Cover Ups, Corruption and Death: What Private Prison Co. Doesn't Want You to Know about Its Stadium

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http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/cover-ups-corruption-and-death-what-private-prison-co-doesnt



This week, Florida Atlantic University announced a deal to rename its football stadium after GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the world. The deal came with a $6 million dollar price tag, the "largest one-time gift in the history of FAU athletics."

But GEO Group has a history of human rights abuses that it would rather keep secret, especially once 30,000 screaming football fans begin seeing the company's corporate sponsorship. So, in all the excitement surrounding the announcement, GEO took to quietly covering up parts of its shady past--by scrubbing its Wikipedia page.

As Brave New Foundation’s Jesse Lava reported, a GEO Group employee deleted the entire “controversies” section of the company’s Wikipedia page and replaced it with some glowing propaganda. Before GEO’s lackey doctored the article, it outlined a slew of horrific abuses in the company’s prisons, including reports of squalid conditions and the deaths of dozens of prisoners.

Wikipedia editors quickly noticed the changes and restored it to its original form Wednesday evening. The highly educational, yet alarming article is available for your perusal—controversies and all— here. And just before they changed it back, Wikipedia took a jab at the company that tried to game its netizen-dependent editing process, posting this delightful disclaimer on the top of the page:

“The article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and removing any inappropriate external links.”