title: Red-bellied piranha

text: This formation of mating pairs, nuptial swimming displays, and guarding of the nests shows that red-bellied piranhas exhibit parental care for the nest and the young. When left unattended, other fish, such as characids, may prey upon the eggs. Despite the defensive practice of circling the nests, red-bellied piranhas are often passive toward other fish that approach the nest. It is possible that the mere presence of the piranha, a natural predator, provides enough of a threat to prevent potential predators from approaching the nest.


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: Piranhas have two annual reproductive seasons; these seasons are tied to water level fluctuations, the flooding pulse, temperature, and other hydrological conditions. When individuals are ready to become sexually active, they will lose their red coloration and select habitats that are conducive to spawning, such as flooded marginal grasses and vegetation within lakes. This habitat selection is a clear distinction from non-reproductive individuals that prefer open water and under floating meadows.


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: Red-bellied piranhas often travel in shoals as a predatory defense. In studies that tested the piranhas' reactions to a simulated predator attack, resting opercular rates returned to normal more quickly among piranhas that were in shoals of eight rather than in shoals of two. Although it has been presumed that piranhas engage in pack-hunting behavior, no investigation shows that shoaling behavior among piranhas is used for cooperative hunting.


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: Most likely, this shoaling behavior is a defense against predation from larger animals such as dolphins, large piscivorous fish, caimans, and aquatic birds. Piranhas will travel to their nesting sites in shoals in order to reduce the likelihood that any single individual will be attacked by a predator. Shoals of red-bellied piranha use the margins of flooded areas to build their nests.


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: Acoustic communication among red-bellied piranhas is exhibited along with aggressive behaviors, such as biting, chasing, conspecific confrontation, and fighting. The sounds created by piranhas are generated through rapid contractions of the sonic muscles and is associated with the swimbladder. The swimbladder may play an important role in sound production as a resonator.


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: All of the observations made on sound production by red-bellied piranha have been when specimens were held by hand. When taken out of the water, the red-bellied piranha will emit a drumming-like sound, consisting of a low-frequency harmonic sound. However, research has shown the presence of three types of acoustic emissions that are associated with specific behaviors. Type one calls are made up of harmonic sounds, last approximately 140 milliseconds at 120 Hz, and are associated with frontal display behavior between two fish. Type two sounds last approximately 36 milliseconds at 40 Hz, and are associated with circling and fighting behavior related to food competition. Type three sounds are made up of a single pulse lasting just 3 milliseconds at 1740 Hz, and are highly associated with chasing behavior toward a conspecific individual. This same sound is also produced when an individual snaps its jaws to bite another individual.


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: Nearly all sounds produced by red-bellied piranhas are produced in the context of social interactions between individuals. The low, drumming sounds are typically produced during moderate attacks, while loud, threatened sounds are produced during more vigorous attacks.


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: The red-bellied piranha is widespread and locally abundant. In some parts of its range, it is among the most common fish species. The collection and trade of the species to aquariums may locally present a low risk to the red-bellied piranha.


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: Many myths surround this species. The 1978 film "Piranha" by Joe Dante shows these fish in a similar light to "Jaws". "Piranha" was followed by a sequel, "", in 1982, and two remakes, one in 1995, and one in 2010, which also got a sequel of its own. Films such as these, and stories of large schools of red-bellies attacking humans, fuel their exaggerated and erroneous reputation as being one of the most ferocious freshwater fish. In reality, they are generally timid scavengers, fulfilling a role similar to vultures on land. In the 2010 film "Piranha 3D", a previously unknown piranha is discovered. Christopher Lloyd's character misidentifies a specimen of this monstrous new species as the familiar "Pygocentrus nattereri".


title: Red-bellied piranha

text: Red-bellied piranhas are sometimes kept as aquarium fish. They may be fed live, fresh, or frozen food, but they will not eat rotten meats. Their natural diet consists of live prey and dead animals or fish. Live feedings to captive piranhas can introduce diseases , and goldfish contain a growth-inhibiting hormone, which in turn will affect piranhas . Red-bellied piranhas, particularly when juvenile, will sometimes bite one another in the aquarium, normally on the fins, in behavior called 'fin nipping'. Those that have had their fins nipped will grow them back surprisingly rapidly. To maintain a piranha aquarium, it is important to keep the water quality up, as they are messy eaters, and this will dirty the water in the tank. Also, they need places to hide in dim light. Because in the wild they may not eat every day, those in captivity do not need to be fed daily, but when hungry, they can eat each other.


title: Private prison

text: A private prison, or for-profit prison, is a place where people are imprisoned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prison companies typically enter into contractual agreements with governments that commit prisoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate, either for each prisoner in the facility, or for each place available, whether occupied or not. Such contracts may be for the operation only of a facility, or for design, construction and operation.


title: Private prison

text: In 2013, countries that were currently using private prisons or in the process of implementing such plans included Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand. However, at the time, the sector was still dominated by the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.


title: Private prison

text: In 2018, 18.4% of prisoners in Australia were held in private prisons. This was much higher than the rate for the United States which was 8.4%.


title: Private prison

text: A 2016 article by Anastasia Glushko (a former worker in the private prison sector) argues in favor of privately owned prisons in Australia. According to Glushko, private prisons in Australia have decreased the costs of holding prisoners and increased positive relationships between inmates and correctional workers. Outsourcing prison services to private companies has allowed for costs to be cut in half. Compared with $270 a day in a government-run West Australian jail, each prisoner in the privately operated Acacia Prison near Perth costs the taxpayer $182. Glushko also says positive prisoner treatment was observed during privatisation in Australia by including more respectful attitudes to prisoners and mentoring schemes, increased out-of-cell time and more purposeful activities.


title: Private prison

text: However, a 2016 report from the University of Sydney found that in general, all states of Australia lacked a comprehensive approach to hold private prisons accountable to the government. The authors said that of all the states, Western Australia had the "most developed regulatory approach" to private prison accountability, as they had learnt from the examples in Queensland and Victoria. Western Australia provided much information about the running of private prisons in the state to the public, making it easier to assess performance. However the authors note that in spite of this, overall it is difficult to compare the performance and costs of private and public prisons as they often house different kinds and numbers of prisoners, in different states with different regulations. They note that Acacia Prison, sometimes held up as an example of how private prisons can be well run, cannot serve as a general example of prison privatisation.


title: Private prison

text: Several Australian immigration prisons are privately operated, including the Nauru Regional Processing Centre which is located on the pacific island country of Nauru and operated by Broadspectrum on behalf of the Australian Government, with security sub-contracted to Wilson Security. Immigration prisons typically hold people who have overstayed or lack a visa, or otherwise broken the terms of their visas. Some, such as the facility on Nauru, hold asylum seekers, refugees and even young children who can be detained indefinitely. In many cases people have been detained for years without charge or trial. This, as well as poor conditions, neglect, harsh treatment and deaths in some of the centers, has been the source of controversy in Australia and internationally.


title: Private prison

text: There have been three notable private detention facilities in Canada to date, and all have either gone defunct or reverted to government control.


title: Private prison

text: The only private adult prison in Canada was the maximum-security Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene, Ontario, operated by the U.S.-based Management and Training Corporation from its opening in 2001 through the end of its first contract period in 2006. The contract was held by the Ontario provincial Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. A government comparison between the Central North "super-jail" and a nearly identical facility found that the publicly run prison had measurably better outcomes.


title: Private prison

text: Two youth detention centres in Canada were operated by private companies, both at the provincial level. The Encourage Youth Corporation operated Project Turnaround in Hillsdale, Ontario under contract from the Government of Ontario from 1997 to 2004, after which the facility was shut down. In New Brunswick, the multinational private prison firm GEO Group constructed and operated the Miramichi Youth Detention Centre under contract with the province's Department of Public Safety before its contract was ended in the 1990s following public protests.


title: Private prison

text: As of mid-2012, private prison companies continued to lobby the Correctional Service of Canada for contract business.


title: Private prison

text: The involvement of the private sector in prisons in France grew significantly between 1987 and the late 2000s, as reported by French scholar Fabrice Guilbaud. France's system is semi-private: so-called non-sovereign missions (kitchen, laundry, maintenance) are delegated to private companies, while guard and security functions are left to the State. Organization of inmate labor in prison workshops is another task that has been delegated to prison management companies. There are however no prisons in France in which every aspect of the prison is run by the private sector, as in the UK. The French approach to privatisation therefore necessarily divorces security and production functions.


title: Private prison

text: Prison is a space of forced confinement where the overriding concern is security. The fact is that at several levels, and depending on the type of prison (high security or not), production logic clashes with security logic. Structural limitations of production in a prison can restrict private companies’ profit-taking capacities. A field study conducted by Guilbaud in 2004 and 2005 in five prisons chosen by prison and management type shows that the intensity of the tension between production and security, and the various ways in which this tension arises and is handled, vary by type of prison (short-stay, for convicts awaiting sentencing, or relatively long-stay for sentence-serving inmates) and type of management. The production/security tension seems better integrated in public-sector prisons than in those managed by the private sector in the sense that it produces fewer conflicts in them. This result runs counter to the widespread understanding that shaped the 1987 reform, the idea that introducing private enterprise and the professionalism associated with it into prisons would improve inmate employment and prison operation.


title: Private prison

text: It is worth noting that in the UK, this problem is overcome by handing over all aspects of management, including both security and prisoners' work, to the operating company, thereby achieving the integration of the two.


title: Private prison

text: In 2004, the Israeli Knesset passed a law permitting the establishment of private prisons in Israel. The Israeli government's motivation was to save money by transferring prisoners to facilities managed by a private firm. The state would pay the franchisee $50 per day for inmate, sparing itself the cost of building new prisons and expanding the staff of the Israel Prison Service. In 2005, the Human Rights Department of the Academic College of Law in Ramat Gan filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court challenging the law. The petition relied on two arguments; first, it said transferring prison powers to private hands would violate the prisoners' fundamental human rights to liberty and dignity. Secondly, a private organization always aims to maximize profit, and would therefore seek to cut costs by, such means as skimping on prison facilities and paying its guards poorly, thus further undermining the prisoners' rights. As the case awaited decision, the first prison was built by the concessionaire, Lev Leviev's Africa Israel Investments, a facility near Beersheba designed to accommodate 2,000 inmates.


title: Private prison

text: In November 2009, an expanded panel of 9 judges of the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that privately run prisons are illegal, and that for the State to transfer authority for managing the prison to a private contractor whose aim is monetary profit would severely violate the prisoners' basic human rights to dignity and freedom.


title: Private prison

text: Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch wrote: "Israel's basic legal principles hold that the right to use force in general, and the right to enforce criminal law by putting people behind bars in particular, is one of the most fundamental and one of the most invasive powers in the state's jurisdiction. Thus when the power to incarcerate is transferred to a private corporation whose purpose is making money, the act of depriving a person of [their] liberty loses much of its legitimacy. Because of this loss of legitimacy, the violation of the prisoner's right to liberty goes beyond the violation entailed in the incarceration itself."


title: Private prison

text: The use of private prisons has also been tried, stopped and reintroduced. New Zealand's first privately run prison, the Auckland Central Remand Prison, also known as Mt. Eden Prison, opened under contract to Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) in 2000. In 2004, the Labour Government, opposed to privatisation, amended the law to prohibit the extension of private prison contracts. A year later, the 5-year contract with ACM was not renewed. In 2010, the National Government again introduced private prisons and international conglomerate Serco was awarded the contract to run the Mt Eden Prison. Numerous scandals surrounding the Mt Eden Prison led to Serco's contract not being renewed there.


title: Private prison

text: On 16 July 2015, footage of "fight clubs" within the prison emerged online and was reported by TVNZ. Serco was heavily criticized for not investigating until after the footage was screened. On 24 July 2015, Serco's contract to run the Mount Eden prison was revoked and operation was given back to the New Zealand Department of Corrections. Serco was ordered to pay $8 million to the New Zealand government as a result of problems at Mount Eden Prison while it was under Serco's management.


title: Private prison

text: Serco has also been given the contract to build and manage a 960-bed prison at Wiri. The contract with Serco provides for stiff financial penalties if its rehabilitation programmes fail to reduce re-offending by 10% more than the Corrections Department programmes. The Auckland South Corrections Facility was opened on 8 May 2015. The contract to operate the prison ends in 2040.


title: Private prison

text: Since it was established, the department has had to cope with a dramatic growth in the prison population. Between 1997 and 2011 the number of inmates increased by 70% and, at 190 prisoners per 100,000 of population (in 2011), New Zealand has one of the higher rates of imprisonment in the Western world. Five new prisons have been built in the last ten years to accommodate the increase. The Fifth Labour Government built four prisons – at Ngawha (Northern Region) housing 420 prisoners, Springhill (north of Huntly) housing 840, Auckland Women's' holding 330 and Milton (Otago) holding 425 – at a cost of $890 million. When National came to power in 2008, the Department built a new 1,000 bed prison at Mt Eden for $218 million in a public private partnership and gave the contract to Serco.


title: Private prison

text: The Department's growth has been such that in July 2010, Finance Minister Bill English expressed concerns that Government spending was "led by a rapidly expanding prison system which would soon make Corrections the government's biggest department". As at December 2011, New Zealand had 20 prisons and the Department employed over 8,000 staff. The Department's operating budget is over $1 billion a year.


title: Private prison

text: As at 31 March 2011, there were 8,755 people in prison in New Zealand. However, the prison population is very fluid and altogether about 20,000 people spend time in prison each year, the vast majority on remand. Nearly 75% of those given a prison sentence are sentenced to two years or less, and all these are automatically released halfway through their sentence. As of 2001, 96% percent of inmates were men and 51% of male inmates were Māori, so Māori were over-represented on a population basis by 3.5 times. The cost of keeping a person in prison for 12 months is $91,000. In 2001 the Department estimated that a lifetime of offending by one person costs victims and taxpayers $3 million.


title: Private prison

text: Despite English's concerns about the growing cost, in 2011 the government approved the building of a 960-bed prison at Wiri estimated to cost nearly $400 million. Later that year, justice sector forecasts showed a drop in the projected prison forecast for the first time. Charles Chauvel, Labour Party spokesperson for justice, and the Public Service Association both questioned the need for a new facility when there were 1,200 empty beds in the prison system. In March 2012, Corrections Minister Anne Tolley announced the new prison would enable older prisons such as Mt Crawford in Wellington and the New Plymouth prison to be closed. Older units at Arohata, Rolleston, Tongariro/Rangipo and Waikeria prisons will also be shut down.


title: Private prison

text: There is only one private prison in S. Korea, Somang Correctional Institution. Somang Correctional Institution was founded in 2010 and is operated by the Association of Churches. They are a non-commercial private prison and have 300~380 beds. However, their inmates are relatively minor criminals (cherry picking).


title: Private prison

text: In the modern era, the United Kingdom was the first European country to use for-profit prisons. Wolds Prison opened as the first privately managed prison in the UK in 1992. This was enabled by the passage of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 which empowered the Home Secretary to contract out prison services to the private sector.


title: Private prison

text: In addition, a number of the UK's Immigration Removal Centres are privately operated, including the Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre, Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre, and Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre.


title: Private prison

text: In 2007 the new Scottish National Party Government in Scotland announced that it was opposed to privately run prisons and would not let any more contracts. Since then, new prisons in Scotland have been built and run by the public sector. The last contract let in England and Wales was for HM Prison Northumberland, which transferred from the public sector to Sodexo in 2013. The most recent new prison to be built in England and Wales, HM Prison Berwyn near Wrexham, was given to the public sector to operate without any competition when it opened in 2017. Since 2017, it has been Labour Party policy not to commission any new private prisons in England and Wales.


title: Private prison

text: On 5 November 2018, the prisons minister, Rory Stewart, told the House of Commons that two new prisons at Wellingborough, Northants, and Glen Parva, Leicestershire, would be built using conventional public finance, but their operation would be contracted out. On 29 November, he announced a framework competition, under which private operators would seek to be placed on a list of companies which would be eligible to bid in future competitions, including the planned programme for 10,000 new places to replace old prisons, and also for prisons currently operated privately, when those contracts end. It was implied that the public sector would be excluded from all such competitions. He said: "This Government remains committed to a role for the private sector in operating custodial services. The competition launched today will seek to build on the innovation and different ways of working that the private sector has previously introduced to the system. The sector has an important role to play, and currently runs some high-performing prisons, as part of a decent and secure prison estate...A balanced approach to custodial services provision, which includes a mix of public, voluntary and private sector involvement has been shown to introduce improvements and deliver value for money for taxpayers."


title: Private prison

text: The Secretary of State for Justice announced on 9 July 2019 that 6 companies had been accepted on to the Prison Operators Service Framework: G4S Care and Custody Services UK Limited, Interserve Investments Limited, Management and Training Corporation Works Limited, Mitie Care & Custody, Serco Limited, and Sodexo Limited. Of the two new contenders, Interserve had operated offender services in the community as part of the Purple Futures consortium: the Chief Inspector of Probation had rated 4 out of their 5 operations as ‘requiring improvement’. The other, MTC, has run prisons in the USA, several of which have been the subject of serious failures and scandals.


title: Private prison

text: The Secretary of State added: "The Government is committed to a mixed market of custodial services. The Prison Operator Framework will increase the diversity and resilience of the custodial services market in England and Wales, by creating a pool of prison operators who can provide high quality, value for money, custodial and maintenance services and enable us to effectively and efficiently manage a pipeline of competition over the next six years."


title: Private prison

text: On 26 June 2020 the Government announced plans for a further 4 prisons, although a site only exists for one of them. It claimed, without evidence, that the new prisons would cut reoffending. It stated that at least one of the four would be publicly run.


title: Private prison

text: Prisons may be re-competed at the end of the contract. Increasingly, a range of services within all prisons, whether public or privately run, are contracted out on a regional basis: this includes works and FM services, and rehabilitation programmes.


title: Private prison

text: Privately run prisons are run under contracts which set out the standards that must be met. Payments may be deducted for poor performance against the contract. Government monitors ("controllers") work permanently within each privately managed prison to check on conditions and treatment of prisoners. The framework for regulation and accountability is much the same for privately run prisons as for publicly run ones. In England and Wales they are subject to unannounced inspection by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, to monitoring by local Independent Monitoring Boards and prisoner complaints are dealt with by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman. Similar arrangements exist in Scotland and Northern Ireland.


