Published by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc. www.cqresearcher.

com

For-Profit Prisons
Should companies be in the incarceration business?

T
he for-profit prison industry in the United States

is growing at a time when the inmate popula-

tion is declining. Critics argue that corporate-run

prisons pose more safety problems than public

ones, saying the companies hire fewer guards and cut costs to

make money. Lawsuits by inmates and civil rights groups allege

that cost-cutting is leading to dangerous prison conditions and

poor medical care. But the industry and its supporters say private
A GEO Group guard stands watch at an immigrant
prisons are as safe as government-run facilities and that privati- detention center in Tacoma, Wash., in June 2017. The
company is the for-profit prison industry’s largest. Prison
zation helps governments avoid overcrowding and save money. companies have faced criticism over inmate safety and
health concerns, but the industry says its record is
comparable to that of government facilities.
The Obama administration in 2016 began phasing out private

federal prisons, but President Trump reversed course a year later.

Meanwhile, companies are playing a greater role in the detention

of undocumented immigrants, drawing criticism from civil rights

groups and some communities where private detention facilities

are located. Immigrant-rights groups say the prison industry is en-

couraging the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal N

I THIS REPORT
THE ISSUES ............................ 875
immigration — a charge the companies deny. S
BACKGROUND ...................... 882
I
CHRONOLOGY...................... 883
D
CURRENT SITUATION .......... 887
CQ Researcher • Oct. 19, 2018 • www.cqresearcher.com E
Volume 28, Number 37 • Pages 873-896
AT ISSUE ................................ 889
OUTLOOK .............................. 890
RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR
EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD
BIBLIOGRAPHY..................... 894
THE NEXT STEP ................... 895
 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS
THE ISSUES
• Should private prisons be
875 banned?
• Are private prisons less
safe than public prisons?
• Are private prisons more
cost effective than public
prisons?
BACKGROUND
882 Early Prisons
Solitary confinement and
inmate labor were hallmarks
of the nation’s first prisons.
Worsening Conditions
884 Riots in the mid-20th century
spurred reform efforts.
Private-Prison Boom
885 Tough sentencing laws led to
more inmates and private pris-
ons between 1991 and 1998.
886 Continued Growth
The private prison industry’s
revenues topped $1 billion
by 2000.
CURRENT SITUATION
Potential Changes
887 Major prison companies are
expanding their real estate
investments.
Government Activity
888 Legislation to lower the
incarceration rate faces
congressional hurdles.
Legal Challenges
888 Immigrant detainees are
suing GEO and CoreCivic
over their treatment.
OUTLOOK
890 Upcoming Elections
Democratic wins in the Novem-
ber midterms could help to slow
the prison industry’s growth.
Cover: AP Photo/Ted S. Warner
874 CQ Researcher
SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS
More Than Half of States
876 Use Private Prisons
Twenty-seven states rely on
for-profit facilities.
Private Prison Population
877 Soars
The number of inmates
jumped 47 percent between
2000 and 2016.
Industry’s Role in
878 Immigrant Detentions
Stirs Controversy
GEO Group sees business
growth amid border crack-
down.
Use of Private Detention
880 Centers Grows
More than 70 percent of
immigrant detainees are
held in privately run
facilities.
Chronology
883 Key events since 1790.
Lawsuits Accuse Prisons
884 of Inadequate Medical
Care
Corrections agencies and
health care providers
deny cutting corners.
At Issue:
889 Should private industry play
a role in prison operations?
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
For More Information
893 Organizations to contact.
Bibliography
894 Selected sources used.
The Next Step
895 Additional articles.
Citing CQ Researcher
895 Sample bibliography formats.
Oct. 19, 2018
Volume 28, Number 37
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 For-Profit Prisons
BY CHRISTINA L. LYONS

THE ISSUES or expand prison capacity

when needed.
“We have played a critical

T erry Beasley and other

inmates at the East Mis-
sissippi Correctional
Facility in Meridian, Miss.,
banged on their windows to
role for [corrections] systems that
are overcrowded or aging” —
such as when the U.S. Supreme
Court in 2011 ordered California
to relieve overcrowding at its
alert guards to another pris- prisons, says Amanda Gilchrist,
oner who needed immediate spokeswoman for CoreCivic
medical attention. Inc., the industry’s second-largest
“He was blue,” Beasley said company. She says the Nashville,
during a March 9 court hearing Tenn.-based company has never
on inmates’ class-action law- cut corners to increase profits.
suit against the state alleging The number of inmates in
unsafe prison conditions and private prisons has increased

AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
poor medical care. Nobody 47 percent since 2000. (See
came for more than an hour, graphic, p. 877.) Meanwhile,
said Beasley, who is serving the overall prison population
a life sentence for homicide. rose 15 percent during that
By then the man was dead. period, although it has fallen
Dozens of inmates and in recent years. In 2016, pri-
staff described harrowing vate prisons housed 8.5 percent
conditions — fights, gang- The Rev. C. Edward Rhodes II, left, pastor of the Mount of all U.S. prisoners — including
related sexual assaults and Helm Baptist Church in Jackson, Miss., leads a prayer 18.1 percent of the more than
poor medical care — at the vigil last April on the steps of the federal courthouse in 189,000 federal inmates and 7.2
Jackson, where a lawsuit by inmates against the
prison run by Management East Mississippi Correctional Facility is being heard. percent of the nearly 1.3 mil-
and Training Corp., a Center- MTC, the company that runs the prison, denies the lion state prisoners. And private
ville, Utah, company known inmates’ contention that the facility is unsafe. companies, including nonprof-
as MTC. The prison houses its, house about 29 percent of
about 1,200 inmates, 80 percent of civil rights groups and some criminal juveniles placed in residential facilities. 2
whom have mental health needs. justice experts say private prisons focus The Obama administration in 2016
MTC officials insisted the facility was too much on boosting profits and put moved to phase out the 13 privately run
safe and the criticisms unfair. Defense inmates at far greater risk of abuse federal prisons — not including immi-
attorney W. Thomas Siler said violence than government-run facilities. gration detention centers — after a 2016
is common in prisons. “This [industry] is profiting off the inspector general’s report concluded
“When you have 1,200 men who incarceration of human beings,” says they were less safe than public prisons.
are hardened criminals, . . . murderers, Shahrzad Habibi, research and policy Many criminal justice experts said at the
rapists . . . living in close proximity, director of In the Public Interest, a time that state governments might follow
you’re going to have fights,” Siler said in research institute in Oakland, Calif. the administration’s example.
closing arguments in U.S. District Court “When dealing with human lives, it’s But the Trump administration re-
for the Southern District of Mississippi. impossible to design a contract that versed course in early 2017, saying
The judge as of early October had not will give a company a profit margin private prisons are needed to relieve
issued a ruling in the suit, which was and actually treat people well.” overcrowding. The administration also
brought by the American Civil Liberties But the prison industry and con- moved to expand the number of pri-
Union (ACLU) and the Southern Poverty servative groups defend private vately run immigration detention centers,
Law Center on the inmates’ behalf. 1 prisons, saying they can help reduce ordered federal prosecutors to charge
The lawsuit highlights issues at government costs, provide innovative drug offenders more aggressively and
the heart of a debate about for-profit programs to rehabilitate prisoners and proposed a 2019 budget that would
prisons and their role in the U.S. cor- enable states and the federal govern- boost funding for law enforcement and
rections system. Prisoner advocates, ment to quickly replace old facilities immigration detention centers. 3

www.cqresearcher.com Oct. 19, 2018 875

 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS
More Than Half of States Use Private Prisons
Twenty-seven states have privately run, for-profit prisons within
their corrections system. In New Mexico, 43 percent of inmates
are incarcerated in such prisons — the highest percentage of any
state. Montana is second with 39 percent.
Share of Inmates in Private Prisons by State, 2016
Wash. N.D.
Mont.
S.D.
Ore. Idaho
Wyo.
Neb.
Nev. Utah
Colo. Kan.
Calif.
Okla.
Ariz.
N.M.
Texas
Alaska
Hawaii
* D.C. count is incorporated in federal numbers.
Source: “Private Prisons in the United States,” U.S. Bureau
of Justice Statistics, The Sentencing Project, last updated
August 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8qxow4t
States and the federal government
either directly manage corrections facili-
ties or contract with private companies
to build and manage prisons. In 2016,
27 states and the federal government
contracted with private companies —
primarily CoreCivic, the GEO Group,
based in Boca Raton, Fla., or MTC.
(See map, above.) CoreCivic and GEO
(formerly called Wackenhut Correc-
tions) are publicly traded companies
while MTC is privately held. 4
Violence, inmate riots and prisoner
complaints about mistreatment have
long plagued U.S. prisons. Civil rights
advocates, liberals and some criminal
justice reform supporters, however, say
such problems have worsened with the
private prison industry’s growth. These
critics say the companies’ profit moti-
vation encourages them to skimp on
spending and training for staff, facility
876 CQ Researcher
4.9 inmates in public prisons, Brook-
ings found. 5
But industry officials and their sup-
porters say private prisons ensure gov-
ernments have access to cost-effective
and quality services.
“You can’t assume the industry is
trying to cut costs,” says Austill Stuart,
policy analyst for the Reason Founda-
N.H.
tion, a libertarian think tank in Los
Minn. Vt. Angeles that supports the use of private
Maine
Wis. prisons. “Competition [in the prison
Mich. N.Y. Mass. industry] has existed long enough” to
Iowa
R.I.
Ind. Ohio
Pa.
Conn.
have proved the effectiveness of private
Ill.
N.J. prisons, he says.
Mo. W.Va. Del.
Ky. Va.
Md.
CoreCivic and GEO say they can
Tenn. N.C. save the government money while
Ark.
S.C. D.C.* offering better quality, cost-effective
Miss.
Ala. Ga.
La. services than the public sector. “We
hear no greater or more consistent
Fla.
long-term priority from [governments]
than bringing down the financial and
social costs of recidivism,” CoreCivic’s
Greater than 30%
Gilchrist says.
20 to 29%
10 to 19%
The industry has scored some suc-
0.1 to 9% cesses, says Jeffrey Butts, director of
No private prisons the Research and Evaluation Center
at the City University of New York’s
John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
He cites the Rite of Passage, a Nevada
upkeep, inmate care and rehabilitation company that operates rehabilitation
services. centers around the country for youths
“Private facilities are generally convicted of crimes. Butts says the
worse off than public facilities,” says company’s CEO, Ski Borman, “pays
Paul Ashton, development and finance attention to the social dynamics in the
manager for the Justice Policy Institute, facilities” and ensures “quality support
a Washington think tank that is work- and services for adolescents.”
ing to lower the incarceration rate. Butts, along with industry officials,
“Guards are often paid substantially many criminal justice experts and other
less than public [ones], and aren’t observers say private prisons are no
offered the same levels of benefits worse than public ones and that abuse
or training. And as a result of the and violence are endemic to both.
lack of training, there are increased Inmate deaths in state and federal
conflicts between guards and inmates prisons increased nearly 24 percent
at private facilities.” between 2001 and 2014, according
In 2015, officers in private prisons to the federal Bureau of Justice. The
were paid about $7,000 less than the number of homicides in prisons more
average public prison guard, according than doubled between 2009 and 2014,
to the Brookings Institution, a centrist while suicides in state prisons increased
Washington think tank. Private prisons 48 percent between 2001 and 2014. 6
also average about one officer per 6.9 In Delaware, inmates seized a
inmates, compared with one officer per building at the state-operated James T.
Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna
in February 2017, sparking an 18-hour Private Prison Population Soars
hostage crisis that left correctional of-
The number of inmates in for-profit, privately run prisons jumped
ficer Steven Floyd dead and multiple
47 percent between 2000 and 2016, the latest year for which data
other guards injured. An independent
audit found severe overcrowding, un- are available. This growth rate outstripped the 15 percent increase
derstaffing, high employee turnover, in the total prison population during that period.
unaddressed inmate complaints and an
aging facility housing more than half Number of Inmates in State and Federal Prisons, 2000 and 2016
of the state’s 5,500 prisoners. 7 Private Prison Population Total Prison Population
“Nobody is doing this right,” says
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a senior fellow 128,063 1.5 million
in the justice program for the Brennan
Center, a liberal-leaning law and policy 87,369 1.3 million

institute at New York University’s School

of Law. “We are sending so many people
to these facilities, we are morally bank-
rupt if we don’t do our best to change
the outcomes for these people.”
Some criminal justice experts urge
policymakers to focus on reworking
prison contracts so that they contain
more incentives for companies to im-
prove inmate care and rehabilitation
services and reduce recidivism — that
is, the number of inmates who re-offend
and return to prison. 8
But others say improving contracts
will not help much. “We say you
can’t improve an industry as bad as
the private prison industry,” says Alex
Friedmann, a former inmate who is
associate director of the Human Rights
Defense Center, a research and prisoner
advocacy group based in Lake Worth,
Fla. Friedmann, who was convicted of
armed robbery and assault charges,
served 10 years in prisons and jails
in Tennessee, including six years at a
CoreCivic facility. 9 He says companies
can only boost profits by hiring less
experienced staff for lower pay and
reducing care for inmates.
The industry also is facing criticism
over its role in the Trump administra-
tion’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
In fiscal 2017, an average of 40,500
undocumented immigrants were held
in federal detention centers daily, up
from more than 28,000 daily over the
previous decade. Private facilities held
more than 71 percent of immigrant
2000 2016
Sources: “Private Prisons in the United States,” U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics,
The Sentencing Project, last updated August 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8qxow4t;
“Prisoners in 2000,” U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 2001, https://tinyurl.
com/jzssn9q
detainees — up from 49 percent in
2009. 10 (See sidebar, p. 878.)
Critics say the industry is encour-
aging the administration’s crackdown
on illegal immigration so it can make
money, a charge industry officials deny.
As debate continues about private
operations in the corrections system,
here are some questions that inmate
advocates, lawmakers, prison experts
and others are asking:
Should private prisons be banned?
Opponents of private prisons argue
companies unethically profit from incar-
cerating others. “If people are going to
be incarcerated, deprived of their liberty,
that needs to be done by a democratically
controlled government, not by a private
corporation with one eye on profits and
the bottom line,” says David Fathi, direc-
tor of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
But the Reason Foundation’s Stuart
says, “It’s not the company depriving
them of their liberty. . . . That’s the
equivalent of shooting the messenger.”
By involving private industry in cor-
rections, the government can choose
the most effective solution that results
2000 2016
from competition in the business, indus-
try supporters say. Private companies
compete with each other — and even
with the government — to offer the
most cost-effective services.
But Fathi says the “usual rules of mar-
ket discipline,” by which a company will
lose business if it provides bad services,
do not apply in the prison industry. “The
people to whom the quality of the service
matters have no choice,” he says. “They
can’t choose another prison.”
Friedmann of the Human Rights
Defense Center says publicly traded
companies are “obligated to sharehold-
ers to generate money,” suggesting their
primary concern is producing profits
rather than caring for prisoners.
The Geo Group reported revenue of
$2.26 billion in 2017, up from $2.18 bil-
lion in 2016. CoreCivic had revenue of
$1.76 billion in 2017, down slightly from
$1.8 billion the previous year. Combined,
the two companies operate about 125
corrections facilities. Among the largest
investors are JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock
and New York Life Group, according to
a report by government and industry
watchdog groups. 11

www.cqresearcher.com Oct. 19, 2018 877

 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS

Industry’s Role in Immigrant Detentions Stirs Controversy

GEO Group sees business growth amid border crackdown.

O n 24 acres at the end of Hilbig Road in Conroe,

Texas, about 40 miles north of Houston, the GEO
Group is preparing to open the nation’s newest im-
migration detention center — the first since President Trump
took office in 2017.
The corrections company purchased the lot in 2010, seven
years before winning the $110 million federal contract to build
and operate the 1,000-bed center. GEO already operates a
mental health center and the 1,500-bed Joe Corley Detention
Center on a neighboring property. GEO spokesman Pablo E.
Paez said the project is an economic boon for Conroe, bring-
ing about 340 jobs with “average annual salaries ranging from
$28,000 to $50,000.” 1
“We have a presence in the community going back several
years,” Paez said. “I think we strive to be a good . . . corporate
partner to the community.” 2
But many residents, Conroe’s mayor and civil rights advo-
cates say the town, part of the metropolitan Houston region,
is already growing and doesn’t need the jobs, and they object
to giving GEO more business. The company has faced several
complaints and lawsuits alleging inmate abuse and forced labor
at some of its facilities, including Joe Corley.
“Our . . . officials have given a blank check to an amoral
corporation with a shameful record of human rights abuses
and lack of accountability,” resident John Miller said last year. 3
Conroe Mayor Toby Powell said, “We have plenty of rooms
[at Joe Corley] for our illegal aliens who are breaking the law.
I don’t think that we need any more detention centers here
in Conroe.” 4
The controversy reflects growing tensions among com-
munities, civil rights activists and the private prison industry
over the companies’ expanding role in the detention of un-
documented immigrants. Critics say the industry is unethically
reaping profits from the Trump administration’s crackdown
on illegal immigration, while industry officials maintain these
companies help the government by building facilities quickly
and providing jobs and revenue for local communities.
In early 2017, Trump ordered immigration agents to detain
anyone suspected of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
The number of immigrants detained daily increased to 45,000
in 2018 — up from more than 28,000 daily in the decade
before. The White House this past spring requested funding
for about 9,000 more detention beds over the next year. 5
More than 71 percent of detainees were kept in private
facilities in 2016, up from 49 percent in 2009, according to the
National Immigrant Justice Center, an affiliate of the Chicago-
based human rights group Heartland Alliance, and Grassroots
Leadership, an Austin group that campaigns against the private
prison industry. 6
GEO Group CEO George Zoley told investors in August
that the detention centers present a growth opportunity for
the publicly traded company, the biggest in the private prison
industry, with $2.26 billion in revenue last year. Stock prices in
GEO, as well as its competitor CoreCivic, had plunged before
Trump’s election in November 2016.
The value of GEO stock — held largely by major banks,
mutual funds and private equity firms, as well as some pub-
lic employee retirement systems — nearly tripled after the
election before dropping back in late 2017. Value now is
nearly double what it was in August 2016 when the Obama
administration announced it would phase out the use of
for-profit federal prisons — a plan that many observers and

Civil rights groups say long-term
government contracts perpetuate in-
carceration levels, in part by including
guarantees on occupancy.
In 2013, about 65 percent of the
more than 60 private-prison contracts
that In the Public Interest examined
had “bed guarantees,” the group said.
The contracts guaranteed a minimum
occupancy rate of 70 percent in one
California prison and 95 to 100 per-
cent in prisons in Arizona, Louisiana,
Oklahoma and Virginia. 12
“We call them profit guarantees,”
because even if the beds are empty, the
prison gets paid, Friedmann says. “I cannot
think of another context in the U.S. where
the government would pay someone for
services they do not provide.”
Gilchrist said CoreCivic does not
require occupancy guarantees, and
agreements that have them — less
than half of the total — are at the
government’s request because it wants
to ensure adequate space is available
when more beds are needed. “Even
then, the contracts contain explicit
language allowing our government
partners to terminate the agreement if
the capacity isn’t needed,” she said. 13
Stuart says this flexibility is essential
to the corrections system. “If you don’t
have private industry, what will you
do if the prison population goes up
or down?” he asks. The industry can
build prisons quickly or the government
can terminate contracts when prisons
are no longer needed, he says.
Critics, however, say companies
need full prisons if they are to make
money and that they therefore en-
courage higher incarceration rates.
They do this, critics say, by donating
money to national and state candi-
dates backing strong sentencing laws

878 CQ Researcher

industry experts expected to be extended to immigration
detention centers. 7
Critics accuse some corrections companies of making il-
legal campaign contributions. After the administration’s 2016
announcement on private prisons, GEO donated $100,000
through a subsidiary to Rebuilding America Now, a political
action committee (PAC) that supported GOP candidate Trump,
and gave the PAC another $125,000 a week before the elec-
tion. GEO and CoreCivic each donated $250,000 to Trump’s
inaugural committee. 8
The Campaign Legal Center, an advocacy group that sup-
ports strong campaign finance laws, filed a complaint with
the Federal Election Commission alleging GEO violated federal
law barring campaign finance donations from federal contrac-
tors. Paez called the complaint an “absolutely baseless and
meritless allegation.” 9
GEO has faced protests outside the company’s Boca Raton, Fla.,
headquarters and its facilities in Florida, Arizona and California. 10
— Christina L. Lyons
1 Gus Bova, “Trump’s New Immigration Lockup Draws Local Opposition
in Conroe,” Texas Observer, July 25, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yd37wyb8.
2 Jay R. Jordan, “Mayor: No need for new immigration detention center
in Conroe,” Courier of Montgomery County, April 15, 2017, https://tinyurl.
com/ybbfltmu.
3 “Montgomery County residents protest massive new for-profit immigrant
detention camp: Construction begins on first new detention camp under
Trump,” Grassroots Leadership, June 14, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yalbr2h3.
4 Jordan, op. cit.
5 John W. Schoen and Chloe Aiello, “ICE overspends tax dollars on a
detention policy many Americans find abhorrent,” CNBC, June 22, 2018,
https://tinyurl.com/y9h8dyle; Brian Bennett, “Not just ‘bad hombres’:
AP Photo/The Courier/Jason Fochtman
The GEO Group, which runs the Joe Corley Detention
Center in Conroe, Texas, is preparing to open a 1,000-
bed immigrant detention center on a neighboring lot.
The company says its facilities are a boon to the
local economy, but some residents and the mayor
say the town doesn’t need the jobs.
Trump is targeting up to 8 million people for deportation,” Los Angeles
Times, Feb. 4, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/habwk7m; and John Burnett, “Big
Money As Private Immigrant Jails Boom,” NPR, Nov. 21, 2017, https://
tinyurl.com/y9oc67qj.
6 Tara Tidwell Cullen, “ICE Released Its Most Comprehensive Immigration
Detention Data Yet. It’s Alarming,” Immigrant Justice Center, March 13, 2018,
https://tinyurl.com/ybrwn8zk; Bethany Carson and Eleana Diaz, “Payoff:
How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention
Quota,” Grassroots Leadership, April 2015, https://tinyurl.com/ycylye6k.
7 “The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO),” Yahoo Finance, https://tinyurl.com/ybhrufqt.
8 “Reports of donations accepted: 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee,”
Federal Election Commission, April 18, 2017, pp. 291, 433, https://tinyurl.
com/n7c9rgy.
9 Lise Olsen, “Private prisons boom in Texas and across America under
Trump’s immigration crackdown,” The Houston Chronicle, Aug. 19, 2017,
https://tinyurl.com/ydhgkv82.
10 Marcia Heroux Pounds, “Protesters target prison-and-detention operator
Geo Group in Boca Raton,” Sun Sentinel, Aug. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.
com/ya7ks2ua.

or the detention of undocumented
immigrants.
A 2015 study led by Byron E. Price,
a professor of public administration at
the City University of New York, found
that CoreCivic and GEO spent more
than 90 percent of their lobbying funds
between 2003 and 2012 in 36 states
where proposed bills sought to detain
more undocumented immigrants. In
the Public Interest found the two com-
panies spent $5.9 million on lobbying
and campaign expenditures in 2014. 14
But critics who say companies
lobby for harsher sentencing laws
are “misinformed” and “dishonest,”
Gilchrist says. “CoreCivic does not
draft, lobby for, promote or in any
way take a position on proposals,
policies or legislation that determine
the basis or duration of an individual’s
incarceration or detention.”
Several criminal justice experts say
similar allegations could be made of
unions representing corrections employ-
ees. “What people forget is that some of
the biggest political donors are public-
sector prison guard unions,” says Alex-
ander “Sasha” Volokh, an associate law
professor at Emory University in Atlanta.
The California Prison Guard Union, for
example, lobbied for the “three strikes”
initiative that increased sentencing pen-
alties for each subsequent conviction,
and for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s
proposed prison expansion in 2013.
(Brown later backed off the proposal.) 15
Likewise, the “state senator whose
district contains a big [prison] facility is
just as concerned . . . about keeping
the facility full” because of the jobs
involved, says Butts of the John Jay
College of Criminal Justice.
Many criminal justice experts say
policymakers should mandate public-

www.cqresearcher.com Oct. 19, 2018 879

 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS
poorly qualified corrections officers and
Use of Private Detention Centers Grows keeping vacant positions open.
Bauer said he obtained a guard
Privately run facilities housed more than two-thirds of the undocu-
position at Winn Correctional without
mented immigrants detained by the Immigration and Customs extensive background checks or ex-
Enforcement agency (ICE) in November 2017, according to the perience in corrections. His four-week
National Immigrant Justice Center, a legal-aid and advocacy training, he said, included observation
group. A separate study by the Detention Watch Network, an in the prison and classroom instruction,
advocacy group that opposes immigrant detention, found that such as guidance on how to break up
private companies housed 49 percent of detainees in 2009. inmate fights. 18
The ACLU’s Fathi says, “Several stud-
Operators of ICE Immigration ies have consistently shown that private
Detention Facilities, November 2017 29% prisons are less safe, provide fewer
(Percentage of detainees held*) services and, on a number of metrics,
are inferior to publicly run prisons.”
Local governments 71% One 2015 study, for example, con-
Private-prison companies
cluded assault rates were higher in
Mississippi’s private prisons than in
* Adults make up the vast majority of detainees. public prisons. 19
Sources: Tara Tidwell Cullen, “ICE Released Its Most Comprehensive Immigration “It’s a safe inference that attempts to
Detention Data Yet. It's Alarming,” National Immigrant Justice Center, March 13, cut costs and boost profits underlie a
2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybrwn8zk; “The Influence of the Private Prison Industry in lot of the problems that we see with
the Immigration Detention Business,” Detention Watch Network, May 2011, private prisons,” Fathi says.
https://tinyurl.com/y7okfark The 2016 study by the Inspector
General’s Office for the Justice De-
private contracts that offer incentives for less lawsuits alleging inmate abuse, partment compared 14 private and
better performance. “If we care about including guards beating prisoners. 14 public facilities and concluded that
reducing recidivism, put that in the con- Nate Balis, director of the juvenile “contract prisons incurred more safety
tract; if we care about skills, job training, justice strategy group for the nonprofit and security incidents per capita than
vocational experience [for inmates], then Annie E. Casey Foundation in Balti- comparable [government-run] institu-
that should be a goal of the contracts,” more, which advocates for juvenile tions.” It also said private prisons had
says the Brennan Center’s Eisen. offenders, says, “Some of the most higher rates of assaults by inmates on
disturbing things I’ve seen . . . have other inmates and staff. 20
Are private prisons less safe been in public facilities.” Three industry officials — CoreCivic
than public prisons? In his 2017 book Locked In, John then-communications director Steve
Journalist Shane Bauer, in his 2018 Pfaff, a criminal law professor at Owen, GEO spokesman Pablo Paez
book American Prison, described his Fordham University School of Law in and MTC vice president of correc-
experiences working undercover for New York City, wrote that problems tions marketing Mike Murphy — said
$9 an hour as a guard at CoreCivic’s persist in corrections facilities because the report unfairly compared private
Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, the “majority of people in prison have prisons holding many “gang-affiliated
where he witnessed stabbings among been convicted of violent crime, and inmates” awaiting deportation with
inmates and beatings by guards. 16 an even greater number have engaged public prisons housing more mixed
“The inference is [that] privatization in violent behavior.” As of December populations. Yet the report also said
is horrible,” says Dan Mears, a pro- 2015, 54.5 percent of U.S. prisoners had that private prison inmates were less
fessor of criminology at Florida State been charged with a violent offense likely to use drugs or be involved in
University. “But the same exposé could such as murder. 17 sexual misconduct and that fewer in-
be done in prisons across the country” But the ex-prisoner Friedmann, who mate deaths occurred in private prisons,
over the past century. has studied the issue, disputes the no- the trio noted. 21
The Reason Foundation’s Stuart says, tion that all prisons have the same safety Gilchrist of CoreCivic rejects the
“Look at a place like Rikers Island,” a challenges. He says private prisons are view that her company endangers
400-acre government-run jail complex not as safe as public ones because they inmates and staff in the interest of
in New York City that has faced count- spend less on payroll and training, hiring making money. “We don’t cut corners

