Louisiana Voice

The American Correctional Association (ACA) is an organization riddled with conflicts of interest, lacks transparency, and is subject to zero accountability even though millions in taxpayer dollars to flow to the ACA and private prison companies, according to a US SENATE INVESTIGATIVE REPORT spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).

The Accreditation Con: A Broken Prison and Detention Facility Accreditation System that Puts Profits Over People is a 16-page indictment of ACA, which the report says is little more than a rubber stamp for accreditation that “has two primary and conflicting functions: accreditor and trade association.

“The ACA acts as both a representative of private prisons and a guarantor of their quality, presenting an irreconcilable conflict of interest,” the report says.

Not so, says Ken Pastorick, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections.

“There is not a conflict of interest,” he said “The accreditation is based upon reaching an objective set of national standards. The audit is performed by independent corrections experts from other states who are not ACA employees. ACA provides the accreditation service to correctional organizations and appears before congress or state or local legislatures if they are asked on specific subjects that relate to corrections.” 

As an accreditor, the ACA is responsible for providing prisons and detention facilities with a stamp of approval that is often required by their contracts with federal, state, and local governments. At the same time, the association serves as the primary lobbyist for private prisons – acting as the “the voice for corrections” The ACA relies on fees paid by corrections facilities it accredits for a large chunk of its revenue, the report says.

Documents obtained as part of the investigation reveal that, from 2014 to 2018, the ACA received over $48 million in revenue. Almost half of that amount – $21.9 million – came from accreditation fees and payments. The ACA receives millions in accreditation fees from federal, state, and local governments as well as private prisons and detention facilities.

The ACA Board of Governors includes representatives from the private prison industry, the report pointed out. The Executive Committee includes Derrick Schofield, who also serves as an Executive Vice President at GEO, and Gary Mohr, a former consultant and managing director for CoreCivic. The Standards Committee also includes “one [member] each from GEO and CoreCivic,” and the former Chair of the Standards Committee, Harley G. Lappin, is now a member of the Board of Directors at CoreCivic. Moreover, the CAC includes a Managing Director of Operations for CoreCivic and GEO’s Reentry In-Prison Treatment Vice President.

Indeed, one of ACA’s past presidents is RICHARD STALDER who served in that capacity in 1993 while he also was the Louisiana DOC secretary. Simply put, he was president of the organization that was responsible for the accreditation of Louisiana prison facilities his state agency ran.

Pastorick, who noted there is no pay for service on the commission, defended the practice. “ACA members who are corrections professionals are eligible to run for these positions, and they are elected by ACA membership. Elected individuals sign conflict of interest statements. Commission on Accreditation members do not play a role in the accreditation of their own institutions.”

But Stalder once canceled spending on psychiatric counseling for troubled teens so that he could give out $2.7 million in raises to his staff.

Pastorick pointed out that in the early 1990s, federal judge Frank Polozola signed an order removing David Wade Correctional Center from federal oversight following an ACA accreditation. “In the years to follow, as other DOC institutions met the national standards and became ACA accredited, the Federal Judge removed those facilities from Federal oversight,” he said. “So yes, being ACA accredited is a prudent investment for the taxpayers of Louisiana. Using a national set of standards is a way to maintain a prison system in a constitutional manner.”

In 1998, however, the Jena Juvenile Center came under fire for widespread problems, including a near-riot, poor teaching and security and physical abuse and in 1999 the juvenile facility in Tallulah was taken under state control after five years of repeated problems with private ownership despite its having received accreditation and a positive report only six months earlier from ACA and Stalder.

Stalder rejected all the claims, saying that he and his staff deserved “a pat on the back,” but in June of 1995, Federal Judge Frank Polozola criticized Stalder for the way in which he ran the state prison system.

In 1995, the ACA accredited all 12 prisons in Louisiana, passing the last two with scores of 100. That year, more than 125 prisoners sued Stalder for mistreatment within the prisons. Meanwhile, only a month after Angola prison of Louisiana was accredited, it was reported by The Baton Rouge Advocate that around $32 million was needed for repairs so the prison could meet safety requirements.

Today, there are only eight state-run prisons in Louisiana. C. Paul Phelps Correctional Cener, Forcht-Wade Correctional Center and J. Levy Dabadie Correctional Center all closed in 2012 and Steve Hoyle Rehabilitation Center was relocated in the Bossier Parish Correctional Center.

Besides the eight state-run prisons, there are three Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers in Louisiana: LaSalle Detention facility in Jena, South Louisiana Correctional Center in Basile and an ICE Processing Center in Pine Prairie. The facilities in Jena and Basile are run by GEO.

