The Wackenhut Corporation is a United States-based private security and investigation firm, and is headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Wackenhut was founded in 1954, in Coral Gables, Florida, by George Wackenhut and three partners, all former FBI agents. After early struggles — including a fistfight between Wackenhut and one of his partners — he took sole control of the company in 1958, naming it for himself. After working all day in the office, he sometimes worked as a security guard at night. By 1964, he had contracts to guard the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as well as the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear test site in Nevada; the company had an initial public offering the next year. In 2002, the company was purchased by Danish corporation Group 4 Falck (now Group 4 Securicor) for $570 million. At the time, the company operated in 54 countries, had $2.8 billion in revenue, and its founder still controlled more than 50% of its stock.

Overview

Wackenhut is a major provider of security guard services in the United States. A number of Fortune 500 companies are among its clients. One subsidiary is Wackenhut Services Incorporated (WSI), which is a primary contractor to U.S. government agencies including NASA and the Army. Wackenhut also provides contract security and emergency response services (fire departments) to local governments, particularly in public transport systems. Wackenhut also offers security for employers experiencing poor relations with labor unions, including strike actions.

During the 1980s Wackenhut was active in the field of airport security; however, it has stated that it was due to pressure from airports and airlines to compromise the company's standards by cutting wages that they only protected four airports in the United States on September 11, 2001. Airports in the United States are now protected by the Transportation Security Administration of the Department of Homeland Security.

Wackenhut is involved in protecting nuclear reactors, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, and other high-security government installations, including those of the Department of Energy. They also are involved in providing armed security for the infamous Area 51, as well as several US military bases in and around the Balkans, such as Kosovo.

In 2004 Wackenhut's nuclear plant guard services came under intense public and media scrutiny, mostly due to concerns over terrorism but also under pressure from labor unions such as the Service Employees International Union, which operates a Web site devoted to criticizing Wackenhut.

Interestingly, the company moved from the Miami suburb of Coral Gables to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, in part because Miami's crime rate made it difficult to attract good workers.^{[citation needed]}

Wackenhut and private prisons

Having expanding into providing food services for prisons in the 1960s, Wackenhut in 1984 launched a subsidiary to design and manage jails and detention centers for the burgeoning private prison market in the United States and abroad. Wackenhut became the nation's second-largest for-profit prison operator. Although the corrections branch of Wackenhut was financially successful, critics claimed the company's guards abused inmates in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana.

In 1999, Wackenhut was stripped of a $12-million-a-year contract in Texas and fined $625,000 for failing to live up to promises in the running of a state jail after several guards were indicted for having sex with female inmates. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, five guards at a Wackenhut work-release facility were fired or punished for having sex with inmates. In April 1999 the state of Louisiana took over the running of Wackenhut's 15-month-old juvenile prison after the U.S. Justice Department accused Wackenhut of subjecting its young inmates to "excessive abuse and neglect." In the same year a New Mexico legislative report called for a near-total revamp of prison operations, including two run by Wackenhut. U.S. journalist Gregory Palast commented on the case: "New Mexico's privately operated prisons are filled with America's impoverished, violent outcasts — and those are the guards." He catalogued lax background checks before hiring guards, which led to several alleged cases of guards physically and sexually abusing inmates. In the U.S., Wackenhut has appeared in the federal courts 62 times since 1999, largely resulting from prisoners' claims of human rights abuses. The company has been accused of trying to maximise profits in its private prisons at the expense of drug rehabilitation, counselling and literacy programs. In 1995 Wackenhut was investigated for diverting $700,000 intended for drug treatment programs at a Texas prison.

Among other facilities, Wackenhut subsidiary Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) operated the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, which opened in 1999 and was closed in 2003 after allegations of widespread abuse of refugee claimants. In a documentary screened on Special Broadcasting Service in 2000, George Wackenhut welcomed Australia's immigrant detention policies, saying, "(Australia is) really starting to punish people, as they should have done all along."

Wackenhut describes itself as no longer involved in the private prison industry in the US, stating that it abandoned the market due to low returns on investment, excessive government regulation, and negative publicity affecting its other, more profitable operations. The GEO Group, Inc. now runs former Wackenhut facilities in 14 states, as well as in South Africa and Australia. Some facilities, such as the Wackenhut Corrections Centers in New York, retain the Wackenhut name despite no longer having any open connection with the company.

Wackenhut and the CIA

Frequent rumors that his company was in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency, particularly in the 1960s, were never substantiated, but Wackenhut, who was obsessive about high-tech security gadgets in his private life, did not discourage the suggestion. Several of his senior executives were former CIA operatives, and his company's board of directors included former FBI director Clarence M. Kelley, former National Security Agency director Bobby Ray Inman, and former Defense secretary and deputy CIA director Frank Carlucci. On rare occasions, the company's clandestine work did land in the headlines. In 1991, a U.S. House of Representatives committee investigated charges that a Wackenhut executive, working for a consortium of oil companies, illegally spied on a whistleblower, former independent oil executive Chuck Hamel, exposing environmental damage caused by the Exxon Valdez oil spill [1]. The executive, who had also discussed trying to implicate a California congressman in his sting, resigned immediately after a meeting with George Wackenhut.

Janet Chandler

In 1979, hotel clerk and Hope College senior Janet Chandler was found dead in a snowbank along Interstate 196 near Holland, Michigan. She had been raped. Initially treated as a robbery, the case remained unsolved until a group of Hope students produced a documentary that uncovered a sex and drugs party atmosphere at the hotel, then occupied by dozens of Wackenhut security guards assigned to protect the facilities of local manufacturer Chemtron during a bitter strike. The documentary prompted a reopening of the case and arrests of six security guards and a hotel supervisor who was Chandler's roommate. Several guards were guilty of her murder in November 2007.[2][3][4][5]

References

• Minahan, John. The Quiet American: A Biography of George R. Wackenhut. International Publishing Group (September 1994) ISBN 0-9639395-0-5
• Palast, Greg (2002). The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters. Pluto Press. ISBN 0-7453-1846-0.
• Eye On Wackenhut
• Obituary of George Wackenhut from Blog of Death
• Obituary of George Wackenhut from the Washington Post
• Wackenhut: Prisons, profits and golf umbrellas

External links

• Official website