880 CQ Researcher
on care, staff or training,” she says.
“CoreCivic staff training is identical to
the training received by our government
partner counterparts, and it meets or
exceeds the training standards of the
independent American Correctional
Association.”
In a 2017 interview, Craig Apker,
warden of the Taft Correctional Institu-
tion in California, a federal facility now
operated by MTC, said: “I have never
been asked to take a shortcut to address
any bottom-line concerns here at Taft.” 22
Eisen of the Brennan Center says
there is no clear consensus on whether
private prisons are less safe than public
ones. “It’s difficult to manage prisoners
regardless, as most prisons and jails are
understaffed,” particularly in rural areas
where labor is hard to find. In addition,
many positions are underpaid, she says.
Several lawsuits are pending against
the South Carolina Department of
Corrections after seven inmates were
killed and 22 others injured in April
during a riot at the publicly owned Lee
Correctional Institution in Bishopville.
The lawsuits allege the system is under-
staffed, unsafe and poorly maintained.
At the time of the riot, the state’s 21
prisons had 600 vacancies for guards,
who were paid $1,600 less than the
national average. 23
“One of the most important things
we can do to improve safety is to
increase wages, ensure better training,
increase education requirements for
those who want to become correctional
officers and incentivize people to move
into that field,” Eisen says.
Are private prisons more cost
effective than public prisons?
A 2014 study by the Independent
Institute, a conservative think tank in
Oakland, Calif., found that compared
with public prisons, private prisons
produced short- and long-term savings
for states — from less than 5 percent
in Ohio and Oklahoma to more than
55 percent in California — and that
state contracts often required such sav-
www.cqresearcher.com
ings. Savings resulted from flexibility
in hiring and wages, lower costs for
benefits packages and pensions, and
the bulk purchasing of supplies, the
study said. 24
The study also said competition
produced benefits: “Competition yields
savings and better performance across
the prison industry,” the authors wrote.
“The economics of industrial organiza-
tion demonstrates the important benefits
derived from the presence of even a
small competitor in an otherwise mo-
nopolistic market.”
Privatization critics discounted the
study because it relied on industry
funding, but Gilchrist says it was in-
dependently peer-reviewed and used
data from the government. “In terms
of new facility construction, CoreCivic
typically delivers cost savings of up to
25 percent while cutting construction
time by 40 percent,” she says.
Two 2005 studies compared the
Taft Correctional Institution, then man-
aged by GEO, with three government-
managed facilities: A Bureau of Prisons
study concluded that the costs of the
public and private facilities were com-
parable, but a study by Abt Associates,
which examines social issues, said the
private facility cost about 6.3 percent
to 10.4 percent less annually than the
public facilities. 25
“That’s a huge difference,” Emory
University’s Volokh says.
The Human Rights Defense Center’s
Friedmann says he is not convinced that
private prisons are more cost effective
than public ones. “There’s been a lot
of studies, a lot of ink spilled, and it’s
still very hard to compare,” he says. “It
depends on who is doing the study.”
Researchers say it is difficult to
compare costs because, unlike public
prisons, private companies do not have
to make public full details of facility
costs. The Government Accountability
Office said data are insufficient for clear
comparisons. 26
Experts also say studies often do
not account for the state’s cost to
oversee private contracts, differences
in inmate characteristics or security
levels. An Arizona government study
found the costs of the state’s publicly
and privately run minimum security
prisons were comparable, but only
after adjusting for medical costs in the
public prisons, where inmates tended
to be in poorer health. 27
A comparison of Mississippi’s me-
dium security prisons, including con-
struction costs, found operating costs
at private prisons averaged $46.50 per
prisoner per day, compared with $35.11
to $40.47 per day at public prisons. 28
Many observers say private con-
tractors can produce cost savings for
states by reducing staff benefits, in-
cluding pensions promised to public
employees. Marc Levin, vice president
of criminal justice for the Texas Public
Policy Foundation, a conservative think
tank in Austin, says private companies
also can produce savings in prison
construction by building faster and
holding down labor costs.
Even so, “any savings in the short
term [are] eclipsed if people come
back . . . and that cost is still born
by taxpayers,” says Friedmann. “So
the long-term costs are going to be
inevitably higher.”
Studies have found that private facili-
ties in Florida, Hawaii, Oklahoma and
Minnesota tend to have slightly higher
recidivism rates than public prisons. In
the Public Interest reported in 2016 that
private prisons have greater recidivism
among prisoners, often because of
financial shortcuts that lead to greater
violence behind bars. 29
GEO said on its website that it is “com-
mitted to providing leading, evidence-
based rehabilitation programs” while
prisoners are in custody and after they
are released. In 2017, for example,
the company spent $10 million for
a new “Continuum of Care” concept
at more than a dozen GEO facilities,
serving about 30,000 men and women
who participate in educational and
vocational programs, life-skills classes,
Oct. 19, 2018 881
 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS
mental health therapy and substance
abuse treatment programs. 30
Criminal justice experts also say
many states send prisoners to private
facilities in other states, either to reduce
overcrowding or because an inmate
was causing security problems or was
in danger. In 2016, about 7,300 in-
mates were housed outside their home
states (California, Hawaii, Idaho and
Vermont), although that number was
down from 10,500 in 2013. 31
A 2015 study by Hadar Aviram, a
Hastings College of Law professor at
the University of California, found that
cost distinctions between government
and private prisons are exaggerated.
“Piecemeal privatization of functions,
utilities and services within state prisons
Bunks take up floor space at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, Calif., in
June 2010, when the facility, designed to hold 1,700 inmates, housed 3,900.
In 2011, the Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its overcrowded
prison population, and the state turned to for-profit prisons for help.
make them operate more like private
facilities,” he wrote, “and public actors
respond to the cost/benefit pressures
of the market just like private ones.”
The 2007-09 recession forced cuts at
both public and private prisons, he
said, “sometimes at the expense of
prison conditions and human rights.” 32
The Brennan Center’s Eisen says
both government officials and the
industry should not be looking to
cut costs in corrections facilities. “In-
882 CQ Researcher
carceration should be expensive,” she Philadelphia. Completed in 1829, the
says, particularly if attention is paid prison adopted the Quaker theory that
to rehabilitation, drug treatment and if individuals spent time in solitary con-
mental health services. “Saving money finement reflecting on their behavior,
isn’t the right goal.” they would not return to a life of crime.
British author Charles Dickens was
not impressed. After visiting the prison,
BACKGROUND he called it “worse than any torture
of the body.”
A state prison opened in Auburn, N.Y.,
in 1821 and isolated prisoners only at
night. During the day, inmates worked
Early Prisons together to make shoes, clothes, carpets,
tools and furniture under state contracts
I n the colonial period, prisons did not
exist. Community jails held individuals
while they awaited trial or punishment. If
with manufacturers. Proceeds from their
labor helped cover prison costs. 34
Other penitentiaries copied the con-
convicted, prisoners were fined, flogged tract-labor practice, while some states
or put in the stockade for a brief time leased their penitentiaries to a private
contractor who covered the facility’s
costs in exchange for inmates’ labor.
In 1825, Kentucky leased its 250-bed
Getty Images/Los Angeles Times/Gary Friedman
facility to businessman Joel Scott for
$1,000 a year; Scott put the inmates to
work, and half of the proceeds from
their labor went to the state. 35
After gold was discovered in Cali-
fornia in 1848, hundreds of thousands
moved west hoping to strike it rich.
Crime followed, and the San Francisco
jail soon overflowed, forcing lawmakers
to turn to private entrepreneurs to
house inmates on ships nearby. Prison-
ers on the ship Waban were tasked in
1852 with building the notorious San
Quentin State Prison. 36
The state contracted with James Es-
tell and subsequently John F. McCauley
to operate the prison. But following
reports of McCauley’s abuse of the
before returning to society. (Debtors, inmates, the state took over in 1858. 37
however, remained jailed until they or The National Prison Association
their family paid their debt.) The local was founded in 1870 and focused on
jurisdiction paid the jailer, who could reforming prisoners rather than giving
squeeze spending to make a profit. 33 them fixed sentences. This principle
The first prison opened in 1790 in became the basis of a reformatory built
Philadelphia, when the Walnut Street in Elmira, N.Y., in 1876, where Super-
Jail was redesigned to place inmates in intendent Zebulon Brockway instituted
individual cells for extended periods. an educational and training system to
Over the next few decades, the facility rehabilitate the inmates, who could
became overcrowded and Pennsylvania earn early release if they cooperated. 38
built the Eastern State Penitentiary in Continued on p. 884
 Chronology
1790s-1930s
Solitary confinement, inmate
labor hallmarks of first prisons.
1790
First state prison opens in Phila-
delphia when the Walnut Street
Jail begins putting some inmates
in solitary confinement.
1821
State prison in Auburn, N.Y., debuts;
inmates are put to work making
shoes and other goods.
1852
Inmates housed on a prison ship
begin building California’s San
Quentin as a private prison; the
state takes it over six years later fol-
lowing reports of inmate abuse.
1887
Congress bars the leasing of pris-
oners.
1891
Congress authorizes construction
of three federal prisons.
1930
Congress creates Bureau of Pris-
ons to manage federal facilities.
• Violent Crime Control and Law En-
1950s-1970s
Inmates riot to protest prison
conditions.
1954
A Missouri State Penitentiary riot
ends with four inmates killed and
dozens more — along with four
guards — injured.
1968
Republican presidential nominee
Richard Nixon campaigns on a
“law and order” platform.
www.cqresearcher.com
1971
Riot in Attica, N.Y., prison results
in deaths of 32 inmates and 11
hostages.
1975
Violent crime rate doubles since 1960.
•
1980s-1990s
Tougher sentencing laws spur
prison construction boom.
1983
Three businessmen begin the first
private prison company, Corrections
Corporation of America.
1984
Sentencing Reform Act eliminates
federal parole. . . . New state laws
mandate minimum prison stays.
1986
Anti-Drug Abuse Act harshly pe-
nalizes cocaine possession.
1988
Federal commission says prison
privatization will save government
money, increase accountability.
1994
forcement Act authorizes $8 billion
in state grants for prisons, man-
dates life sentences for some three-
time offenders.
1997
District of Columbia, 23 states con-
tract with private companies to
build, manage prisons. . . . Congress
authorizes first private federal prison.
1998
Journalist Eric Schlosser coins the
phrase “prison-industrial complex” to
describe how political and economic
interests perpetuate prison growth.
2000s-Present
States seek ways to cut budgets
and reduce incarceration rates.
2007-09
Recession forces states to slash
corrections budgets.
2010
Number of prisoners declines for
the first time in decades, from
2.3 million in 2009 to 2.28 million,
after state and federal lawmakers
begin relaxing sentencing laws.
2011
Supreme Court orders California to
reduce its state prison population
because of overcrowding.
2013
California Gov. Jerry Brown signs
three contracts with private prison
companies.
2015
Columbia University becomes first
college to divest its stock holdings
in private prison industry.
2016
After an inspector general report
concludes federal private prisons
are less safe than public ones,
Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates says the U.S. will stop con-
tracting with private companies.
2017
Trump administration vows crack-
down on violent crime and il-
legal immigration, and reverses
2016 order ending private prison
contracts.
2018
Congressional negotiations stall
on legislation to soften sentencing
laws. . . . Number of daily im-
migrant detainees rises to 45,000,
from 28,000 the decade before.
Oct. 19, 2018 883
 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS

Lawsuits Accuse Prisons of Inadequate Medical Care

Corrections agencies and health care providers deny cutting corners.

P risons’ challenges extend beyond maintaining security.

Equally daunting, many criminal justice experts say, is
providing medical care to an inmate population often
in poor health and suffering chronic conditions that require
extensive treatment.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and prisoner
advocacy groups say public and private prisons alike are fail-
ing this challenge. Inmates of all ages — but especially older
ones — are not getting the care they need, they charge. To
cut corrections costs, they allege, state agencies and their
health care providers withhold, limit or delay critical medical
care for inmates, often endangering lives.
When it comes to medical care, “we see exactly the same
problems that we see with private prisons themselves,” says
David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project for the
ACLU. “We see a desire to cut costs, and the way you do
that is to have fewer staff. . . . You don’t send people out for
necessary medical procedures because that costs you money
and reduces your profits.”
But the corrections departments and their health care pro-
viders say they are doing their best, noting the difficulty of
providing medical care in prisons during a time when health
care costs are rising.
“It’s a challenging endeavor with patients who enter incar-
ceration with more illnesses and chronic conditions than the
general public,” said Steve Rector, CEO of Corizon Health, the
nation’s largest private health care contractor for prisons. 1
Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Louisiana, Tennessee and other
states are facing lawsuits filed by prisoners and civil rights
groups alleging inadequate medical care. The suits describe
a severe shortage of nurses, doctors, psychiatrists and other
medical staff, and inmates with serious but treatable illnesses
who do not get the care they need. 2
Prisoners’ health care is usually delivered by one of three
providers: government employees, a private contractor or an
academic medical center. As of 2014, 24 states contracted with
health care providers to deliver services to inmates, according
to a 2017 report by the RAND Corp., a California think tank. 3
Alex Friedmann, associate director of the Human Rights
Defense Center, a prisoner advocacy group in Lake Worth,
Fla., says when medical care is privatized, inmates tend not
to get medications, facilities are understaffed and providers are
often unqualified. “And bad things happen,” he says.
“That said,” Friedmann adds, “medical care is poor in
government-run systems as well.”
In Arizona, a class-action lawsuit accused Corizon Health
of not ensuring adequate health care for the 33,000 inmates
in the state’s 10 prisons.
In June, a U.S. District Court judge said the Arizona Depart-
ment of Corrections failed to properly oversee Corizon and
meet the conditions of a 2014 court settlement of the lawsuit.
That suit was filed in 2012 on behalf of 13 inmates — and
was later joined by the ACLU and the California-based Prison
Law Center — which alleged Corizon’s medical care was
grossly inadequate.
Judge David Duncan also imposed $1.45 million in fines
on the Department of Corrections after whistleblowers testified
that health care managers barred inmate consultations with
cardiologists and other specialists and did not have enough
basic medicines such as antibiotics on hand. 4

Continued from p. 882
In the post-Civil War South, state pris-
ons leased convicts to work on plantations,
in mines, on railroads or in other indus-
tries. The inmates often suffered disease
and severe mistreatment on the job. 39
In 1887, Congress forbade the
leasing of prisoners, but many states
continued the practice until prison riots
or pressure from reformers forced them
to stop. Alabama was the last state to
ban the practice, in 1928. 40
Under the 1891 Three Prisons Act,
construction began on the first federal
prisons — in Atlanta; Leavenworth,
Kan.; and McNeil Island, Wash. Previ-
ously, prisoners convicted of federal
crimes were held in local jails and state
prisons. Nearly 40 years later, Congress
authorized a fourth federal prison, in
Lewisburg, Pa., and created the Bureau
of Prisons to oversee them. 41
Worsening Conditions
B etween 1920 and 1950, the annual
U.S. prison population did not
top 200,000 nationwide, but it began
slowly rising in the 1950s as crime
ticked upward. Soon prison conditions
worsened, prompting several riots. 42
Prison officials nationwide respond-
ed by boosting efforts to rehabilitate
prisoners, with California’s use of
psychotherapy for inmates serving as
a model. The Justice Department in
1954 set aside six federal corrections
facilities for juvenile violators where
programs offered rehabilitation. 43
In the 1960s, crime rates rose further.
In 1965, Democratic President Lyndon
B. Johnson called for a “war on crime”
and established a Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of
Justice. The commission’s work led to
the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe
Streets Act of 1968 that authorized more

884 CQ Researcher

“The frustration I have felt in this case must be so small
compared with the suffering of these people on the prison
yards,” the judge said when announcing his decision. The state
immediately filed a notice that it would appeal. 5
Rector said Corizon has exceeded the conditions of the
settlement agreement and that “Corizon has averaged more than
4,100 patient interactions per day — 1.5 million encounters
per year” in Arizona’s prisons. 6
States face challenges providing sufficient care in part due to
tight budgets and the growing cost of health care, Friedmann
and others say, but also because most prisons have aging
inmate populations — the result of lengthy prison sentences
imposed in the past 20 to 30 years.
The number of state and federal prison inmates age 55 or
older increased 280 percent between 1999 and 2016, according
to the Pew Charitable Trusts. 7
A Bureau of Justice Statistics report said older inmates are
more susceptible to costly chronic medical conditions than
younger prisoners. And a study by the National Research
Council found that older individuals in prison are more likely
to develop dementia, impaired mobility and hearing and vision
loss than the general public. 8
Marc Levin, vice president of criminal justice for the Texas
Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin,
says many prisoners arrive with health problems that have
gone untreated, or they have sketchy medical records. “We
are spending huge sums of money” for state inmate health
care, particularly for aging inmates, he says.
— Christina L. Lyons
Getty Images/The Washington Post/A. Flanagan
Donald Murray, a health care orderly, takes care of fellow
inmate Clyde Giddens at the Louisiana State Penitentiary
in Angola, La. An aging inmate population
presents major challenges for prisons.
1 Steve Rector, “ACLU is using the court to attack prisons, not improve inmate
health care,” Arizona Central, June 21, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7lqypl6.
2 Beth Schwartzapfel, “How Bad is Prison Health Care? Depends on Who’s
Watching,” The Marshall Project, Feb. 26. 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ya4g8w5w.
3 Joe Russo et al., “Identifying High-Priority Needs to Reduce Mortality in
Correctional Facilities,” RAND Corp., 2017, p. 24, https://tinyurl.com/yd78mm6t.
4 Michael Kiefer, “Judge finds Arizona Corrections, officials in contempt,
orders them to pay $1.45M,” Arizona Central, June 22, 2018, https://
tinyurl.com/y79coulc.
5 Michael Kiefer, “Judge: Contempt ruling, fines ahead for state in prison
health-care case,” Arizona Central, May 9, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8598yxc.
6 Rector, op. cit.
7 Matt McKillop and Alex Boucher, “Aging Prison Populations Drive Up
Costs,” Pew Charitable Trusts, Feb. 20, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ycm2p9ar.
8 Laura M. Maruschak and Marcus Berzofsky, “Medical Problems of State
and Federal Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2011-12,” Bureau of Justice Statistics,
U.S. Department of Justice, February 2015, https://tinyurl.com/ybx9juas; “The
Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Con-
sequences,” National Research Council, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y8qegfdf.

than $400 million in federal grants for
local law enforcement. 44
That year, the Juvenile Delinquency
and Prevention Act encouraged states
to improve rehabilitation programs for
juvenile offenders. When the youth
incarceration rate increased along with
reports of abuse of juvenile prisoners,
Congress in 1974 strengthened incen-
tives for communities to develop alter-
natives, opening the door for private
industry to get involved. 45
By 1975, the rate of serious crime —
murder, rape and other crimes — had
more than doubled since 1960 to 5.3
crimes per 100,000 residents, although
through the 1960s and 1970s the re-
cidivism rate of prisoners remained
steady at 60 percent. 46
Meanwhile, inmate riots continued.
On Sept. 9, 1971, about 1,200 of the
2,245 prisoners at the New York state
penitentiary in Attica took control of
the prison. They held 39 guards and
civilian employees hostage for four
days. The inmates demanded better
conditions, an end to mail censorship
and religious freedom. State police
captured the facility after a siege that
left 32 inmates and 11 hostages dead. 47
Many policymakers, criminologists
and other observers said the prison
riots proved more severe punishment
was needed. Advocates of stronger sen-
tencing were influenced by sociologist
Robert Martinson of City University of
New York who wrote in the mid-1970s
that “nothing works” to rehabilitate
criminals. 48
Private-Prison Boom
A s crime spiked in the 1980s and
’90s, a “tough on crime” attitude
among lawmakers and voters led to
harsher sentencing laws and the need
for more prisons.