ICE has its own detention standards, but the agency incorporates many ACA practices and requirements into its detention standards for single adults, the report says. And while ICE does not require ACA accreditation, it does “encourage” it, which helps to funnel additional money into the ACA coffers through private contract facilities.

Private prison companies rely on accreditation for access to generous government contracts and as a shield against claims that their facilities lack critical safeguards. CoreCivic, GEO, and MTC refer to their facilities’ ACA accreditation scores in response to negative reports.

LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company headquartered in Ruston which has experienced numerous problems with its facilities, operates 20 private prisons in four states, including five in Louisiana.

The accreditation standards are established by the ACA with no oversight by government agencies, and the organization basically sells accreditation by charging fees ranging from $8,100 to $19,500, depending on the number of days and auditors involved and the number of facilities being accredited.

“Every organization that does accreditation charges fees,” Pastorick said. “All Hospitals are accredited by Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation, and they charge for accreditation. Police Departments are accredited by Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement, and they charge as well. Colleges and universities and crime labs are also accredited by organizations, and they are charged to be evaluated and accredited. We’re not the only operation that finds value in ongoing peer/commission review.” 

Perhaps it is only coincidence that LeBlanc served as a member of the ACA’s Commission on Accreditation for Corrections in 2016 or that then-Angola Warden Burl Cain is still listed as a member of  ACA’s Executive Committee that same year.

“The ACA’s accreditation process lacks rigor, ignores serious health and safety problems, and acts as a rubber stamp for private prisons and detention facilities,” the report says, and there is little reason to think it’s any different for government-run facilities.

Tomorrow: What to state facilities pay to receive ACA accreditation?

The MISSISSIPPI SOVERGEINTY COMMISSION, which came into being by act of the state legislature on March 29, 1956, was created in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision as a desperate attempt to stave off racial integration.

In January 1977, a bill was introduced to officially abolish the commission, even though it had ceased functioning four years earlier. The bill also called for the destruction of all the commission’s records. But the bill that was ultimately passed instead called for records to be preserved, but sealed, until 2027.

Litigation over release of the records by the American Civil Liberties Union, initiated in 1977, eventually resulted in a partial release in 1998 and by 2002, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) had provided an online full text version of commission records.

All this is to say while that the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission got a lot of media coverage because of the legal battle and the eventual release of its records, Louisiana once had its own State Sovereignty Commission, formed four years after and modeled on Mississippi’s commission but which received far less notoriety.

The Louisiana commission and its companion Joint Legislative Committee on Segregation published an inflammatory BROCHURE titled “Don’t be Brainwashed! We Don’t Have To Integrate Our Schools!” The word “Brainwashed” ran diagonally down the front of the brochure.

The brochure then listed a six-point plan to protect what it described as the “American way of life.” Heading the list was a call to “Resist all attempts of subversive groups to brainwash you into believing that all is lost, that we now have no choice in the matter, that integration is inevitable.”

SEVERAL BOOKS that came down hard on the side of states rights and which were PROMOTED by the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission included:

• 50 Sovereign States or Federal Districts? (author unknown);
• Legislative Reapportionment is Strictly Our Business (author unknown);
• Amending the U.S. Constitution – How? (author unknown);
• The Unsolid South (author unknown);
• We the People (author unknown);
• Voting Rights and Obligations, the Louisiana Program (author unknown);
• The Hamburger Case (author unknown);
• Why We Should Support Our Police and Other Law Enforcement Officers (author unknown);
• The Plaquemine Story: A Question of Law and Order by E. Monnet Lanier;
• Can America Recapture Americanism? by Clarence Albert Ives;
• James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation by William P. Hustwit;
• The Southern Case for School Segregation by James J. Kilpatrick;

Several writers and speakers were promoted by the commission, among them Frank Voelker’s address before the Select Judiciary Committee entitled “The Role of the Federal Judiciary.” Nowhere in any of the commission’s promotional material was there any reference to a person’s right to dignity, his right to vote or his right to a decent education.

The Louisiana commission even produced a PROPAGANDA FILM in 1961that purported to illustrate the peaceful coexistence of black and white Louisiana citizens. It offered the dubious argument that “even though black and white citizens use separate facilities in Louisiana, those facilities provide equitable services, including schools and libraries.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.

It went on to claim that additionally, “both races also have an equal opportunity to use state services” (another distortion of reality). The film closed with then-Gov. Jimmie Davis speaking out against “federal interference in the way of life within the state.”