title: Private prison

text: There has been little systematic, objective evaluation of private prisons in the UK. The best study, by the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University, using direct observation of staff and prisoner behaviour, found that public sector staff tended to be more knowledgeable and confident, while the private sector treated prisoners more respectfully, though one private prison scored well on both. Earlier, cruder, studies came to broadly the same conclusion. Another study found marked improvements in prisoner quality of life at Birmingham prison after transfer from public to private sector (though subsequently, conditions at Birmingham deteriorated to such a degree that the contract was ended and the prison returned to public operation). An analysis of performance assessments of individual prisons by the Chief Inspector of Prisons and by the Prison Service suggested no consistent difference in service quality between sectors The same study showed that construction and operating costs were for many years much lower in the private sector, but that the gap has narrowed. In May 2019, the Labour Party spokesman on prisons published data showing that the rate of assaults in privately run local prisons is around 40% higher than in publicly run ones.


title: Private prison

text: In early 2012, Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform said Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons encountered an almost nine-fold rise in restraint used in the previous year at Ashfield Young Offenders Institution, which holds 15- to 18-year-olds. She cited "many incidents of strip searching children unnecessarily". Force had been used almost 150 times a month compared to 17 times monthly the prior year, recalling it had "chilling echoes" of circumstances in the choking death of a 15-year-old at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre after restraints had been applied. Frequent use of force followed failure of wards to obey staff instructions. Three years earlier the institution recorded more than 600 attacks on inmates in one year - the highest number of every jail, including adults, in the country. Crook claimed "This jail has a history of failing children and the public." Managers claimed the increase was due to better reporting of the use of restraints. The institution had been half full during the previous unannounced inspection in 2010. The chief inspector of prisons noted "some staff lacked confidence in challenging poor behaviour." The director of the prison and the YOI admitted there is "room for improvement."


title: Private prison

text: Six members of staff were dismissed from G4S-operated Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre for children in Rugby in May 2015 following a series of incidents of gross misconduct. G4S took the action in response to an Ofsted inspection that reported some staff being on drugs while on duty, colluding with detainees and behaving "extremely inappropriately". The behaviour allegedly included causing distress and humiliation to children by subjecting them to degrading treatment and racist comments.


title: Private prison

text: Four G4S team leaders of Medway Secure Training Centre in Rochester were arrested in January 2016 and four other staff members were placed on restricted duties, following an investigation by the BBC's "Panorama" TV programme into the centre. Allegations in the television programme included foul language and use of unnecessary force – such physical violence, overuse of restraint techniques (causing one teenager to have difficulties breathing) – on 10 boys aged 14 to 17, as well as a cover-up involving members of staff by avoiding surveillance cameras in order not to be recorded, and purposefully misreporting incidents in order to avoid potential fines and punishment; for example, in one exchange, it was claimed some staff don't report "two or more trainees fighting" because it indicates they've "lost control of the centre", resulting in a potential fine.


title: Private prison

text: G4S-run Medway managers received performance-related pay awards in April 2016, despite the chief inspector of prisons weeks saying weeks earlier that "managerial oversight failed to protect young people from harm at the jail." In January, "Panorama" showed an undercover reporter working as a guard at the Medway secure training centre (STC) in Kent. The film showed children allegedly being mistreated and claimed that staff falsified records of violent incidents. No senior managers were disciplined or dismissed. Prior to the Panorama programme's broadcast, the Youth Justice Board (YJB), which oversees youth custody in England, stopped placing children in Medway. In February, a Guardian investigation revealed that, in 2003, whistleblowers had warned G4S, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the YJB that staff were mistreating detained children. Their letter, forwarded by Prof John Pitts, a youth justice expert, was ignored. When the prisons inspectorate carried out a snap inspection at Medway it found detainees reported staff had used insulting, aggressive or racist language toward them and felt unsafe in facility portions not covered by closed circuit TV. Reviewers agreed to the legitimacy of evidence presented by Panorama showing, "...targeted bullying of vulnerable boys," by employees, and that, "A larger group of staff must have been aware of unacceptable practice but did not challenge or report this behaviour."


title: Private prison

text: In an earlier Ofsted report on Medway, inspectors said staff and middle managers reported feeling a lack of leadership and having "low, or no confidence in senior managers." Nick Hardwick, at the time the chief inspector of prisons said, "Managerial oversight failed to protect young people from harm. Effective oversight is key to creating a positive culture that prevents poor practice happening and ensuring it is reported when it does." "The Guardian" newspaper learned that senior managers at Medway received performance-related pay awards in April amounting to between 10-25% of their annual salaries, according to seniority. One 15-year-old girl placed at Medway in 2009 said she was frequently unlawfully restrained over 18 months, citing an occasion in which her face was repeatedly slammed into icy ground. "I assumed the senior management team would be sacked... But now it looks like they have been rewarded for allowing children to be abused in prison," she said. Former Labour MP Sally Keeble has complained about G4S maltreatment in STC's for over ten years, stating: "This is people making personal profit out of tragedy. I hope that justice minister Liz Truss would intervene and make sure these bonuses are not being paid by a Ministry of Justice contractor." Notwithstanding the results of the investigations no senior managers at Medway were disciplined or dismissed. In May, the MoJ said the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) would take over the running of Medway. In July, it formally assumed control of the STC. In February 2016, G4S had announced that it was to sell its children's services business, including the contract to manage two secure training centres. The company hoped to complete the process by the end of 2016.


title: Private prison

text: Following release of an extremely critical report regarding a G4S-operated jail, the Labour party's shadow justice secretary said they would be inclined to take control of for-profit prisons if the industry competitors had not met deadlines imposed upon them. Sadiq Khan's response stressed the need for better contracting, to include liquidated damages provisions. The chief inspector of prisons Nick Hardwick, recommended the crafting of a takeover contingency plan. "It's not delivering what the public should expect of the millions being paid to G4S to run it." Khan said, " I see no difference whether the underperformance is in the public, private or voluntary sector... We shouldn't tolerate mediocrity in the running of our prisons." Khan continued: "We can't go on with scandal after scandal, where the public's money is being squandered and the quality of what's delivered isn't up to scratch. The government is too reliant on a cosy group of big companies. The public are rightly getting fed up to the back teeth of big companies making huge profits out of the taxpayer, which smacks to them of rewards for failure."


title: Private prison

text: Private prisons are operated in the United States of America. In 2018, 8.41% of prisoners in the United States were housed in private prisons. On January 25, 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to stop the United States Department of Justice from renewing further contracts with private prisons. As most facilities are run by their respective states, the order only will apply to small fraction of private prisoners, about 14,000 inmates housed in federal prisons.


title: Private prison

text: The privatization of prisons can be traced to the contracting out of confinement and care of prisoners after the American Revolution. Deprived of the ability to ship criminals and undesirables to the Colonies, Great Britain began placing them on hulks (used as prison ships) moored in English ports.


title: Private prison

text: In 1852, on the northwest San Francisco Bay in California, inmates of the prison ship Waban began building a contract facility to house themselves at Point Quentin. The prison became known as San Quentin, which is still in operation today. Its partial transfer of prison administration from private to public did not mark the end of privatization.


title: Private prison

text: The next phase began with the Reconstruction Period (1865–1876) in the south, after the end of the Civil War. Plantations and businessmen needed to find replacements for the labor force once their slaves had been freed. In 1865, the United States ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished all forms of slavery "except as punishment for a crime". This exception allowed plantation owners and businessmen to find the unpaid labor they desired. Beginning in 1868, convict leases were issued to private parties to supplement their workforce.


title: Private prison

text: Federal and state governments have a long history of contracting out specific services to private firms, including medical services, food preparation, vocational training, and inmate transportation. However, the 1980s ushered in a new era of prison privatization. With a burgeoning prison population resulting from the War on Drugs and increased use of incarceration, prison overcrowding and rising costs became increasingly problematic for local, state, and federal governments. In response to this expanding criminal justice system, private business interests saw an opportunity for expansion, and consequently, private-sector involvement in prisons moved from the simple contracting of services to contracting for the complete management and operation of entire prisons.


title: Private prison

text: The modern private prison business first emerged and established itself publicly in 1984 when the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), now known as CoreCivic, was awarded a contract to take over operation of a facility in Shelby County, Tennessee. This marked the first time that any government in the country had contracted out the complete operation of a jail to a private operator. The following year, CCA gained further public attention when it offered to take over the entire state prison system of Tennessee for $200 million. The bid was ultimately defeated due to strong opposition from public employees and the skepticism of the state legislature. Despite that initial defeat, CCA since then has successfully expanded, as have other for-profit prison companies.


title: Private prison

text: CCA's $52 million January 1997 purchase of Washington, D.C.'s $100 million Central Treatment Facility was "the first time a prison has been sold outright (although under a lease-back arrangement, ownership is supposed to revert to D.C. after 20 years)."


title: Private prison

text: Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice show that, as of 2019, there were 116,000 state and federal prisoners housed in privately owned prisons in the U.S., constituting 8.1% of the overall U.S. prison population. Broken down to prison type, 15.7% of the federal prison population in the United States is housed in private prisons and 7.1% of the U.S. state prison population is housed in private prisons.


title: Private prison

text: As of 2017, after a period of steady growth, the number of inmates held in private prisons in the United States has declined modestly and continues to represent a small share of the nation's total prison population. Companies operating such facilities include the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the GEO Group, Inc. (formerly known as Wackenhut Securities), Management and Training Corporation (MTC), and Community Education Centers. In the past two decades CCA has seen its profits increase by more than 500 percent. The prison industry as a whole took in over $5 billion in revenue in 2011.