www.cqresearcher.com Oct. 19, 2018 885

 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS
Republican President Ronald Rea-
gan, elected in 1980, promised to
crack down on street crime, downsize
government and privatize services.
The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984
abolished federal parole; state “truth
in sentencing” laws required inmates
to serve at least 85 percent of their
sentences in prison; and the Anti-Drug
Abuse Act of 1986 imposed harsh
penalties for cocaine use. 49
Between 1980 and 1988, the incarcera-
tion rate increased from 139 per 100,000
residents to 244 per 100,000. The U.S.
prison population rose 74 percent to
550,000 inmates during that period. At the
same time, prisons were aging. In 1983
alone, 41 states and the District of Co-
lumbia were subject to litigation or under
court order to improve conditions. 50
But voters during the 1980s rejected
60 percent of referenda authorizing
bonds to construct prisons. With prisons
overcrowded, at least 16 states gave early
release to more than 18,600 inmates. 51
In some regions, government agen-
cies contracted with private firms,
enabling public officials to bypass the
voter referenda because the companies
would finance prison construction and
lease the prison to the state. In 1983,
the Corrections Corporation of America,
or CCA, was founded — the nation’s
first private prison company. CCA, later
renamed CoreCivic, in 1984 opened a
county jail and juvenile detention center
in Tennessee, and the first privately
owned immigration detention center
in Houston. 52
In 1986, Wackenhut Corrections
Corp., a division of the Wackenhut
Corp. that was founded in 1984 and
later renamed the GEO Group, received
its first federal contract from the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service
to build and operate a 150-bed deten-
tion facility in Aurora, Colo. 53
A commission formed by Reagan in
1988 recommended more privatization
of prisons and immigrant detention
centers. Its report said private industry
promised efficiency and cost savings
886 CQ Researcher
and could be held accountable through
fines or contract cancellations. 54
The report spurred the private in-
dustry as states sought help to open
prisons quickly. By 1994, 20 states had
imposed truth-in-sentencing laws, in
effect lengthening prison terms and
contributing to overcrowded facilities. 55
Congress in August 1994 passed the
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforce-
ment Act, authorizing $8 billion in prison
construction grants for states that enacted
truth-in-sentencing laws, mandated life
sentences for some three-time offend-
ers and made dozens of federal crimes
eligible for the death penalty. 56
During the 1990s, 245 prisons were
built in rural counties — many of them
in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas,
where local economies were suffering
after the 1980s oil boom ended. An
average of 25 rural prisons opened
annually, up from 16 in the 1980s and
four in the 1970s. 57
Between 1991 and 1998, private prisons’
adult capacity increased 856 percent. In
1997, 23 states and the District of Columbia
contracted with private firms to house
prisoners, and two other states placed
prisoners in private facilities in other states.
About 5 percent of the nation’s juvenile
centers were privately operated. 58
Meanwhile, thousands of lawsuits
alleged unsafe and violent conditions
in both public and private prisons. A
transgender woman, Dee Farmer, sued
prison officials in 1989 for beatings
and rapes at the federal penitentiary
at Terre Haute, Ind. Ruling in 1994,
the Supreme Court said prison officials
must provide humane conditions and
medical care and protect inmates from
violence. 59
Seeking to stem the tide of legal
cases — which numbered about 39,000
in 1995, or 15 percent of all civil cases
in federal court — Sens. Robert Dole,
R-Kan., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, suc-
cessfully introduced the Prison Litiga-
tion Reform Act of 1997, requiring
prisoners to exhaust a lengthy grievance
appeals process before filing a civil
rights lawsuit. They said the process
would eliminate many “trivial” cases
jamming the legal system. 60
The Clinton administration in the
mid-1990s encouraged the Bureau of
Prisons to rely more on the private
sector to manage prisons. Congress in
1997 authorized the bureau to open a
privately run prison at Taft Correctional
in California as part of a demonstration
project to compare the operation and
safety of private and public prisons. 61
As the study proceeded, journalist
Eric Schlosser, writing in The Atlantic in
1998, coined the term “prison-industrial
complex” to describe a “set of bureau-
cratic, political and economic interests”
that perpetuated the growth of prison
populations and prison construction.
He said politicians had successfully
campaigned on a fear of crime to
increase sentencing laws, forcing the
need for more prisons. 62
Economist and legal scholar Michael
K. Block, however, said, “There are too
many prisoners because there are too
many criminals committing too many
crimes.” 63
Continued Growth
A s the incarceration rate rose, so
did private industry’s business. By
2000, 14 private corporations operated
more than 150 adult correctional facilities
in the United States, earning combined
annual revenues of more than $1 billion.
They housed 6.5 percent of all state and
federal inmates nationwide. 64
When a recession began in late 2007,
states sought to cut corrections costs.
Some states, such as Michigan and New
York, repealed mandatory minimum-
sentencing laws. Texas focused on
alternatives for nonviolent offenders
and closed eight of its prisons in the
next six years, three of them private. 65
Concerns about prison operations
grew with reports of scandals. In 2009,
juvenile court judges Mark Ciavarella
and Michael Conahan of Wilkes Barre,
Pa., were convicted of accepting bribes
from a private owner and builder of
a detention center to charge youths
with minor crimes and send them into
custody. In 2010, The New York Times
and the ACLU said that federal officials
overseeing public and private immi-
grant detention centers hid evidence of
mistreatment and deaths of inmates. 66
FBI statistics in 2011 showed the
number of serious crimes had fallen to
a 48-year low. But prison overcrowding
continued. That May, the Supreme Court
forced California to reduce its overflow-
ing prison population. Justice Anthony
Kennedy said that as many as 156,000
people were crammed into facilities
designed to hold half that number, and
that “needless suffering and death have
been the well-documented result.” 67
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013
signed a $28.5 million annual contract
to lease a CCA prison in the Mojave
Desert to house 2,300 prisoners, and
two contracts with GEO to house 1,400
prisoners. CCA already was taking in
8,000 California inmates at its facilities in
Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. 68
But, spurred in part by the Netflix
series “Orange Is the New Black” about
a fictional minimum security prison, vot-
ers increasingly became concerned about
reports of abuses in private prisons. Co-
lumbia University became the first U.S.
institution of higher learning to divest its
stock holdings from the private prison
industry. Six months later, the University
of California system did the same. 69
During the 2016 presidential cam-
paign, Democratic nominee Hillary
Clinton said she would stop accepting
the industry’s money and called for an
end to private prison contracts. GOP
nominee Trump said privatization of
prisons “seems to work a lot better”
than public prisons. 70
That August, following the release of
the Inspector General’s report, Deputy
Attorney General Sally Yates told the
Bureau of Prisons not to renew private
management contracts. “This is the first
step in the process of reducing — and
www.cqresearcher.com
ultimately ending — our use of privately
operated prisons,” she said. 71
Trump took office in January 2017
pledging “zero tolerance” for undocu-
mented immigrants and vowing to stop
the “American carnage” — a reference
to gang violence and other crimes in
the United States. 72
Reversing Yates’ directive, Attorney
General Jeff Sessions said phasing out
private prisons “impaired the bureau’s
ability to meet the future needs of the
federal correctional system.” And he told
federal prosecutors to charge defendants
with the most serious crimes that carry
the harshest penalties. 73
CURRENT
SITUATION
Potential Changes
T he prison industry and inmate
advocacy groups are watching
developments at the national, state
and local levels for their effect on
prison incarceration rates and industry
involvement in corrections.
Government statistics show crime rates
continue the decline that began in the early
1990s. Violent crimes fell 0.8 percent in
the first six months of 2017 compared
with the same period in 2016, according
to FBI statistics, and property crimes
dropped 2.9 percent. Since 1993, the
violent crime and property crime rates
have fallen 48 percent. 74
In recent years, the prison popula-
tion has fallen as well: The number
of federal and state prisoners declined
from 1.58 million in 2013 to 1.51 mil-
lion in 2016 — 7 percent lower than
in 2009 when the prison population
peaked at nearly 1.61 million. 75
In February, Trump proposed cutting
funding for some Department of Justice
grant programs while increasing efforts
to crack down on crime and illegal
immigration. The House and Senate
Appropriations committees in May and
June approved $30.7 billion in spending
for the Justice Department — above the
president’s $28 billion request — and
included increases for drug enforcement
and immigrant detention. 76
House and Senate appropriators,
however, rejected Trump’s request for
$2.8 billion to raise the number of
immigrant detention beds to 52,000
per day. The House Appropriations
Committee approved funding for 44,000
beds — an increase of 3,480 beds over
current levels. Senate appropriators
did not increase funding for detention
beds, encouraging the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to
seek alternatives to detention. 77
ACLU’s Fathi says the federal Bureau
of Prisons’ inmate count appears to be
trending upward for the first time in
years. As of Oct. 11, 181,418 inmates
were in federal facilities, nearing the
2016 level of 189,192. 78
Meanwhile, industry leaders are
trying to improve their profitability
by increasing their purchases of land
and then building a prison or deten-
tion center on it to lease back to the
government. CoreCivic and GEO are
classified as real estate investment
trusts (REITs) — companies that own
income-producing real estate. The
firms made the change in 2013 so
that their profits from property-related
operations — prisons and detentions
centers — would be tax-free, provided
they are distributed to shareholders.
Critics say prison companies are not
really REITs, and that the classification