So, what, exactly, is the point of this mini-lesson in Louisiana history? Why bring this long-buried, mostly forgotten state embarrassment up at this late date?

No reason other than to ruminate on current efforts by people like State Rep. Ray Garofalo, Jr. (R-Chalmette) to revamp history courses at the elementary, secondary and university levels.

It would be one thing if he were a lone voice in the wilderness crying out against his perception of skewed history, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. There is a concerted, synchronized effort by Republicans in general and people like Garofalo in particular to soften America’s history to the point of TEACHING only the “good things about this country” (his words, not mine).

I’ve got no problem with teaching the good things about this great country. It’s given me, a poverty-stricken kid the opportunity to improve my living standard and I’m appropriately grateful for that. And anyone who knows me will tell you it wasn’t given to me. I’m all in on the work ethic.

But at the same time, there are those for whom the so-called American Dream is just that – a dream, a fantasy. Inferior schools and social environments have doomed many to a lifetime of poverty subsistence through no fault of their own. A friend, an African-American, grew up in New Roads but his segregated school went only to the 10^th grade. He knew that was a sentence to a dead-end existence so, he moved in with relatives in North Baton Rouge in order to finish high school (a high school with 12 grades) and to attend college. Today, he’s a successful accountant. But he’s the exception.

And now Garofalo comes along to advocate censorship, for lack of a better description. He would control public school teachers, limiting what they can teach about the warts and blemishes that accompany all those good things about this nation. The attempted genocide waged against the only true natives of this land, one man’s owning another individual (yes, I know there were black slave-owners as well, so what’s your point? Slavery is slavery), the counting a black person as three-fifths a citizen for the purposes of the U.S. Census, the denial of the right to vote for women until well into the 20^th century, and a grossly unequal system of justice for the haves and have-nots, be they black, brown or poor whites.

Not satisfied to limit his suffocating policies to elementary and high schools, he also is conducting a frontal assault against colleges and universities who have the temerity to address the problems of racism that have been brought to the surface by an orange-haired, spray-tanned TV reality show personality.

Garofalo said in February he was concerned that conservative positions are getting short shrift on college campuses, being relegated, as it were, to a metaphoric back seat to white guilt trips because of a planned panel discussion at LSU on “white rage” against blacks.

That was before his more recent tirade against teaching about the Civil War, women’s suffrage, the civil rights struggle, and the treatment of Native Americans in the name of Manifest Destiny.

Sometimes the willingness to look back can give us the ability to look forward. Perhaps someday, the history hysteria of Garofalo, et al, will look as foolish and ill-advised as the monumental idiocy of the Mississippi and Louisiana sovereignty commissions.

And lest you think I’m being a tad overly-dramatic, do this: Step out of your comfort zone and try putting yourself in someone else’s position for a change. Close your eyes and imagine, for just a moment, that you are a black person whose right to vote is under attack – or worse, that you are a black man minding your own business while driving along I-20 in northeast Louisiana…

In 2017, during a rash of sperm whale stranding reports from Cameron and Terrebonne parishes in Louisiana to Pensacola, Oregon and Australia, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Marine Mammal Stranding Coordinator MANDY TUMLIN was permitted to respond to reporters’ inquiries.

But in 2019, when the openings of the Bonnet Carre Spillway were blamed for more than 300 dolphin deaths along the Gulf Coast, she was denied access to adequate resources with which to conduct her research and was cut off from media requests for information. A year later she was fired in what now appears to have been a classic example of political damage control.

The proposed Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion. A $1.4 billion project to create a controlled opening in the Mississippi River levee south of New Orleans is designed to flush fresh river water into Barataria Bay in an effort to rebuild state wetlands with sediment carried by the river.

The problem with that, according to project opponent Capt. George Ricks, is that it would allow fresh water to pass through the levee for longer than the 118 days the spillway was opened in 2019, which he said would lead to more dolphin deaths.

A REPORT released in March for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project pointed to the potential of the project to have “immediate and permanent major adverse impacts on bottlenose dolphins in Barataria Bay. Another study, done for the MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION, said in May that the project would result in the “functional extinction” of dolphin populations in two areas of Barataria Bay because of prolonged exposure to freshwater, which causes burn-like lesions on dolphins.

Tumlin agrees. “Freshwater lesions will make them more susceptible to viral infections that will cause mortality,” she said. “Their skin turns into what looks like a Brillo pad.”

Of the 337 dolphin deaths in 2019, more than 150 were in Mississippi, which Moby Solangi, executive director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, attributes to the spillway opening. He said the spillway opening also was responsible for deaths of oysters, blue crab and shrimp. “These animals cannot just swim away,” he said. “By the time they realize things are bad, they are sick and die.”

