The History of the American Correctional Association
For more than 149 years, the American Correctional Association has paid lip service to the cause of corrections and correctional effectiveness while lining our pockets with the suffering of the poor, the prisoner, and the refugee.
Enoch Cobb Wines
The American Correctional Association was founded in 1870 by the Rev. Enoch Cobb Wines, a Christian minister who devoted his life to prison reform. Yes, you heard that correctly – our organization was founded to fix the injustices of the prison system, not to perpetuate them. Unfortunately, both Rev Wines and Jesus made it clear that you cannot serve both God and wealth, and since we had to choose, we chose wealth.
1870-1970
Our organization continued along for another century as we discovered that incarceration allowed us to continue the peculiar institution of American slavery. No seriously, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”
That little “except as punishment for a crime” clause is what allows the for-profit prison industry to put prisoners to work for 83 cents an hour. And when you combine this with racial injustice like unequal enforcement and unequal sentencing, you can see that we’ve pretty much dodged the Emancipation Proclamation entirely. John Oliver did a great piece on it, actually.
David L Bazelon
In the early 1980s, Judge David Bazelon was serving a term on our board of directors when he realized that it was highly unethical for us to serve as both a trade group and an accreditor – in other words, our organization is funded by the same people we accredit. This is why we’re so willing to overlook things like children sleeping on concrete with Mylar blankets – our bottom line literally depends on us not noticing those things.
Judge Bazelon couldn’t stomach this level of corruption, though, and delivered a scathing 21-page resignation letter that is well worth your time. (Although, honestly, if it hasn’t had an impact in forty years it won’t now.)
Christopher B Epps
Another highlight of our history came in 2014 when our former president, Christopher Epps, resigned in disgrace after being indicted on dozens of corruption charges – he accepted about $1.5M in bribes, awarded over $1B in no-bid contracts, took a plea deal when he was caught, and was sentenced to almost 20 years in prison.
Other Highlights
- the private Otter Creek Correctional Center in Kentucky, accredited in 2009 despite multiple charges of sexual abuse that caused Hawaii to remove its inmates and the prison’s closure
- the Idaho State Correctional Center, also privately run, which retained its good grades from ACA throughout a long proven pattern of violence in the prison, understaffing, operator contract fraud, and multiple federal investigations
- the private Walnut Grove Correctional Facility in Mississippi, accredited in 2012 when it was a juvenile facility, the same year U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves described it as “a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts”