming for help that I wasn’t getting from the courts or anywhere else. Again, that’s another rabbit hole for another day. It was the end of 2012 and I was arrested for robbery and sent to prison for 24 months. I was classified to Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Conneaut, Ohio as inmate number A651-896.

At the time La.E.C.I. was owned by CCA, Corrections Corporation of America. The largest of the ugly, they are the Goldman Sachs of the prison world. They own prisons all over the world, including Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s horrifying to imagine what goes on abroad after what I witnessed myself here in an American prison. I heard all kinds of war stories going into the prison system–that it was crazy and totally off the hook, and that if you were not gang affiliated you were going to get tried because of a gang called the Heartless Felons. Rumor had it, they had taken over the facility when CCA bought it. I quickly found out this was not just inmate talk.

As soon as CCA took over, they started taking all the hard cases and violent offenders from other prisons to fill the prison quickly. They increased the inmate population without increasing the numbers of correctional officers, and as a result, the corrections staff was completely overwhelmed. During my incarceration, female staff were being molested on a regular basis. 

You could tell something was different about the staff at Lake Erie compared to the state-owned Lorain Correctional Institution. Lorain is the intake prison you are sent to before being classified to your parent institution. The staff at Lake Erie acted more like the inmates I was in prison with than the trained professionals they are supposed to be. I told myself going into this that I would never let anyone harm me or take anything from me, and I stood by that. The line I drew was tested on my very first night there. A man in his 70s rode in from Lorain with me, and that night they stripped him of everything he owned. He just sat and watched as they helped themselves to the few items he possessed. I wanted to help him, but one thing you don’t do there is get involved in stuff that has nothing to do with you. 

I would have my own battles to fight soon enough. During my time there I noticed one theme: less and less of everything as time went on. Less food, less religion, less schooling, less activities. Less of anything that would help better us, because, well, all of that costs money. If you ask them, they can spout off program after program available to the inmates at Lake Erie. The truth is, there is a dusty room in the prison that people may or may not gather in for the sake of the organizations that allocate money from grants for inmate programming from the federal government. They tell you that they are going to do all these great things with the program, really help people to better themselves, but it’s a lie. In reality, they may throw a pizza party once in a while, and then they’ll pocket the remainder of that grant money. If you do ask for help, good luck getting it. The bottom line is, there’s absolutely nothing to do; nothing but watch the dorm clock slowly tick the seconds of your stay away. 

So what do you think a bunch of criminals in prison are going to do with a bunch of time on their hands? They continue to live the lives they always have, as though they were still in the streets. They sell drugs, do drugs, and fight. Gang banging and extreme violence are the norm and code of conduct there. I was beaten with a lock during my incarceration there, and I was also involved in a huge fight that resulted in my expulsion from Lake Erie. I was sent to Mansfield Correctional after that, a state-owned prison similar to Lorain. 

The truth is, the only time I felt safe and sane when I was in La.E.C. was when I was in the hole. I witnessed a man get beaten so violently with a master lock attached to a belt, that he had to be life-flighted out of the prison, and his skull had to be cut open to relieve the pressure on his brain. I saw him later on in Mansfield and he wasn’t the same person as before the assault.  All of this went on with little to no control of the staff. Think about it: these staff are paid way less than state employees and they don’t have the same benefits, working much more for far less. State employees work 40 hour weeks, while Lake Erie staff, last I saw, were working up to 60 hours a week with all this craziness going on. They are overworked and underpaid. 

You may be thinking to yourself: “So what, what do I care? It’s prison; they deserve it.” I urge you to re-evaluate that thought. Most of the people I was doing time with were serving less than five-year sentences. Furthermore, not everyone in prison is a hardened criminal; anyone can get five years for their second OVI, or even their first OVI offense if there’s an accident or injury involved. 

So where was I? Mansfield. Now I’m scared, again. Mansfield is infamous. It’s closed security, “the walls” they call it. A tougher set of inmates–more gangs, more stabbings, more rape. Well guess what? I have nothing much to write about it. Yes, I saw stabbings and fights. However, it is a much more controlled environment. There was programming available, such as AA and church retreats for entire weekends. There was control, and there was respect. The correctional officers patrolled and controlled, but they treated you with respect as long as you respected them. I served the rest of my sentence with no problems at all, and then I came home. 

Unfortunately, I had to go back to Lake Erie in 2018 for a parole sanction. Nothing had changed; in fact, I believe it was worse. Even less than before, but the staff were worse, treating the inmates as though they were less than human. They bragged about abusing them when they are handcuffed and spraying them with mace. I guess they realized they’d messed up and wanted control back. As a result of these atrocities, CCA has been sued so much they have now changed their name to Core Civic, as if renaming could erase all the past and present corruption behind their gates. 

I have been in jail and in treatment with some of these corrections officers. I believe this is because the environment at Lake Erie is making these people sick. I was friends with a female officer who accused her co-worker of rape. Following their track record of corruption, CCA swept it right under the rug, adding to the growing pile of dirt going unnoticed outside the gate. It’s a disgusting culture and the world should see it for exactly what it is — treating humans like cattle. 

I recently found out that the whole reason for this prison, and others like it, is that it is supposedly cheaper, yet this isn’t true at all. The human cost is immeasurable and damaging in ways no one can fathom. So please consider this, as it all ties in with corporations such as CCA giving money to politicians to get what they want. It is lobbying at the cost of human lives, at the cost of taxpayers, and at the cost of our morality.

Morality aside, these prisons don’t save money like they promise. In an investigative report from the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Bob Paynter, found that it’s actually costing the state of Ohio money, and not saving 5% as the law requires to keep the prison running. According to the state of Ohio, we are somehow saving $45 million by privatizing our prisons. However, as Paynter found, apparently they are not even sure how to calculate a proper estimate of savings: “Their methods for calculating the seemingly robust savings have changed substantially and, in some cases, inexplicably over the last several biennia. A detailed examination of those calculations shows them not only to be riddled with errors, oversights and omissions of significant data, but also potentially tainted by controversial accounting assumptions that many experts consider deeply flawed.” When these errors and miscalculations are fixed we find out that there are no savings at all. Additionally, a 2016 report found that private prisons increase the risk of recidivism by 20 percent. 

So why do we stick with a system that clearly isn’t living up to its promises? Nationally, the top three private prison Corporations  — GEO Group, Core Civic, and Management and Training Corp.— gave a whopping $3 million to political campaigns in the 2020 campaign cycle.the infamous “three strikes law,” which dictates that after the third time you get a felony, no matter what it’s for, you get a life sentence. I don’t think I need to explain to you how this and similar legislation benefits private prison corporations. It seems their “contributions,” or bribes if we’re being honest, are paying off in spades, as they are allowed to operate these hell holes with seemingly little to no oversight both nationally and abroad.

We desperately need to change this corrupted system; actually change it, not just talk about it. I hope you see the gravity and severity of this issue. I have PTSD-triggered nightmares almost daily. Some would say I deserve it, but that’s for God, not man, to decide. If I could undo my crime, I would. But if I can use my story to help change the world for the better, I must try. Join me, won’t you?

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