She said she was disappointed and disheartened to be fired as large numbers of dolphins were perishing. “We feel this was done so that the State of Louisiana can proceed with its plan to construct and operate the Mid-Barataria Bay and Breton Sound Diversion projects which will actually be lethal on dolphin populations in those areas due to freshwater lesions and other impacts,” she said.

She began her career with LDWF in 2005 and responded to marine mammal strandings during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. She saved hundreds of sea turtles during that crisis. “I gave my life to this. I missed out on celebrations and holidays,” she said. “My personal cell phone was the statewide hotline for marine mammal strandings. I was on call constantly.”

Of course, to no one’s surprise, that means little when civil servants, who are supposed to be protected from arbitrary reprisals, become a PR problem. There are always ways to terminate an employee. In Tumlin’s case, LDWF documents indicate the reason was that she failed to enter data into an online system about dolphin and sea turtle strandings by a federal deadline.

Not so, says Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith, III., who is representing Tumlin. “The termination was a bogus, contrived set-up,” he said. “Mandy made all deadlines for which she was responsible.”

Ricks testified on Tumlin’s behalf at one of three meetings of the Louisiana State Civil Service Commission held on her appeal. “She got terminated because they didn’t want her saying too much about the river water causing these dolphins to die,” he said.

Civil service is expected to make a decision on the case in the next few months.

Meanwhile, Tumlin remains concerned about the future of marine mammals in Louisiana waters. “These diversions are going to cause the salinity levels in these areas to drop drastically,” she said. “We can’t catch 2,000 or more dolphins and move them.”

To say Lafayette wealthy used car dealer Donald Mendoza leads a charmed life would be something of an understatement.

Nineteen years ago, he was shot twice at his dealership, Don’s Sports & Imports car lot.

In March, he walked away from a helicopter crash that has raised some unanswered questions.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently released a nine-page report on the crash of the million-dollar-plus helicopter Mendoza was piloting without a license.

The NTSB report said Mendoza, 51, was piloting the Roberson R-66 craft from a maintenance facility to a concrete driveway near his hangar at 3:28 p.m. on March 9 when a gust of wind during his hover maneuver caused him to lose control.

He told investigators that the helicopter, which is equipped with Rolls-Royce 300 engine, “nosed over and struck the driveway” and ended up resting on its left side. He said he was unable to recall how the helicopter ended up on its side. He was able to exit the craft on his own power, the report said.

The helicopter’s rotors were destroyed, the tail was snapped off and the hub sustained damage, the report said. The helicopter was deemed a total loss.

Other than noting that he had no pilot’s license, the report did not elaborate on the fact that Mendoza was operating the craft without a pilot’s certificate, nor what the penalty, if any, was for such an infraction.

The report indicated the helicopter was registered to Trinity Paul Air, LLC, though the Louisiana Secretary of State’s records had no corporate listing for a Trinity Paul Air. Mendoza is listed as a principal of a number of corporate entities, including DW Don’s Automotive Group which apparently has replaced Don’s Sports & Imports, which was listed as inactive.

Mendoza was also listed as an officer of DW Air Service, LLC. Both DW Don’s Automotive Group and DW Air Service are domiciled at the same address in Lafayette.

Danielle Mendoza is listed as an officer of DW Don’s Automotive Group. Her name also surfaced in an incident in 2002 in which Don Mendoza was SHOT TWICE, in the back and leg, at his import car lot.

A man identified as Ben Broussard, a veteran of the French Foreign Legion, appeared at the dealership demanding to speak to a woman he identified as his cousin, whom he indicated was Danielle Alleman, Mendoza’s then-girlfriend.

mis·in·for·ma·tion

/ˌmisinfərˈmāSH(ə)n/

noun

1. false information that is spread, regardless of intent to mislead.

dis·in·for·ma·tion

/ˌdisənfərˈmāSH(ə)n/

noun

1. false information which is intended to mislead, especially knowingly spreading misinformation.