title: Private prison

text: According to journalist Matt Taibbi, Wall Street banks took notice of this influx of cash, and are now some of the prison industry's biggest investors. Wells Fargo has around $100 million invested in GEO Group and $6 million in CCA. Other major investors include Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, General Electric and The Vanguard Group. CCA's share price went from a dollar in 2000 to $34.34 in 2013. Sociologist John L. Campbell and activist and journalist Chris Hedges respectively assert that prisons in the United States have become a "lucrative" and "hugely profitable" business.


title: Private prison

text: In June 2013, students at Columbia University discovered that the institution owned $8 million worth of CCA stock. Less than a year later, students formed a group called Columbia Prison Divest, and delivered a letter to the president of the University demanding total divestment from CCA and full disclosure of future investments. By June 2015, the board of trustees at Columbia University voted to divest from the private prison industry.


title: Private prison

text: CoreCivic (previously CCA) has a capacity of more than 80,000 beds in 65 correctional facilities. The GEO Group operates 57 facilities with a capacity of 49,000 offender beds. The company owns or runs more than 100 properties that operate more than 73,000 beds in sites across the world.


title: Private prison

text: Most privately run facilities are located in the southern and western portions of the United States and include both state and federal offenders. For example, Pecos, Texas is the site of the largest private prison in the world, the Reeves County Detention Complex, operated by the GEO Group. It has a capacity of 3,763 prisoners in its three sub-complexes,


title: Private prison

text: Private prison firms, reacting to reductions in prison populations, are increasingly looking away from mere incarceration and are seeking to maintain profitability by expanding into new markets previously served by non-profit behavioral health and treatment-oriented agencies, including prison medical care, forensic mental hospitals, civil commitment centers, halfway houses and home arrest.


title: Private prison

text: A 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice asserts that privately operated federal facilities are less safe, less secure and more punitive than other federal prisons. Shortly thereafter, the DoJ announced it will stop using private prisons. Nevertheless, a month later the Department of Homeland Security renewed a controversial contract with the CCA to continue operating the South Texas Family Residential Center, an immigrant detention facility in Dilley, Texas.


title: Private prison

text: Stock prices for CCA and GEO Group surged following Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 elections. On February 23, the DOJ under Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned the ban on using private prisons. According to Sessions, "the (Obama administration) memorandum changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the bureau's ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system. Therefore, I direct the bureau to return to its previous approach." Additionally, both CCA and GEO Group have been expanding into the immigrant detention market. Although the combined revenues of CCA and GEO Group were about $4 billion in 2017 from private prison contracts, their number one customer was ICE.


title: Private prison

text: According to a 2021 study, private prison inmates serve longer time in prison than comparable inmates in public prisons.


title: Private prison

text: In the wake of the escape of three murderers from the minimum/medium security Kingman Prison, Arizona operated by Management and Training Corporation (MTC), and its gruesome aftermath, Arizona Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Terry Goddard said "I believe a big part of our problem is that the very violent inmates, like the three that escaped, ended up getting reclassified [as a lower risk] quickly and sent to private prisons that were just not up to the job". The private prison had inadequate patrols and prisoner movement, excessive false alarms, a lax culture, and inconsistencies in visitor screening procedures.


title: Private prison

text: One escaping murderer, Daniel Renwick, immediately absconded with the intended getaway vehicle, abandoning his companions outside the prison. He was involved in a shootout in Rifle, Colorado, about 30 hours after the prison break, and was captured by a Garfield County deputy and Rifle police. Though he still "owed" Arizona 32 years on his sentence, he was sentenced to sixty years to be served first in Colorado.


title: Private prison

text: In the course of evading pursuers, the remaining two escapees and their accomplice, Casslyn Welch, kidnapped and hijacked vacationing Oklahomans Gary and Linda Haas in New Mexico. The couple was soon murdered by the ringleader, John McCluskey. The extended family of the murdered couple sued the state of Arizona, as well as Dominion, a corporation based in Edmond, Oklahoma, that spec-built the prison, and MTC, the corporation that managed it, for $40 million. The last escapees and their accomplice were soon captured. Tracy Province, a lifer, was apprehended in Wyoming on August 9. The final pair were arrested on August 19, 20 days after the jailbreak, upon their return to Arizona. All three were first convicted of the escapes, initial hijacking, kidnappings and robberies in Kingman, Arizona. Then they were charged with the same crimes plus murder in New Mexico. John McCluskey, the ringleader, and his accomplice, Casslyn Welch, were also alleged to have committed an armed robbery in Arkansas. The three were eventually held on federal murder charges in New Mexico. McCluskey was tried on death penalty charges but after five months of court proceedings, his jury gave him life imprisonment on December 11, 2013. Estimates of the costs of the nationwide searches as well as the apprehensions, prosecutions and subsequent imprisonment in the three states greatly exceed $1 million.


title: Private prison

text: Torrance County Detention Center is in Estancia, New Mexico. Estancia has a population of about 1,500 residents, while Torrance County has a population of more than 15,000.


title: Private prison

text: The Torrance County Detention facility houses about 580 prisoners, most of them federal inmates. The head of the Torrance County Detention center, Garland was told the prison needs closer to 700 beds filled to stay open. For several years they have not been able to maintain this quota and are being forced to shut down.


title: Private prison

text: The closure will cost the town of Estancia about $700,000 annually, according to the county's news release, and will result in about $300,000 worth of lost tax income for the county. "I’m concerned about the jobs," Garland said. "We are losing a large part of our workforce." Garland said the prison's imminent closure will affect the county in a number of ways, not the least of which is that the county, which does not have its own jail, will have to find another place to house the 40 to 75 inmates it sends there each month.


title: Private prison

text: The company told the county it has been holding fewer federal detainees for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Garland said.


title: Private prison

text: From 1925 to 1980 the prison population stayed consistent with the general population. The private prison population began to increase at an disproportional rate in 1983 (the year that private prisons began operation in the United States). From 1925 to 1980 the prison population had a gradual increase from 150,000 to 250,000. However, From 1983 to 2016 the prison population has increased from 250,000 to 1,500,000.


title: Private prison

text: The exact causes for this overwhelming increase cannot be assigned to individual policies as even similar types of criminal sentencing policies were associated with wildly different rates of incarceration in different communities due to powerful external factors such as income disparity, racial makeup, and even the party affiliation of the lawmakers Correlated with the rise of incarceration rates in the United States was the abolition of loose sentencing guidelines for crimes. Before 1970 in the United States judges were given generally wide sentencing frames (2–20 years), allowing judges ample room for judicial discretion. Liberal Americans argued that this system left room for discrimination in sentencing while conservatives argued that this discretion led to unduly lenient sentences. Under pressure from both sides, many states adopted presumptive sentencing practices or presumptive sentencing guidelines. These policies presented a single recommended sentence among the wider statutory range. This left judges with some room to increase or reduce the sentence in response to mitigating or aggravating circumstances but generally limited their discretion under penalty of automatic appeal through appellate review. Accompanying this change was the adoption of determinate sentencing practices. These acted in the same way as presumptive sentencing but instead concerned release. Adoption of these type of laws effectively ended discretionary parole release for all offenses and made mandatory minimum sentences the norm. Researchers have had mixed results in trying to determine whether these policies themselves led to increased incarceration rates and the results largely depended on the demographics of the community in question. Based on a correlation matrix assembled by Stemen and Rengifo it was shown that the percentage of black residents in a community had a much higher correlation with an increased incarceration rate than the area's choice of sentencing policy. Determinate sentencing was however linked with increased drug arrests which correlated highly with increased incarceration rate and minority population percentage. Determinate and structured sentencing policies on their own lead to more stable jail times as they leave less room for judicial input. In doing so they embody the attitudes of the population at the time they were created. As a result of their static nature these policies were not well adapted to face the wave of drug related offenses created by the crack epidemic of the 1980s and the modern opioid crisis.


title: Private prison

text: When Reagan's War on Drugs lead to a massive rise in numbers in prisons, private prison operators were quick to seize the opportunity. According to statistics from "The Problem with Private Prisons—Justice Policy Institute", from 1990 to 2005 there was a 1600 percent increase in the American private prison population. However, the vast majority of prisoners, over 90 percent, remain in publicly-run prisons


title: Private prison

text: To properly compare the benefits of private versus public prisons, the prisons must share common factors such as similar levels of security, number of staff, and population in the prisons. Studies, some partially industry-funded, often conclude that states can save money by using for-profit prisons. However, academic or state-funded studies have found that private prisons tend to keep more low-cost inmates and send high-cost back to state-run prisons. This is counterproductive to the cost benefit analysis of the Private Prisons and contradicts the original selling point of the CCA and other private prisons; "to mitigate the cost of running prisons". In practice these companies have not been shown to definitively reduce costs and have created several unintended outcomes. The supposed benefit of outsourcing correctional services takes root in the liberal economic idea that having multiple companies compete to provide a service would naturally make the companies innovate and find ways to increase their efficiency to win more contracts than the others. Few companies ever got involved in the business. In the United States CoreCivic, GEO Group Incorporated, and Management and Training Corporation house all the privately held federal inmates and most state inmates across the United States. (United States, Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General,1 ) Naturally, this means there is little competition within the industry.


title: Private prison

text: When comparing the quality of the services that private prisons provide versus their public counterparts a 2016 report from the Office of the Inspector General found that private facilities underperformed their public counterparts in several key safety areas. 14 private prisons were surveyed in this study and compared to 14 federally operated facilities of the same security level in this study. Privately run facilities were found to have higher rates of inmate on inmate and inmate on staff assaults per capita. Twice as many weapons and eight times as many contraband phones were confiscated per capita at private facilities versus their public counterparts.


