News & Commentary

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Apparently, private prison company CoreCivic never got the memo.

The American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders sent a letter to the White House documenting their concerns. Beatings and stabbings were rampant, suicides were prevalent, sexual assault reports were discouraged, and the company failed to report the death of an inmate for six days.

CoreCivic, the second largest private prison company in America, is seeking to reactivate a shuttered facility in Leavenworth as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.

“What their actions say is that CoreCivic’s decision makers consider the SUP process and this city disposable,” said Esmie Tseng, communications director for the ACLU of Kansas.

GEO Group Chairman George Zoley said the company stands to gain up to $1 billion in additional revenue from detaining and surveilling undocumented immigrants.

The director of the Kansas ACLU says more people need to be aware of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency's proposal to open a privately-run detention facility in Leavenworth, Kansas.

The ACLU in December announced that documents it had obtained revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was "actively considering proposals to expand its immigration detention capacity in Kansas."

The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, is intervening in two capital murder cases underway in Wyandotte County, challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty as a form of punishment.

A long-shot constitutional challenge to Kansas’ death penalty unfolding in preliminary court proceedings for a man charged in the death of four people at a Wyandotte County bar centers on claims the state’s process of jury selection is racially biased in favor of executions.