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ICYMI

Oklahoma’s private prison industry is expanding…

2:29 PM EST on March 6, 2017

Well, at least one industry in Oklahoma has been able to weather our state's shitty economy.

According to Oklahoma Watch, Core Civic – one of the largest private prison contractors in Oklahoma – is looking to expand its reach by acquiring a big chunk of the always-lucrative Oklahoma halfway house market.

Here are the details:

Oklahoma’s largest private-prison company is proposing to acquire the state’s second largest provider of halfway houses, which would give the company a dominant footprint in private incarceration in the state.

CoreCivic – formerly known as Corrections Corp. of America – has been in talks with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and nonprofit Center Point Inc. to acquire the nonprofit’s halfway houses in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Osage County, according to an Oct. 10 letter from the Corrections Department to CoreCivic.

If the purchase of the California-based Center Point goes through and CoreCivic doesn’t close or consolidate facilities, CoreCivic would own more than 70 percent of the state’s halfway-house reentry beds. CoreCivic has proposed closing the Center Point halfway houses in Tulsa and Osage County should the deal be finalized, but the Corrections Department is somewhat resistant, the letter shows...

“For the past several years, CoreCivic has undertaken multiple acquisitions to expand the company’s ability to meet government partners’ growing demand for community correctional and residential reentry services,” Owen said. “While we continue to assess such opportunities around the county, we have no announcements of pending acquisitions at this time.”

That's nice. I think I speak for everyone when I say there's nothing more satisfying than watching the private industry profit off the "opportunities" to incarcerate of our citizens. I'm sure our founding fathers would be very proud to see these "job creators" succeed. While we're at it, maybe we should put CoreCivic in charge of executions, too? Then we wouldn't have to worry about Mary Fallin botching an execution or ordering the wrong lethal drug cocktail.

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