title: Private prison

text: Determining the quality per dollar spent by private prisons is a difficult proposition. At a surface level the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reports that private prisons expended an average of $22,488 annually per capita from 2011-2014 while BOP institutions expended $24,426. This may seem like a clear indication of savings but there is a critical lack of information about how the money supplied to private institutions is being spent each month. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) which oversees both federal and private prisons in the United States does not receive cost information broken out by function or department for private institutions, leaving them no way to compare the expenditures made in key cost-saving areas such as food and medical care. Without this data federal overseers cannot adequately evaluate the efficiency of the programs offered at private institutions. Several Research studies have indicated that the cost savings indicated in these reports may come from lower wages, lower staffing levels and reduced employee training at these private facilities. Another consideration when examining these cost savings is the disparity in the inmates housed at private facilities versus those that are publicly funded. Private institutions often have a laundry list of internal rules about the kinds of prisoners they will house. These rules are designed to prevent private companies from taking on prisoners that will be particularly costly to house. Christopher Petrella a researcher at the University of California investigated some of the rules set forth by CoreCivic in their contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Based on their agreement CoreCivic could refuse the intake of prisoners over a multitude of health issues such as HIV of Hepatitis C positive status as well as mental health concerns. This is indicative of a greater trend across the United States. Private prisons tend to house prisoner that carry lower risk levels and require fewer services than their public counterparts making direct comparisons of savings unreliable.


title: Private prison

text: According to a 2020 study of private prisons in Mississippi, "private prison inmates serve 90 additional days... The delayed release erodes half of the cost savings offered by private contracting and is linked to the greater likelihood of conduct violations in private prisons."


title: Private prison

text: Proponents of privately run prisons contend that cost-savings and efficiency of operation place private prisons at an advantage over public prisons and support the argument for privatization, but some research casts doubt on the validity of these arguments, as evidence has shown that private prisons are neither demonstrably more cost-effective, nor more efficient than public prisons. An evaluation of 24 different studies on cost-effectiveness revealed that, at best, results of the question are inconclusive and, at worst, there is no difference in cost-effectiveness.


title: Private prison

text: A study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the cost-savings promised by private prisons "have simply not materialized". Some research has concluded that for-profit prisons cost more than public prisons. Furthermore, cost estimates from privatization advocates may be misleading, because private facilities often refuse to accept inmates that cost the most to house. A 2001 study concluded that a pattern of sending less expensive inmates to privately run facilities artificially inflated cost savings. A 2005 study found that Arizona's public facilities were seven times more likely to house violent offenders and three times more likely to house those convicted of more serious offenses. A 2011 report by the American Civil Liberties Union point out that private prisons are more costly, more violent and less accountable than public prisons, and are actually a major contributor to increased mass incarceration. This is most apparent in Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world and houses the majority of its inmates in for-profit facilities. Marie Gottschalk, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that the prison industry "engages in a lot of cherry-picking and cost-shifting to maintain the illusion that the private sector does it better for less." In fact, she notes that studies generally show that private facilities are more dangerous for both correctional officers and inmates than their public counterparts as a result of cost-cutting measures, such as spending less on training for correctional officers (and paying them lower wages) and providing only the most basic medical care for inmates.


title: Private prison

text: A 2014 study by a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley shows that minorities make up a greater percentage of inmates at private prisons than in their public counterparts, largely because minorities are cheaper to incarcerate. According to the study, for-profit prison operators, in particular CCA and GEO Group, accumulate these low-cost inmates "through explicit and implicit exemptions written into contracts between these private prison management companies and state departments of correction".


title: Private prison

text: Recidivism rates, how many prisoners are re-arrested after release, are not usually considered to measure performance. A study in 2005 found that out of half of the federal prisoners released that year, 49.3% were arrested again later on. Pennsylvania became one of the first states to offer a financial incentive to corrections facilities that were privately operated and could lower their recidivism rates in 2013. In order for these facilities to gain a 1% bonus, they had to lower rates to 10% below the baseline. Together, all 40 of these facilities in the state had an average of 16.4% reduction in their recidivism rates.


title: Private prison

text: Evidence suggests that lower staffing levels and training at private facilities may lead to increases in the incidence of violence and escapes. A nationwide study found that assaults on guards by inmates were 49 percent more frequent in private prisons than in government-run prisons. The same study revealed that assaults on fellow inmates were 65 percent more frequent in private prisons.


title: Private prison

text: An example of private prisons' inadequate staff training leading to jail violence was reported by two Bloomberg News journalists, Margaret Newkirk and William Selway in Mississippi regarding the now-closed Walnut Grove Correctional Facility (WGCF). According to the journalists, the ratio of staff to prisoners in this prison was only 1 to 120. In a bloody riot in this prison, six inmates were rushed to the hospital, including one with permanent brain damage. During the riot, the staff of the prison did not respond but waited until the melee ended, because prisoners outnumbered staff by a ratio of 60–1. The lack of well-trained staff does not only lead to violence but also corruption. According to a former WGCF prisoner, the corrections officers were also responsible for smuggling operations within the prison. To make more money, some provided prisoners with contraband, including drugs, cellphones and weapons. Law enforcement investigations led to the exposure of a far wider web of corruption.


title: Private prison

text: At the Walnut Grove C.F., intense corruption was involved in the construction and operation of, and subcontracting for medical, commissary and other services. After exposure of the rape of a female transitional center prisoner by the mayor, who also served as a warden, a bribery scheme was uncovered. It had paid millions to the corrupt Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps and his conduits. Ten additional officials and consultants, including three former state legislators (two Republicans and one Democrat), were indicted in the Department of Justice's Operation Mississippi Hustle prosecution.


title: Private prison

text: Prior to the Mississippi investigations and prosecutions, a similar investigation began in 2003, dubbed "Operation Polar Pen", exposed a wide-ranging bribery scheme of what legislative members themselves called the "Corrupt Bastards Club" (CBC). It initially involved for-profit corrections, then extended to include fisheries management and oil industry taxation. At least fifteen targets of the investigation, including ten sitting or former elected officials, the governor's chief of staff, and four lobbyists were considered for possible prosecution, and a dozen were indicted. Investigation of a Democratic state senator found nothing amiss, but ten indictments were issued that included six Republican state legislators, two halfway house lobbyists, two very wealthy contractors and the U.S. Senator, Ted Stevens. The seven felony convictions against Stevens were overturned, as were verdicts involving three other legislators and the governor's Chief of Staff, one directly due to the Supreme Court's overturning part of the existing "Honest Services Fraud" in the case of Representative Bruce Weyhrauch. Weyhrauch pleaded guilty to a state misdemeanor. Others also had their verdicts overturned, in part because the prosecution failed to completely disclose exculpatory evidence to their defense, but three of those also pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Though they were implicated, the Department of Justice also declined to prosecute a former state senator and the U.S. Congressman, Don Young, who spent over a million dollars on his defense, though he was never indicted.


title: Private prison

text: In the kids for cash scandal, Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp, a private prison company which runs juvenile facilities, was found guilty of paying two judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, $2.8 million to send 2,000 children to their prisons for such alleged crimes as trespassing in vacant buildings and stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart. Sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, Ciavarella will spend his time in Kentucky at Federal Correctional Institution Ashland. The two judges were not the only ones at fault though, seeing as the First National Community Bank never reported the suspicious activity, causing the scandal to go on even longer. In the end, FNCB was fined $1.5 million for failing to report the suspicious activities including transactions that went on over a total of 5 years.


title: Private prison

text: “From 1999-2010, the Sentencing Project found that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) spent on average, $1.4 million per year on lobbying at the federal level and employed a yearly average of seventy lobbyists at the state level.”


title: Private prison

text: The influence of the for-profit prison industry on the government has been described as the prison–industrial complex.


title: Private prison

text: CoreCivic (previously CCA), MTC and The GEO Group have been members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Washington, D.C.-based public policy organization that develops model legislation that advances free-market principles such as privatization. Under their Criminal Justice Task Force, ALEC has developed model bills which State legislators can then consult when proposing "tough on crime" initiatives including "Truth in Sentencing" and "Three Strikes" laws. By funding and participating in ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Forces, critics argue, private prison companies influence legislation for tougher, longer sentences. Writing in "Governing" magazine in 2003, Alan Greenblatt states:


title: Private prison

text: According to Cooper, Heldman, Ackerman, and Farrar-Meyers (2016), ALEC has been known to push for the expansion of the private prison industry by promoting greater use of private prisons, goods, and services; promoting greater use of prison labor; and increasing the size of prison populations. ALEC has had a hand in not only broadening the definition of existing crimes, but also in the creation of new crimes. ALEC is known for developing policies that may threaten civil liberties by increasing the probabilities of incarceration and lengthy sentences (Cooper et al., 2016).


title: Private prison

text: According to a 2010 report by "NPR", ALEC arranged meetings between the Corrections Corporation of America and Arizona's state legislators such as Russell Pearce at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. to write Arizona SB 1070, which would keep CCA's immigrant detention centers stuffed with detainees.