Misinformation:

• When you discuss the Jan. 5 insurrection;
• When you argue incorrectly, as did an acquaintance, that Bobby Thompson history home run  in a pennant-clinching playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers was in 1952;
• When you write, as did a capable and reputable sportswriter; that Billy Cannon won the Heisman Trophy in 1958;
• When you voice your disgust with Barrack Obama when you find the post office is closed on Columbus Day (it was Eisenhower who made it a holiday);
• When you earnestly believe it’s unfair for Democrats to want to raise the tax rate on millionaires to 39.6 percent (again, under Eisenhower, the tax rate on the richest Americans was 91 percent);
• When you attempt to invoke your rights as an individual to resist the vaccine because you believe mandatory vaccines are unconstitutional or are unproven (the polio vaccine was unproven at the outset, but it eradicated the virus; vaccines for other diseases, such as smallpox, measles, etc., have been mandatory for decades)

Disinformation:

• When you claim the Jan. 6 insurrection was nothing more than a routine Capitol tour;
• When you claim forest fires in California were started by Israeli laser beams;
• When you insist the coronavirus vaccines can alter your DNA, that the door-to-door survey is to document unvaccinated Americans, that the vaccine is an “experimental gene therapy” that has killed thousands in the U.S., or that the vaccines insert tracking devices into your body (cell phones already do that and I don’t see anyone giving those up);
• When you claim that Biden is not really president but instead, he is actually an actor on a sound stage in Hollywood;
• When you forward the photo of Biden in the Oval Office with Trump staring in the window from outside;
• When you claim that federal office buildings in Washington are deserted and boarded up;
• When history lessons about race, slavery and women’s suffrage that make you uncomfortable, your answer is to literally alter history by banning their teaching;
• When you claim that military armaments are being moved into urban areas in preparation for a federal takeover, and
• When you claim that Trump will be reinstated on Aug. 13.

Louisiana, along with Arkansas and Florida, currently lead the nation in the surge in infections of the Delta variant and Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate in America. Mississippi has cited an “astounding” rise in Covid-19 cases. Those states are all, coincidentally, states that voted heavily for Trump.

What’s that got to do with anything? Well, first and foremost, Trump holds franchise rights on disinformation, claiming, among other things that (a) the virus will disappear in a few days and that (b) drinking bleach was a reasonable treatment for Covid.

The irony, the real oxymoron here, is that Trump wants to claim credit for developing the vaccine “in record time,” but refuses to encourage his base to take the shots. He doesn’t trust the scientists. That’s disinformation, just as it was disinformation to proclaim that he knew more about war than his generals, or that he accepted Putin’s word that there was no Russian interference in 2016 over that of U.S. intelligence agents.

It would be easy to dismiss his base as a pack of mouth-breathing redneck KKKers, but the truth is, many of his followers are highly-education individuals – including many of my own close friends and family members.

There can be no denying that there is a deliberate and concerted effort to distort facts by inundating us with lies and distortions so far-fetched that they would have been laughable 30 or even 15 years ago. The conspiracy whackos rule the day now. There are several reasons for that.

Like anyone with a computer, I have an easily-accessible platform from which to express my viewpoint. I know I’m more than a little biased on this, but I believe I attempt to examine issues from all sides before offering my opinion. There is little that I agree with Trump on, for example, but as I said recently, I agreed with him when he said we routinely orchestrate coups and insurrection in other countries and that we had no business in Afghanistan. (If we didn’t learn that the collapse of the Soviet Union was at least indirectly tied to its own frustrated efforts in that country, what made us think we could succeed, especially after our experience in Vietnam?)

And while I, in my less-than-objective opinion, believe I take a level-headed approach to issues, there are those who use social media as a launching pad for conspiracy theories that are so far out there as to make Jeff Bezos’ recent trip into space seem like a walk in the park.

These people don’t use misinformation, they deliberately use disinformation to try and get their nut-job ideas across.

Besides the popularity and accessibility of the internet, there are two other developments that have helped move the process along:

The sad decline of newspapers and news magazines like Time and Newsweek (a direct result of the internet) and the explosion of television news networks that depend far too heavily on sound bites and talking heads who really have little to say.

The Shreveport Times, Monroe News-Star (and its predecessor, the Monroe Morning World) and the New Orleans Times-Picayune once were proud newspapers that had full-time bureaus in Baton Rouge. Today, thanks to the internet, they are skeletons of their once proud selves. The Times-Picayune was swallowed up by The Baton Rouge Advocate while the Shreveport and Monroe papers, along with several other Louisiana publications, were absorbed by Gannett, aka McNewspapers.

Thankfully, The Advocate has committed itself to in-depth investigative reporting that can – and has – exposed and embarrassed public officials who desperately needed to be exposed and embarrassed. And thankfully, there are still publications like The New York Times, Boston Globe, and The Washington Post to keep the national power brokers in line.

But their job is made infinitely more difficult by the proliferation by the purveyors of disinformation and as a result, we’re now looking down the barrel of another national lockdown.