Here’s a mind-boggling one.
Florida Atlantic University, a 29,000-student public university in Boca Raton, will announce today that it has sold the naming rights to its football stadium to a private prison company that until recently ran a youthful offender facility in Mississippi whose “pervasive level of brazen staff sexual misconduct” was called “among the worst in the nation” by a 2012 Department of Justice investigation.
The Justice Department report on the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility found not only that Walnut Grove management was “deliberately indifferent to staff sexual misconduct,” but also that the facility “often use[d] excessive force as a first response” to disciplinary issues, tolerated active gang membership by facility employees, failed to protect inmates against physical and sexual assault by peers, and was “deliberately indifferent to the suicide risks and serious mental health needs of its youth.”
Walnut Grove was operated at the time by GEO Group, a global private prison operator. Later that year, after a federal judge described Walnut Grove as “a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts,” GEO was removed as manager of the institution. The company would later claim that it had chosen not to renew the contract because Walnut Grove was “financially underperforming.”)
So why would FAU choose to associate itself with a company with such an appalling record? Two reasons.
First, the university has been searching for a corporate sponsor for the stadium without success since it opened two years ago. The $5 million reportedly offered by the GEO Group was apparently impossible to resist.
And second? Well, there’s GEO Group’s CEO, George Zoley. He’s a FAU alum and the former chair of the university’s board of trustees.
Update | It’s official. Thanks to a $6 million donation to the university, the stadium will now be named “GEO Group Stadium.” The university’s press release on the deal calls GEO Group a “fully integrated equity real estate investment trust specializing in the design, financing, development, and operation of correctional, detention, and community reentry facilities around the globe.”
Wednesday Update | The New York Times reports on the story, calling the deal a “a jarring case of the lengths colleges and teams will go to produce revenue, of the way that everything seems to be for sale now in sports — and to anyone with enough cash.” As well, it quotes local private-prison opponent Bob Libal as saying that the GEO Group has recently “poured enormous resources” into attempts “to take over a large portion of the Florida prison system,” characterizing yesterday’s agreement as an extension of that lobbying effort. GEO is, Libal says, “a company whose record is marred by human rights abuses, by lawsuits, by unnecessary deaths of people in their custody and a whole series of incidents that really draw into question their ability to successfully manage a prison facility.” As the Times itself notes, GEO “has been cited by state and federal regulators and lost a series of high-profile lawsuits.”
Asked by a Times reporter whether FAU had investigated such incidents before partnering with GEO, university president Saunders said, “we think it’s a wonderful company, and we’re very proud to partner with them.”
The Times also notes that two past FAU student government presidents have gone on to work for GEO Group.
Third Update | It has emerged that the GEO Group owns an immigrant detention center just ten miles from the Florida Atlantic campus that has been the target of criticism based on complaints of inadequate medical care and unjustified incarceration. The Miami Herald reported today that at least one current FAU student is a former detainee at the center.
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February 21, 2013 at 4:56 pm
pamelako
This is outrageous. I’ve been involved appealing an 8th grader’s life sentence who was sent to Walnut Grove at age 14. Within the first few months he was there he was gang raped. He never reported it because he was frightened of the repercussions. Over the course of the time he was there, he had a collapsed lung which he received no medical services for, a torn tear duct which he was denied surgery, numerous stab wounds, broken jaw, broken nose numerous times, maced in the face numerous times, the hole, 2 week-long lockdowns were common which is 23 hours in a cell and no school, jumped in the hallway, and much more. This was standard procedure and was not due to conduct violations, just every day occurrences in order to survive and avoid being gang raped. Over the course of 7 years, the unimaginable and uncivilized way that place was run never ceased to amaze me. When a federal judge recently called it a “cesspool” and the most violent place he’d seen I was not at all surprised, just relieved. The inmates who testified were sent back with special safety orders put in place by the judge. I could write a book about what I witnessed through this inmate at Walnut Grove. It was systemic, not some outlier type of happenings. The federal lawsuit against Walnut Grove stemmed from a lawsuit filed on behalf of an inmate left mangled and brain damaged who was sent there on a non-violent charge. His father had to search all over the state of MS to find out what happened to his son because the warden would not tell him, saying on his visitation day that he was no longer there. The father found him a month later unrecognizable in the intensive care unit of a Mississippi hospital. It is a gruesome story. GEO fled town when the DOJ started an investigation. To name a University football stadium after this corrupt and despicable company is mind-boggling and completely inappropriate. They should do some research before they agree to this. They know how to do research don’t they?