title: Private prison

text: CCA and GEO have both engaged in state initiatives to increase sentences for offenders and to create new crimes, including, CCA helping to finance Proposition 6 in California in 2008 and GEO lobbying for Jessica's Law in Kansas in 2006. In 2012, The CCA sent a letter to 48 states offering to buy public prisons in exchange for a promise to keep the prisons at 90% occupancy for 20 years. States that sign such contracts with prison companies must reimburse them for beds that go unused; in 2011, Arizona agreed to pay Management & Training Corporation $3 million for empty beds when a 97 percent quota wasn't met. In 2012 it was reported that the DEA had met up with the CCA to incorporate laws that would increase the CCA's prison population and in turn increased the CCA's prison population. CCA, now CoreCivic, closed their facility in Estancia, New Mexico as the lack of prisoners made them unable to turn a profit, which left 200 employees without jobs.


title: Private prison

text: OpenSecrets reported that private prison corporations donated a record breaking 1.6 million in federally disclosed contributions in the 2018 midterm elections.


title: Private prison

text: Many organizations have called for a moratorium on construction of private prisons, or for their outright abolition. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and United Methodist Church have also joined the call, as well as a group of Southern Catholic Bishops.


title: Private prison

text: As of 2013, there has been a modest pushback against the private prison industry, with protests forcing GEO Group to withdraw its $6 million offer for naming rights of FAU Stadium, and Kentucky allowing its contract with the CCA to expire, ending three decades of allowing for-profit companies to operate prisons in that state. In 2014, Idaho will be taking over the operation of the Idaho Correctional Center from the CCA, which has been the subject of a plethora of lawsuits alleging rampant violence, understaffing, gang activity and contract fraud. Idaho governor Butch Otter said "In recognition of what's happened, what's happening, it's necessary. It's the right thing to do. It's disappointing because I am a champion of privatization."


title: Private prison

text: In the final quarter of 2013, Scopia Capital Management, DSM North America, and Amica Mutual Insurance divested around $60 million from CCA and GEO Group. In a Color of Change press release, DSM North America President Hugh Welsh said:


title: Private prison

text: Some U.S. states have imposed bans, population limits, and strict operational guidelines on private prisons:


title: Phuket International Airport

text: Phuket International Airport (, ) is an international airport serving the Phuket Province of Thailand. It is in the north of Phuket Island, from the centre of Phuket City. The airport plays a major role in Thailand's tourism industry, as Phuket Island is a popular resort destination. It is the third-busiest airport in Thailand in terms of passengers, after Suvarnabhumi Airport and Don Mueang International Airport in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region. The airport set a record 15.1 million arrivals and departures in 2016, up 17.8 percent from 2015.


title: Phuket International Airport

text: The airport has three terminals: Terminal 2 is used for international flights, and Terminal 3 for domestic flights. Terminal X for charter flights opened in February 2014.


title: Phuket International Airport

text: Phuket Airport underwent a 5.14-billion-baht expansion and renovation, with the work completed in 2016. The capacity of the new international terminal is 12.5 million passengers per year. The expansion increased airport capacity to 20 million passengers a year from its previous capacity of 6.5 million. A rail link from an alternate airport, Krabi, was suggested in 2012, as Phuket is congested with little room to expand.


title: Phuket International Airport

text: A new international airport, which will serve three provinces—Phang-Nga, Phuket and Krabi, is proposed. The airport will be built in two phases, out of which the first phase is expected to be completed by 2025. The airport will be able to cater more than 5 million passengers per year, and after the second phase, will cater to over 25 million passengers per year. It will serve as an alternative to Phuket and Krabi airports.


title: Phuket International Airport

text: Phuket is a favourite tourist destination in the region. International passengers mainly come from Asia Pacific and Europe. In 2012 it ranked second-busiest in total passenger traffic, after Suvarnabhumi Airport in the Bangkok metropolitan area. In mid-2015 the airport, designed to handle 20 flights per hour, was servicing 23 per hour.


title: Phuket International Airport

text: Phuket airport handled 12.9 million passengers in 2015, 12.8 percent more than 2014, with international numbers rising 8.27 percent to 6.95 million and domestic up 18.6 percent to 5.9 million. Aircraft movements grew 11.6 percent to 84,758, with 43,996 international (up 7.63 percent) and 40,762 domestic (up 16.1 percent).


title: Bret Stephens

text: Bret Louis Stephens (born November 21, 1973) is an American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He began working as an opinion columnist for "The New York Times" in April 2017 and as a senior contributor to NBC News in June 2017.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens previously worked for "The Wall Street Journal" as a foreign-affairs columnist and later as the deputy editorial page editor, and was responsible for the editorial pages of its European and Asian editions.


title: Bret Stephens

text: From 2002 to 2004, he was editor-in-chief of "The Jerusalem Post". He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2013.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens is known for his neoconservative foreign policy opinions and for being part of the right-of-center opposition to Donald Trump.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens was born in New York City, the son of Xenia and Charles J. Stephens, a former vice president of General Products, a chemical company in Mexico. Both his parents were secular Jews. His mother was born in Italy at the start of World War II to Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany. His paternal grandfather, Louis Ehrlich, was born in 1901 in Kishinev (today Chișinău, Moldova). He fled with his family to New York after the Kishinev pogrom and changed the family surname to Stephens (after poet James Stephens). Louis Stephens moved to Mexico City, where he founded General Products and built his fortune. He married Annette Margolis and had two sons, Charles and Luis. Charles married Xenia. They moved to Mexico City with their newborn son, Bret, to help run the chemical company, inherited from Louis. Bret was raised there and is fluent in Spanish. As a teenager, he attended boarding school at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens earned an undergraduate degree in political philosophy from the University of Chicago. He then earned a master's degree in comparative politics at the London School of Economics.


title: Bret Stephens

text: He is married to Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, a "New York Times" music critic. They have three children, and live in New York City. He was previously married to Pamela Paul, the former editor of "The New York Times Book Review".


title: Bret Stephens

text: In 1998 he joined "The Wall Street Journal" as an op-ed editor. He later worked as an editorial writer for "The Wall Street Journal Europe", in Brussels. Stephens edited the weekly "State of the Union" column on the European Union.


title: Bret Stephens

text: In 2002, Stephens moved to Israel to become the editor-in-chief of "The Jerusalem Post". He was 28 years old. "Haaretz" reported at the time that the appointment of Stephens, a non-Israeli, triggered some unease among senior "Jerusalem Post" management and staff. Stephens said that one of the reasons he left "The Wall Street Journal" for "The Jerusalem Post" was that he believed that Western media was getting Israel's story wrong. "I do not think Israel is the aggressor here", he said. "Insofar as getting the story right helps Israel, I guess you could say I'm trying to help Israel." Stephens led "The Jerusalem Post" during the worst years of the Palestinian campaign of suicide bombings against Israel and pointed the paper in a more neoconservative direction. In 2003, "The Jerusalem Post" named Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq War, its Man of the Year.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens left "The Jerusalem Post" in 2004 and returned to "The Wall Street Journal". In 2006, he took over the "Journal"s "Global View" column after George Melloan's retirement.


title: Bret Stephens

text: In 2017, Stephens left the "Journal", joined "The New York Times" as an opinion columnist, and began appearing as an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.


title: Bret Stephens

text: In 2021, Stephens became editor-in-chief of "SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations", published by Maimonides Fund.


title: Bret Stephens

text: In 2005, the World Economic Forum named Stephens a Young Global Leader. He won the 2008 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism. In 2009, he was named deputy editorial page editor after Melanie Kirkpatrick's retirement. In 2010, Stephens won the Reason Foundation's Bastiat Prize.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist." He is a national judge of the Livingston Award. In 2015, Stephens joined the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences. The Real-Time Academy judges contestants for the Shorty Awards, which honor the best individuals and organizations on social media.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens has chaired two Pulitzer juries. In 2016, he chaired the one that awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting to Alyssa Rubin of "The New York Times". In 2017, Stephens chaired the jury that awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing to Art Cullen of "The Storm Lake Times".


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens's book "America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder" was released in November 2014. In it, he argues that the US has been retreating from its role as the "world's policeman" in recent decades, which will lead to ever-greater world problems.


title: Bret Stephens

text: In August 2019, Stephens sent a complaint to a George Washington University (GWU) professor and the university's provost about a tweet in which the professor called Stephens a "bedbug". The topic of Stephens's next column was the "rhetoric of infestation" used by authoritarian regimes such as Nazi Germany. The column was interpreted as criticism of the GWU professor and other critics of Stephens. The controversy went viral online, leading to then-president Donald Trump tweeting, "lightweight journalist Bret Stephens, a Conservative who does anything that his bosses at the paper tell him to do! He is now quitting Twitter after being called a 'bedbug.' Tough guy!" It was also pointed out that in a 2013 "Wall Street Journal" article, Stephens had called Palestinians "mosquitoes".


title: Bret Stephens

text: In August 2016, "The Wall Street Journal" published a column by Stephens about an Egyptian judoka refusing to shake hands with his Israeli opponent after an Olympic match, in which Stephens called antisemitism "the disease of the Arab mind". Some readers criticized this as a racist generalization that all Arabs were antisemitic. After Stephens joined "The New York Times", several reporters at the newspaper criticized Stephens's previous writings.


