Left Jabs

  When you go to the website of GEO Group , the largest and most well-connected of the private prison companies, the headline that greets you on the home page reads: “Global Leader in Evidence-Based Rehabilitation.” If you were to go no further than that home page, you might think the company, based in Boca Raton, was all about “enhanced rehabilitation and reentry programs,” which is just one part of their “Continuum of Care,” a program they trademarked. The word ‘prisoner’ never appears. It’s not till you click on the tab for “GEO Secure Services” that you first encounter the word ‘offender,’ and the euphemisms start to cascade. This is where you’re told about “intake and housing of offenders,” about “secure offender transportation services,” and the “operation and management of approximately 72,000 beds in 54 secure facilities.” Not prisoners, beds. The website paints a rosy picture of a benevolent company steeped in the art and science of helping repentan...

  I don’t want to overstate the importance of protest demonstrations. Their immediate impact on the problems of the day is never likely to be more than negligible, while their long-term impact is unknowable. But I don’t want to understate their importance, either. I’ve now been to five protests — two aimed at a Tesla dealership, three aimed at the junta more generally — and I was ambivalent about all of them. Were it not for my wife’s strong feelings on the subject, I probably wouldn’t have gone. I realize I was being selfish. Surely I wasn’t the only one thinking there are better ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. But the ones who showed up pushed past that, so who was I to excuse myself from a civic responsibility? As it turned out, the simple act of showing up came with unexpected benefits. What the protests may have lacked in political effectiveness, they made up for in psychic income. Our collective mental health has taken a beating of late, and ther...