CEC meaning in Community ?

Community Education Centers, Inc. abbreviated CEC was a private corrections company based in West Caldwell, New Jersey and operated residential reentry facilities, jails, and in-prison drug treatment programs in seventeen American states and in Bermuda.

In June, 2007 CEC acquired a jail management company, CiviGenics.

In 2011, New Jersey and its counties spent about $105 million on halfway houses. Of that amount, about $71 million went to Community Education Centers.

The firm operated fourteen jails, mostly in Texas. Its largest “secure facility” was the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornbury Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania with a capacity of 1,883. It also had contracts for twenty six “residential reentry” facilities, more commonly called “halfway houses.” The largest of these was Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey with a capacity of 1,196. It also offered a number of residential treatment programs funded by Native American tribes in six states.

In addition to contracts with cities, counties and states, the firm also provided reentry services in four states to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

In June, 2012, The New York Times published the results of a 10-month-long investigation into the halfway houses operated by the firm in New Jersey. Almost three quarters of one group of inmates at a New Jersey facility tested positive for various drugs. Although government contracts required inmates be provided therapy and job training no such programs were offered. The company was described in the press as having close ties to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. At the time the company's senior vice president was William J. Palatucci, a close friend and adviser to Governor Christie. He and the governor's brother Todd Christie co-chaired the governor's inaugural committee.[16]

The firm is paid about seventy dollars a day to house each inmate, about half the cost of a prisoner held in a state-run facility. Some of the inmates in the facilities retain connections to gangs. The Delaney Hall facility, for example, includes inmates affiliated with the Bloods. Drugs were widely available at least at the New Jersey sites in the series covered by The New York Times' report.

In April 2017, GEO Group, Inc., one of the world's two largest for-profit prison corporations, acquired Community Education Centers.