For Immediate Release

July 2nd, 2014

Please contact: CJ Frogozo, 310 570 2622 cj@fitzgibbonmedia.com

New York, NY– ColorOfChange, the nations largest online civil rights organization, has launched a campaign targeting a Temple University study on prison privatization, which is the subject of a pending ethics complaint. The campaign calls on Temple President Neil Theobald to ensure a thorough and prompt investigation of the ethics complaint, hold the authors of the study accountable, and create new policies requiring staff to reveal corporate funding at all stages of the publication process.

Campaign may be seen here: https://colorofchange.org/campaign/temple-university-best-research-money-can-buy/

ColorOfChange, Executive Director Rashad Robinson stated, “As the head of Temple, Pres. Theobald has an obligation to enforce the university’s ethics policies and ensure the integrity of academic research at the school. The glaring conflict of interest in Temple’s private prison study and the lack of upfront transparency around its funding is a major concern. We hope Pres. Theobald will uphold the principles of higher learning over corporate agendas and ensure a fair and timely investigation.”

The study, released as a working paper in April 2013, claimed state costs savings and other benefits through prison privatization; however, researchers did not initially disclose that it had been funded by the country’s largest for-profit prison firms: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group and MTC. The ACLU recently posted a report by U.C. Berkeley researcher Christopher Petrella regarding the inaccuracies of the Temple study, describing it as “fundamentally misleading” due to a number of flagrant shortcomings. CCA and GEO Group have repeatedly referenced the study in promotional materials as “independent” confirmation of the industry’s benefits. Neither company mentions that they funded the research.

“The significance of Temple’s private prison study is that it gives corrupt for-profit prisons cover to continue harming Black communities for profit. It allows them to defend their widespread human rights violations, systemic abuse of youth, deeply unethical business, with the authority of university approved research, which they themselves funded,“ Robinson continued. “This false sense of credibility has a huge influence on the public and state officials, and ultimately results in continued business with the government.”

Private prisons, which incarcerate people for the purpose of generating corporate profit, are a major driver of mass incarceration that unjustly target Black and brown communities. Private prison companies get to cherry pick who they imprison, and in order to cut costs and increase profit, companies choose younger and healthier people who are disproportionately Black and Latino due to the discriminatory War on Drugs of recent years. The already devastating racial disparities of the public prison system are even worse in private prisons.

Alex Friedmann, associate director of the Human Rights Defense Center, filed an ethics complaint

against the authors of the Temple study, Professors Simon Hakim and Erwin Blackstone, alleging they had violated university policies by failing to adequately disclose the funding source of the research in their initial working paper and in various editorials they had published. The ethics complaint also contends that the professors misrepresented their research and disregarded ethical research standards. Professor Hakim was quoted in one news report as saying that disclosure of the funding source was “not that important.”

Attorney and Temple University graduate Matt Pillischer criticized the corporate funding and inadequate disclosure of that funding with respect to the Temple study, “Now more than ever we need independent research and independent media that tells the truth, without ties to rich corporate interests that benefit from the status quo. And we need to shine a light on conflicts like this that only serve to perpetuate the worst atrocities in this unjust system. It is time for Temple to stop dragging its feet and to take swift and decisive action on the ethics complaint, which raises valid concerns.”

The ethics complaint, filed in June 2013, has been pending for the past year with no apparent action by university officials or President Theobald.

###

With 900,000 members, ColorOfChange is the country’s largest online civil rights organization.