Feeling the Heat, Corrections Corp. Launches "The CCA 360" to Respond to Critics

Corrections Corporation of America has launched The CCA 360.com a website for the corporation to respond to critics. You'd think that a leading corporation in a billion dollar industry such as private prisons would be able to come up with something more catchy than "The CCA 360" for a website, but apparently not. The website is a response to ongoing criticism of the private prison industry generally and CCA's operations more specifically. According to a front-page post by CEO John Ferguson:

For people seeking the unfiltered, full 360-degree view of CCA, we have created this Web site - TheCCA360.com. This site provides greater detail about news coverage of CCA, including the publicized tragic death of an inmate in a CCA facility, and viewpoints we’ve shared with our customers and employees.

The website apparently was developted to take on criticism of the company's operations by non-governmental organizations and activists though Texas Prison Bid'ness has not yet made the company's hit-list! Our friend Alex Friedmann, the former CCA prisoner whose efforts seem to have de-railed the federal judicial nomination of former CCA chief counsel Gus Puryear has. The website also addresses critics of CCA's T. Don Hutto family detention center claiming, as ICE has in the past, that improvements at Hutto had nothing to do with public protests, a litigation settlement, or widespread media scrutiny.

As soon as CCA was selected to assist ICE with this pressing need, ICE and CCA began working together to renovate the facility to meet the needs of its new population. While extensive media coverage has implied that reforms were the result of litigation, ICE maintained a deliberate and systematic program for the development of the Hutto facility throughout the period of the contract. That contract and that development process are still ongoing.

I'm not sure that I believe that, seeing as none of the improvements to Hutto were apparently made before the facility was condemned in a series of protests and news articles starting in December 2006. Regardless, this new CCA website should give private prison opponents an interesting look into the company's public relations machine.