title: Bret Stephens

text: In December 2019, Stephens's column "The Secrets of Jewish Genius", in which he contended that Ashkenazi Jews have superior intelligence, led to accusations of eugenics and racism. The column originally said that "Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different." Following widespread criticism, "The New York Times" editors deleted the section of the column in which he appeared to claim that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically superior to other groups. The editors said that Stephens erred in citing an academic study by an author with "racist views" whose 2005 paper advanced a genetic hypothesis for the basis of intelligence among Ashkenazi Jews. The Times's deletion was criticized by Jonathan Haidt, Nadine Strossen, Pamela Paresky and Steven Pinker, who called it "surrender to an outrage mob".


title: Bret Stephens

text: In February 2021, Stephens wrote a column critical of the "Times"'s dismissal of Donald McNeil for using a racial slur against African Americans in the context of a discussion with students of the slur's usage. Six students present on the occasion said that McNeil had used the word "in a way that they perceived as casual, unnecessary or even gratuitous", but one of them added that "McNeil’s opinions didn’t disparage African Americans". The "Times" spiked the column, but it leaked to the "New York Post", which published it. Stephens principally argued against the editor's initial position that the newspaper would "not tolerate racist language regardless of intent"; the editor subsequently backed down from that position.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Foreign policy was one of the central subjects of the columns for which Stephens won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. His foreign policy opinions have been characterized as neoconservative, part of a right-wing political movement associated with President George W. Bush that advocated the use of military force abroad, particularly in the Middle East, as a way of promoting democracy there. Stephens was a "prominent voice" among the media advocates for the start of the 2003 Iraq War, for instance writing in a 2002 column that, unless checked, Iraq was likely to become the first nuclear power in the Arab world. Although the weapons of mass destruction used as a "casus belli" were never shown to exist, Stephens continued to insist as late as 2013 that the Bush administration had "solid evidence" for going to war. Stephens has also argued strongly against the Iran nuclear deal and its preliminary agreements, claiming that they were a worse bargain even than the 1938 Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens is a supporter of Israel. He has caused controversy for his remarks referring to an Egyptian athlete's refusal to shake his Israeli Olympic opponent's hand as "the disease of the Arab mind". Stephens claimed this incident exemplifies antisemitism in the Arab world.


title: Bret Stephens

text: During the 2016 United States presidential election campaign, Stephens became part of the Stop Trump movement, regularly writing articles for "The Wall Street Journal" opposing Donald Trump's candidacy and becoming "one of Trump’s most outspoken conservative critics". Stephens has compared Trump to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. After Trump was elected, Stephens continued to oppose him: In February 2017, Stephens gave the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, and used the platform to denounce Trump's attacks on the media. His opposition to Trump continued after he moved to the "Times." For instance, in 2018 he argued that by the same logic Republicans used to justify the impeachment of Bill Clinton, they should impeach Trump.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens is also known for his climate change contrarianism. He has been described as a climate change denier, but disavows that term, calling himself agnostic on the issue.


title: Bret Stephens

text: Stephens considers climate change a "20-year-old mass hysteria phenomenon" and rejects the notion that greenhouse-gas emissions are an environmental threat. According to him, "it isn't science" and belongs into the "realm of belief" as it is a "sick-souled religion". He also mocks climate change activism as hysterical alarmism, denying that any significant temperature change will occur in the next 100 years and arguing that it distracts from more important issues, such as terrorism. Stephens claims that global warming activism is based on theological beliefs, rather than science, as an outgrowth of Western tendencies to expect punishment for sins. He has also suggested that activists would be more persuasive if they were less sure of their beliefs. Stephens's positions on this issue led to a protest in 2013 over his Pulitzer citation omitting his climate change columns, and to a strong backlash against his 2017 hiring by "The New York Times". In reaction, "The New York Times" praised Stephens's "intellectual honesty and fairness". As of October 28, 2022, Stephens said that he had come to accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change after a trip to Greenland with climate scientist John Englander, although he believes that markets are more effective than government at addressing the problem.


title: Jim Stafford

text: James Wayne Stafford (born January 16, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and comedian. While prominent in the 1970s for his recordings "Spiders & Snakes", "Swamp Witch", "Under the Scotsman's Kilt", "My Girl Bill", and "Wildwood Weed", Stafford headlined at his own theater in Branson, Missouri, from 1990 to 2020. Stafford is self-taught on guitar, fiddle, piano, banjo, organ, and harmonica.


title: Jim Stafford

text: Stafford was raised in Winter Haven, Florida. In high school, he played in a band called the Legends, along with friends Bobby Braddock, Kent LaVoie (also known as Lobo) and Gram Parsons (of the Byrds, and The Flying Burrito Brothers).


title: Jim Stafford

text: Stafford's first chart hit was "Swamp Witch", produced by Lobo, which cracked the U.S. top 40 in July 1973. On March 2, 1974, his biggest hit, "Spiders & Snakes", peaked at number three on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and number 14 in the BBC Top 50 in the UK, selling over two million copies, earning a gold disc by the RIAA that month. Stafford continued to have moderate chart success through most of 1975 with an additional minor hit called "My Girl Bill" which reached number 20 in the BBC Top 50 chart a year earlier in 1974.


title: Jim Stafford

text: Stafford's first televised appearance was in 1974 on a show called "Rock Concert" that aired in the United Kingdom.


title: Jim Stafford

text: "The Jim Stafford Show" was a six-week summer variety series shown on ABC from to . It featured Valerie Curtin, Richard Stahl, Deborah Allen, Cyndi Wood, and Gallagher, and was co-produced by Tony Scotti. Stafford, Rod Warren, April Kelly, and Pat Proft were among the writers on the series.


title: Jim Stafford

text: In 1976, Stafford guest-starred in two episodes of "Gemini Man", which were later combined into a TV movie titled "Riding with Death". He also guest-starred in the episode "The Understudy" on "The Love Boat".


title: Jim Stafford

text: Stafford appeared numerous times on music specials, variety shows, and talk shows. He was a frequent guest on "The Tonight Show". He co-hosted "Those Amazing Animals" with Burgess Meredith and Priscilla Presley, from 1980 to 1981, and also hosted 56 episodes of "Nashville on the Road".


title: Jim Stafford

text: Stafford was credited with being the supervising writer for "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" revival show, which aired on CBS in 1988.


title: Jim Stafford

text: Stafford contributed to several movie soundtracks. He received a gold record for his work on the Disney movie "The Fox and the Hound". He wrote "Cow Patti" for the Clint Eastwood movie "Any Which Way You Can" and appeared in the movie. His work has been covered by George Jones and Jerry Reed. His second classical guitar album, "Somewhere in Time", appeared in March 2002. His most recent comedy album was "Don't Tell Mama I'm a Guitar Picker, She Thinks I'm Just in Jail". In 2010, he produced and recorded his first Christmas album, "A Guitar for Christmas".


title: Jim Stafford

text: Stafford operated and performed at the Jim Stafford Theatre in Branson, Missouri, beginning in 1990. His children, Sheaffer and GG, would accompany him on stage.


title: Jim Stafford

text: The theatre ceased performances in spring 2020, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, with plans to re-open within weeks. However, it was announced in 2021 that the theatre would be razed, and in October 2021 a "pre-demolition auction" of theatre items and personal memorabilia was held and it was expected then that the demolition would take place within 60 days. The famous "guitar neck" in front of the theater, regarded as a beloved Branson landmark, was saved in an effort by preservationists and fans.


title: Jim Stafford

text: In the late 1970s, Stafford was married briefly to singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry, and they have a son, Tyler Gentry Stafford. Stafford was also married to Ann Britt Stafford for 24 years. She co-owned the Jim Stafford Theatre in Branson until December 2013.


title: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

text: Mobile Fighter G Gundam, also known in Japan as (and commonly referred to as simply G Gundam), is a 1994 Japanese animated television series produced by Sunrise and the fifth installment in the long-running "Gundam" franchise. The series is set in the "Future Century", where space colonies representing countries have agreed to hold an organized fighting tournament known as the "Gundam Fight" every four years to settle their political differences in place of war. Each colony sends a representative fighter piloting a giant, humanoid mecha called a Gundam to battle on Earth until only one is left, and the winning nation earns the right to govern over all the colonies until the next tournament. The events of "G Gundam" follow Domon Kasshu, the pilot of Neo Japan's Shining Gundam during the 13th Gundam Fight. Domon's mission is to both win the tournament and to track down his older brother, who is believed to have stolen the mysterious Devil Gundam (AKA the Dark Gundam outside of Japan/Asia) from the Neo Japan government.


title: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

text: Commemorating the 15th anniversary of the "Gundam" brand, "G Gundam" was produced to reboot the waning popularity of the long-running franchise. It is the first "Gundam" series with a self-contained plot set in an alternate calendar era from the original "Universal Century" timeline. Additionally, the show casts aside many of the conventions set by its predecessors and takes many new steps for its franchise, such as a focus on martial arts and decisive, personal duels as opposed to large-scale military conflicts. "G Gundam" was directed by Yasuhiro Imagawa, with its settings and characters significantly influenced by the director's interest in world cinema. The anime's real-world locales were drawn from numerous foreign films and were planned using location scouting. "G Gundam" ran for 49 episodes on Japan's TV Asahi from April 22, 1994, to March 31, 1995. An English-language version produced by Bandai Entertainment aired in the United States on Cartoon Network's Toonami block beginning on August 5, 2002. Since its original broadcast, "G Gundam" has spawned manga, audio albums, video games, guide books, and several lines of scale models.


