This work examines the government memo as a seemingly innocuous missive, and reproduces three such memoranda issued by the current administration.  One of the works in this series reproduces Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ memo written to the Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on February 21, 2017, raising a painful issue that disproportionately affects people of color–incarceration. The memo reversed the Obama administration’s plan to phase out federal use of private prisons, a plan that responded to an audit finding more safety and security problems in privately versus publicly run institutions. 

On the reverse of each memo is the earnings report for the GEO group in the months before during and after the memo was issued. The correlation is indirect –as in sometimes the stock goes up/down, but this series intends merely to illustrate the connection.  As the ink rusts through the paper on both sides, the earnings report bleeds through into the text of the memorandum and the text of the memo bleeds through into the earnings report.