title: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

text: During its conception and Japanese television debut, "G Gundam" was met with controversy among its production staff, sponsors, and fans because the show takes a wildly different turn from all previous entries in the "Gundam" universe. However, for that very reason, the series is cited as a milestone in its long-running franchise and ultimately proved very popular in the region. Reception for "G Gundam" has been generally positive in North America. Reviewers praised the primary characters and mecha as unique and stylized, but strongly disagreed on the plot. While some critics enjoyed the bold and campy divergence from the more dramatic social and political undertones traditional of "Gundam", others found "G Gundam"s story diffusely shallow, repetitive, or not up to standards set by its anime predecessors.


title: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

text: Unlike previous series in the "Gundam" franchise which are set in the "Universal Century" timeline, "Mobile Fighter G Gundam" takes place in an alternate "Future Century" universe. Within this timeline, much of mankind has abandoned a ruined Earth to live in space colonies. The countries on Earth have corresponding colonies just outside the planet's atmosphere. Rather than fight wars for political and social dominance, the colonies agree to hold a "Gundam Fight" tournament every four years. Each country sends to Earth a representative piloting a highly advanced, humanoid mobile fighter called a Gundam. The Gundams compete with one another in one-on-one battles, under a strict set of rules, until only one fighter remains; the nation represented by the winner earns the right to rule all of space for that period. Each Gundam is controlled directly by the user within the cockpit using the "Mobile Trace System", a gesture recognition and feedback mechanism whereby the Gundam mimics the pilot's own body motion, combat skills, and weapon-wielding capabilities. "G Gundam" opens at the start of the 13th Gundam Fight in Future Century year 60 and follows Neo Japan's Domon Kasshu, fighter of his nation's Shining Gundam and bearer of the coveted "King of Hearts" martial arts crest. Aside from winning the tournament, Domon's mission is to track down his fugitive, older brother Kyoji, who allegedly stole the experimental Devil Gundam from Neo Japan's government, leaving their mother dead and their father (Dr. Raizo Kasshu) to be arrested and placed in a cryogenic state.


title: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

text: Under orders from Major Ullube Ishikawa, Domon and his childhood friend and mechanic Rain Mikamura travel from country to country, challenging each one's Gundam while searching for clues to the whereabouts of Kyoji and the Devil Gundam. Domon's initial matches with Neo America's Chibodee Crocket, Neo France's George DeSand, Neo China's Sai Sai Ci, and Neo Russia's Argo Gulskii end in draws, gaining mutual respect among the fighters. As they encounter Gundam pilots who had come in contact with the Devil Gundam, Domon and Rain learn of its unique cellular properties to regenerate, multiply, and evolve by infecting organic matter and causing violent behavior in living things. The duo then journey to Neo Tokyo, a city decimated by the Devil Gundam's army of mobile weapons. Domon reunites with his esteemed martial arts instructor Master Asia, who is also the champion of the last Gundam Fight, the former King of Hearts, and one-time leader of an elite group of Gundam fighters called the Shuffle Alliance. After Domon and Rain help the city's survivors defend their last outpost in Shinjuku, Master Asia reveals himself as a servant of the Devil Gundam, having also gained control over Chibodee, George, Sai Sai Ci, and Argo using Devil Gundam (DG) cells. The four remaining members of the Shuffle Alliance intervene and vow to destroy their previous leader for his crimes. Ultimately, the Alliance members offer their lives in purging the DG cells from Domon's four comrades and bestow each of them with a Shuffle Alliance crest as their successors. Kyoji and the enormous Devil Gundam eventually appear from beneath the ground of Shinjuku but shortly thereafter vanish alongside Master Asia. As the Shuffle Alliance trains in the Guiana Highlands for the Gundam Fight finals, Master Asia and the Devil Gundam reappear. With the help of his friends and a new ally in Neo Germany's masked warrior Schwarz Bruder, Domon defeats the Devil Gundam. When the Shining Gundam becomes incapacitated during the battle, Domon desperately manages to activate a newly acquired God Gundam, escape Master Asia, and make his way to the finals set in Neo Hong Kong.


title: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

text: The Gundam Fight finals are presided over by Wong Yunfat, Neo Hong Kong's prime minister, and the current ruler of the space colonies and Earth. Wong chooses to have the qualifying nations battle in one-on-one and tag team preliminary matches to reach a battle royale on Lantau Island, where the tournament is to end with the winner facing the defending champion Master Asia. Having gained possession of the Devil Gundam, Wong secretly plots to revive and control it as his trump card to inevitably maintain his own power over space. Domon and his companions make their way to the battle royale while several truths concerning the Devil Gundam are unveiled. Rain's father, Dr. Mikamura, eventually explains that the Devil Gundam (originally called the Ultimate Gundam) was constructed by Dr. Kasshu to rejuvenate the dying Earth. Jealous of his genius colleague, Dr. Mikamura had Neo Japan's officials attempt to confiscate Kasshu's creation. To prevent the military from using his father's invention for its own agenda, Kyoji fled with and crash-landed the Gundam on Earth, where its computer malfunctioned, triggering its malevolent activity. Ullube subsequently had Dr. Kasshu arrested, framed Kyoji as a criminal, and used Domon and Rain as pawns in recovering the Gundam. In a separate confession, Master Asia discloses to Domon that, having been distressed by the utter destruction wrought by the Gundam Fights, he planned to use the Devil Gundam to wipe out humanity and allow Earth to heal naturally. The battle on Lantau Island culminates with Domon fatally besting Master Asia in a final confrontation, while Kyoji and Schwarz sacrifice themselves so that Domon can attack the Devil Gundam's cockpit and disable it once again. Though the schemes of both Wong and Master Asia are foiled, Ullube quietly claims the Devil Gundam and transports it to Neo Japan's space colony for his own purpose. Having been corrupted by DG cells with ambitions of supreme power, Ullube kidnaps Rain and places her into the Devil Gundam's core to act as its energy source. The hulking monstrosity then merges with the colony and begins absorbing Earth itself. As the entire world's Gundams unite to assault the Devil Gundam from the outside, the Shuffle Alliance breaks inside the colony and destroys Ullube. Finally, Domon professes his love for Rain and releases her from the core. Invoking the power of the King of Hearts, the couple vanquishes the Devil Gundam once and for all.


title: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

text: "Mobile Fighter G Gundam" was produced by Sunrise in association with advertising agencies Sotsu and Dentsu, and toy company Bandai. The series was created to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the "Gundam" franchise, created by Yoshiyuki Tomino in 1979. "G Gundam" was directed by Yasuhiro Imagawa, known for his work on the "Giant Robo" and "Getter Robo Armageddon" original video animations (OVAs). "G Gundam" was chiefly written and supervised by Fuyunori Gobu, a veteran screenwriter for various Sunrise properties such as "Shippū! Iron Leaguer" and "The King of Braves GaoGaiGar". Many of the principal production crew members for "G Gundam" were carried over the previous season's "Mobile Suit Victory Gundam", including character designer Hiroshi Ōsaka and mechanical designers Kunio Okawara and Hajime Katoki. Manga artist Kazuhiko Shimamoto collaborated on the show's character designs. Kimitoshi Yamane acted as a back-up mechanical designer and has since worked on Sunrise's acclaimed series "Cowboy Bebop" and "The Vision of Escaflowne". Hirotoshi Sano, previously credited for "Tekkaman Blade", was responsible for directing the mechanical animation in "G Gundam", but also produced much of show's promotional artwork seen on home media covers. The musical score for "G Gundam" was composed by Kohei Tanaka. The opening theme song "Flying in the Sky" performed by Yoshifumi Ushima and the closing theme by Etsuko Sai are played for the first 25 episodes of the series. The opening theme "Trust You Forever" by Ushima and the closing theme by Takehide Inoue are played for the remaining episodes.


title: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

text: Like other early mecha anime, the "Mobile Suit Gundam" franchise was backed by sponsors whose main interest was having television programs advertise plastic models and toys. "Gundam" fiction set itself apart from others in the same genre with its dramatic plot devices, morally complex characters, and depictions of the horrors of war. These aspects, combined with its "Real Robot" mecha approach, made "Gundam" immensely popular for several years. After the broadcast of "Victory Gundam" beginning in 1993, Imagawa, a young protégé of Tomino, was selected as the director of the next installment in the franchise, titled "Polcarino Gundam". However, as "Gundam" popularity dwindled and sales began to drop by this time, the sponsors forced the creators to reboot the brand with the newly titled "Mobile Fighter G Gundam". Conceived as a less realistic "Super Robot" series, "G Gundam" abandoned its military roots and was aimed at younger viewers to increase toy sales. Alterations including a lack of a warfare-centered plot, Gundams stereotypically based on nationality, and Earth as a ring were originally seen as blasphemous to Imagawa and much of Sunrise's staff. Notwithstanding, Imagawa became more supportive of the changes after seeing some impressive, complex designs in "G Gundam"s sponsor-created toys. He eventually settled into his position, taking advice from his mentor. "If you continue to make a copy of a copy of a copy," he stated, "eventually the image degrades to nothing." Imagawa thought it was important for creators and sponsors to buy into each other's ideas for the benefit of a product's success. The director also commented that in order to sell a product like "G Gundam" to an audience resistant of such ambitious changes, creators must instill their own personalities to overcome hardships and make the work unique. By the end of production, Imagawa considered it meaningless to compare "G Gundam" to other parts of the franchise and disregarded the concept of a "conventional" "Gundam" series. "This is MY "Gundam"," he proclaimed, "And I've made a "Gundam" that I can be proud of."