allows them to avoid paying taxes. “To
suggest that this type of operation,
which has significant aspects of tax
avoidance embedded in the proposal,
has at its core a real estate business
is, at best, a charitable description of
private prisons,” tax lawyer Peter Boos
wrote in a 2014 analysis.
But the companies say real estate
investments are important to their bottom
Oct. 19, 2018 887
 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS
lines and that building and leasing pris-
ons helps them to stay in business. “The
margins in the managed-only business
are very low,” Gilchrist said, “and we are
dependent on the government partner to
maintain the real estate asset.” 79
Habibi of In the Public Interest says
the arrangement costs the taxpayer in
the long run. “At the end of the day,
the government entity ends up paying
for the full cost of construction and a
lot more on top of that,” Habibi says.
“And the reason this is concerning is
The Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, S.C., was in lockdown in
April 2018 after a riot left seven inmates dead. The South Carolina Department
of Corrections faces several lawsuits alleging the state prison system
is understaffed, unsafe and poorly maintained. At the time of the riot,
South Carolina’s 21 prisons had 600 unfilled guard positions.
it is embedding these companies in
our criminal justice system for very
long periods of time.”
For example, CoreCivic is construct-
ing a 2,400-bed prison in Kansas,
which the state will operate and lease
for 20 years for a total $362 million.
After the lease ends, the state will
own the prison. CoreCivic defends the
arrangement, saying savings in prison
operations will pay for the lease. 80
Government Activity
I n Washington, efforts aimed at
reducing the nation’s incarceration
rate are stalled. The White House in-
888 CQ Researcher
dicated earlier this year it would not
support a Senate Judiciary Committee
measure that seeks to reduce some of
the strictest federal sentencing laws. 81
But President Trump will support a
compromise version after the November
midterm elections, Sen. Charles Grassley,
R-Iowa, said in August. The measure
is expected to include reductions to
some mandatory minimum-sentencing
rules for nonviolent drug offenders and
a provision allowing judges greater
discretion in sentencing. It also would
AFP/Getty Images/Logan Cyrus
include provisions similar to those in
a House-passed measure that aim to
reduce recidivism among prisoners. 82
Another bill seeks to make private
correctional facilities subject to the
Freedom of Information Act so that
watchdog groups could obtain data
about their operations. The Private
Prison Information Act has been
pushed in at least the six previous
Congresses but has died each time
in committee. Rep. Sheila Jackson
Lee, D-Texas, reintroduced the bill in
2017, and it is again languishing in the
House Judiciary Committee. 83
On the state level, proposals to
address rising corrections costs and
continued high incarceration rates con-
tinue to divide lawmakers, particularly
in Florida, where seven out of every
1,000 residents are incarcerated. The
issue is particularly contentious in the
governor’s race, in which all of the
Democratic candidates during the pri-
mary criticized private prisons. These
facilities hold about 10 percent of the
state’s estimated 96,000 inmates. 84
Kentucky is struggling to find space
for inmates, largely due to the opioid
crisis. After lawmakers set tougher
penalties for drug dealers and users
several years ago, the new sentencing
laws pushed the prison population to
more than 24,000 in 2016 — up from
20,000 in 2013.
Last year, the state considered re-
opening three private prisons it had
closed in 2013 after those facilities had
faced years of allegations of abuse and
sexual assault. Kentucky could reach
full prison capacity — even with the
three prisons open — by May 2019,
according to state officials. But amid
a public outcry about reopening the
private facilities, state senators blocked
funding for two of the prisons, pushing
for other, less expensive options. Last
November, the state did sign a contract
to reopen a CoreCivic-run facility. 85
Kentucky also is negotiating with com-
panies to participate in a program where
the companies could hire inmates. 86
In California, thousands of prison
inmates are helping to fight wildfires.
Inmates without a record of arson,
sexual crimes or escape can volunteer
to train through a California Depart-
ment of Corrections and Rehabilitation
firefighting training program at 43 con-
servation camps. 87
Legal Challenges
T housands of undocumented immi-
grants in federal detention centers
around the country are suing private
companies, alleging the centers are
forcing the detainees to work.
Continued on p. 890
 At Issue:
Should private industry play a role in prison operations?
yes
MARC LEVIN
VICE PRESIDENT, CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION
WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, OCTOBER 2018
t he right question in corrections isn’t whether prisons
yes no
should be public or private; it’s whether we are correct-
ing at all. Ideally, involving the private sector can spark
innovations that improve outcomes in recidivism, employment
and other areas. If structured correctly, private-sector partners
can help corrections move from a system that grows when it
fails to one that rewards results.
Great Britain is in the vanguard of such innovations. For ex-
ample, in 2017 a bond funded a prison reentry program involv-
ing prison operator Sodexo and private providers such as the
YMCA, which reduced recidivism by 9 percent. Private investors,
not taxpayers, took the risk that the program wouldn’t work.
Conversely, too often government programs that don’t produce
results create their own constituencies of full-time employees and
other beneficiaries, making them difficult to reform or eliminate.
Indeed, in Texas, private lockups have proven easier to
close than public prisons: Five of the eight corrections facili-
ties closed from 2011 to 2017 were privately run, in a state
where they accounted for less than 10 percent of capacity.
Texas wisely entered into flexible contracts without occupancy
guarantees so the state could end these arrangements when it
no longer needed these facilities.
Though private prisons can save 10 to 15 percent over
their public counterparts, perhaps most notably by avoiding
long-term public employee pension costs, jurisdictions should
insist on getting the best value. This means not simply going
with the lowest bidder, but building in incentives, both for
in-prison metrics such as abuse incidents and educational and
vocational benchmarks and for post-release outcomes such as
recidivism and employment.
At privately run facilities, accountability also must be en-
sured through transparency, including compliance with open-
records laws.
Finally, while not all faith-based programs are effective,
some of the most effective correctional programs have a
spiritual component. For constitutional and practical reasons,
government is not well positioned to deliver such programs,
which of course must always be optional for participants.
Though some individuals must be incarcerated due to their
high safety risk, research shows that alternatives to imprison-
ment, regardless of which entity delivers them, are more effec-
tive than traditional programs in most cases. If arrangements
provide the right incentives and proper accountability, the pri-
vate sector can be a partner rather than an obstacle in helping
corrections transition to a smaller, more rehabilitative system.
no
www.cqresearcher.com
DAVID C. FATHI
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL PRISON PROJECT,
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, OCTOBER 2018
i n the United States we largely rely on market discipline
to police corporate behavior. We expect that companies
that consistently provide bad service, that injure or maim
or kill people, will lose customers and eventually go out of
business.
The problem with private prison companies is that those
forces don’t operate in the same way, because the ultimate
consumer of the “service” — the prisoner — has no con-
sumer choice. If a prisoner is being beaten by gang members
because corrections officers won’t protect him, or if his meta-
static cancer is going untreated, or if the food he’s served
is full of maggots, he can’t go down the road to a different
prison where the service might be better.
As a result, private prison companies have every incentive
to cut corners to maximize profits, without having to worry
that they’ll lose “customers.” They manage to stay in business
— and increase their profits — despite a track record that is
often frankly appalling.
A federal judge in Mississippi called a juvenile prison run
by the GEO Group “a picture of such horror as should be
unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.” A judge oversee-
ing a health care lawsuit against the Arizona prison system
has called conditions “sickening” and held state officials in
contempt for their persistent violations of court orders. Yet
the state has repeatedly extended the contract of its for-profit
health care provider, Corizon Health, and has given the com-
pany multiple pay increases.
The profit motive also provides ample opportunities for
corruption. In Idaho, a federal court found that private
prison giant Corrections Corporation of America (since re-
named CoreCivic) falsified staffing records, billing the state
for thousands of hours of staff time that were never pro-
vided. In Mississippi, the state’s corrections commissioner
was convicted of taking kickbacks in exchange for steering
contracts to private prison companies; he’s now serving
time in federal prison.
To be sure, private prisons don’t have a monopoly on in-
humane conditions; there are plenty of bad publicly operated
prisons as well.
But whatever their faults, they are public institutions
subject to democratic control, and they don’t have to turn
a profit for shareholders. Private prison companies combine
the profit motive with limited oversight and a literally cap-
tive market — and that’s a recipe for neglect, mistreatment
and abuse.
Oct. 19, 2018 889
 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS
Continued from p. 888
A class-action lawsuit by immigrants at
Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego
is pending against CoreCivic, which oper-
ates the facility. “Our complaint alleges
CoreCivic illegally enriches itself on the
backs of a captive workforce,” said Korey
Nelson, partner at Burns Charest, a law
firm with offices in Dallas and New
Orleans that specializes in class-action
suits. A CoreCivic spokesman said its
programs are “completely voluntary” and
follow federal standards. 88
Other lawsuits against CoreCivic
in Texas and Georgia make similar
allegations.
GEO also is facing a class-action
lawsuit by immigrant detainees at a
1,500-bed ICE facility in Aurora, Colo.,
that it operates. The detainees allege
the center forces them to do manual
labor such as cleaning toilets. The
lawsuit, originally filed in 2014 on
behalf of nine immigrants, seeks more
than $5 million in damages for about
62,000 current and former detainees
who performed such chores, without
pay, over the past decade.
GEO has denied the allegations,
arguing in a court filing that “the
household duties expected of detainees
do not involve GEO in ‘trafficking’
persons for forced labor.” 89
CoreCivic is facing several federal
lawsuits regarding its management of a
private detention facility in Leavenworth,
Kan., as well as a securities class-action
complaint from some of its investors.
The law firm Robbins Arroyo, rep-
resenting shareholders, said the Bureau
of Prisons had notified CoreCivic of
several policy violations, including
understaffing and underqualified staff
at its prisons and failure to provide
proper health care to inmates.
The investors’ complaint, filed in March
2017, alleges CoreCivic violated the Securi-
ties Exchange Act of 1934 by scheming
to defraud investors. The suit accuses the
company of falsely stating that its con-
tract services resulted in improved prison
operations for government agencies and
890 CQ Researcher
that its facilities were operated according
to proper policies. CoreCivic has denied
the allegations and unsuccessfully sought
to have the suit dismissed. 90
OUTLOOK
Upcoming Elections
M any experts say the prison
industry’s fate will depend on
electoral changes in coming years.
The Trump administration’s deci-
sion to reverse the Obama administra-
tion’s directive on phasing out federal
use of private prisons and to call for
harsher sentencing of certain drug
offenders is “ominous,” ACLU’s Fathi
says. “At the federal level, it’s look-
ing very good for the private prison
industry because we have an admin-
istration that is ideologically commit-
ted to privatization and ideologically
committed to putting more people in
prisons,” he says. “This is a recipe for
profit for the private prison industry.”
Industry representatives said its con-
tinued growth will be a good thing. “We
believe in running an efficient operation
that provides adequate staffing and relies
on state-of-the-art technology for monitor-
ing, communication, health care and reha-
bilitation programs,” GEO’s Paez said. 91
The industry’s outlook, however,
could change if Democrats regain
control of Congress after the November
midterm elections or the presidency
in 2020, he and others say.
But other experts say the debate
over privatization and prison violence
has been ongoing for years and likely
will not change.
“I don’t see the issue changing one
iota,” Florida State University’s Mears says.
“It will continue to be a political debate.”
He says policymakers will continue to
have difficulty discerning the differences
between public and private prisons
without expanded research, which most
states do not have the staff to undertake.
“Funding for criminal justice re-
search is a pittance,” Mears says.
Criminal justice experts say they are
unable to generalize what will hap-
pen at the state level because of the
nation’s diverse political landscape. If
the overall prison population declines
because of changes in state laws or
declines in crime rates, Fathi says,
“that’s obviously in the long-term bad
news for the industry and that is why
they are diversifying into other parts
of the criminal justice system.”
Levin of the Texas Public Policy
Foundation says state legislators facing
reelection or term limits may be reluc-
tant to make changes that will affect
their district. And if policymakers are
inclined to create incentives for prison
operators in contracts, “the benefits
will be a few years out or longer,”
Levin says. “That’s the challenge.”
“I worry that we are a punitive nation
at our heart,” the Brennan Center’s Eisen
says. Despite the drop in the inmate
population in recent years, the U.S.
incarceration rate remains the highest
in the world. 92 “Over-incarceration is
almost uniquely an American phe-
nomenon,” she says. “We have a lot of
work to do to reduce our correctional
footprint, and I think the industry will
follow the government’s lead.”
Eisen adds, “It’s up to the government
to say, ‘We’ll shrink our correctional foot-
print, and we want the private sector to
be our true partner’ ” and help produce
better outcomes.
“A lot of academics have said it’s
taken a lifetime to get into this mess,”
Eisen says, “and it will take a lifetime
to get out of it.”
Notes
1 Jermaine Dockery et al. v. Christopher Epps
et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of Mississippi Jackson Division, Class
Action Complaint, May 30, 2013, https://
tinyurl.com/ybey5a3v; Arielle Dreher, “Private
Prison on Trial: Inmates at ‘Bleak’ Facility Tell
Harrowing Stories,” Jackson Free Press, May 2,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9b7zpy4.
2 E. Ann Carson, “Prisoners in 2016,” U.S.
Department of Justice, revised Aug. 7, 2018,
p. 22, https://tinyurl.com/yalqubjm; “Prison-
ers in 2000,” U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics,
August 2001, https://tinyurl.com/jzssn9q; and
C. Puzzanchera et al., “Juvenile Residential
Facility Census Databook: 2000-2016,” Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Preven-
tion, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ya8l9lw6.
3 Rich Benjamin, “Trump Prison Reform
Push Has Divided Washington on a Rare
Bipartisan Issue,” The New Yorker, May 24,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/yb6zw2l9; Eric Katz,
“Leaked Memo: Trump Admin to Boost Use
of Private Prisons While Slashing Federal
Staff,” Government Executive, Jan. 25, 2018,
https://tinyurl.com/yczkbt89.
4 “Private Prisons in the United States,” The
Sentencing Project, August 2018, https://
tinyurl.com/ybybrhoo.
5 Megan Mumford, Diane Whitmore Schan-
zenbach and Ryan Nunn, “The Economics
of Private Prisons,” Brookings Institution,
October 2016, https://tinyurl.com/ybpqshw8.
6 “Mortality in State Prisons, 2001-2014 —
Statistical Tables,” Bureau of Justice Statistics,
December 2016, https://tinyurl.com/ybvskon2;
“Sexual Victimization Reported by Adult Cor-
rectional Authorities, 2012-15,” Bureau of Justice
Statistics, July 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybb5jsyg.
7 Gaby Galvin, “Underfunded, Overcrowded
State Prisons Struggle with Reform,” U.S. News &
World Report, July 26, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
ycb5dk7r; Esteban Parra and Brittany Horn,
“DOC overtime on track to surpass $30M this
year with no sight of ending,” Delaware Online,
April 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yahl6kzf.
8 Mariel Alper and Matthew R. Durose, “2018
Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-
up Period (2005-2014),” Bureau of Justice Sta-
tistics, May 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7ckhh6s.
9 Keegan Hamilton, “An Ex-Con Takes Aim
at Multibillion-Dollar Private Prisons,” Vice,
March 22, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/yak764hr.
10 “Code Red: The Fatal Consequences of
Dangerously Substandard Medical Care in
Immigration Detention,” Human Rights Watch,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/ycrnpyxr; Tara Tidwell
Cullen, “ICE Released Its Most Comprehensive
Immigration Detention Data Yet. It’s Alarming,”
National Immigrant Justice Center, March 13,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybrwn8zk.
11 “Bankrolling Oppression: How Wall Street
Companies Finance the Private Prison and
www.cqresearcher.com
Immigrant Detention Industry,” Center for
Popular Democracy et al., 2018, https://tinyurl.
com/y9pmxy99.
12 “Criminal: How Lockup Quotas and ‘Low-
Crime Taxes’ Guarantee Profits for Private
Prison Corporations,” In the Public Interest,
September 2013, https://tinyurl.com/y9molk65.
13 Amanda Gilchrist, “Opinion: Amanda Gil-
christ: Private prisons working to reduce recidi-
vism in Georgia,” Savannah Morning News,
Dec. 14, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y9lvndmk.
14 Karina Moreno Saldivar and Byron E. Price,
“Private Prisons and the emerging immigrant
Market in the U.S.: Implications for Security
Governance,” Central European Journal of
international and Security Studies, 2015,
https://tinyurl.com/y8f44p9a; “Buying Influ-
ence: How Private Prison Companies Expand
Their Control of America’s Criminal Justice
System,” In the Public Interest, October 2016,
p. 2, https://tinyurl.com/y89wb3dv.
15 Saki Knafo, “California Prison Guards Union
Pushes for Prison Expansion,” HuffPost, Sept.
9, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/y942rxfz.
16 Shane Bauer, American Prison: A Reporter’s
Undercover Journey Into the Business of
Punishment (2018).
17 John Pfaff, Locked In: The True Causes of
Mass Incarceration — and How to Achieve
Real Reform (2017); Carson, “Prisoners in
2016,” op. cit., p. 18.
18 Bauer, op. cit., p. 26.
19 “Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass
Incarceration,” American Civil Liberties Union,
Nov. 2, 2011, p. 24, https://tinyurl.com/pj8qdo6.
20 “Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’
Monitoring of Contract Prisons,” Office of the
Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice,
August 2016, p. iii, https://tinyurl.com/j5yzzyd.
21 Steve Owen, Pablo Paez and Mike Murphy,
“Letter to the Editor: Benefits of Private Prisons,”
The New York Times, Sept. 12, 2016, https://
tinyurl.com/y8twnhge.
22 Ivette Feliciano, Zachary Green and Sam
Weber, “Private prisons help with overcrowd-
ing, but at what cost?” PBS, June 24, 2017,
https://tinyurl.com/ycfvzwbk.
23 Avery G. Wilks, “SC’s 21 prisons need
600 more guards, don’t have money to hire
them, director says,” The State, May 10, 2018,
https://tinyurl.com/ybvlbkmn.
24 Simon Hakim and Erwin A. Blackstone,
“Prison Break: A New Approach to Prison
Cost and Safety,” The Independent Institute,
2014, pp. 42-49, https://tinyurl.com/yaojdbus.
25 Harley G. Lappin et al., “Evaluation of the Taft
Demonstration Project: Performance of a Private-
Sector Prison and the BOP,” Federal Bureau of
Prisons, October 2005, p. 34, https://tinyurl.com/
y8dt56ex; Douglas C. McDonald and Kenneth
Carlson, “Contracting for Imprisonment in the
Federal Prison System: Cost and Performance
of the Privately Operated Taft Correctional
Institution,” Abt Associates Inc., Oct. 1, 2005,
p. 45, https://tinyurl.com/ybb89vra.
26 “Cost of Prisons: Bureau of Prisons Needs
Better Data to Assess Alternatives for Acquiring
Low Minimum Security Facilities,” Government
Accountability Office, October 2007, https://
tinyurl.com/ya5sqf4j.
27 Charles L. Ryan, “Biennial Comparison of
‘Private Versus Public Provision of Services,’ ”
Arizona Department of Corrections, Dec. 21,
2011, https://tinyurl.com/zkbgwqq.
28 “Cost Per Inmate Day By Facility Type FY
2012,” Mississippi Department of Corrections,
https://tinyurl.com/y7t2p642.
29 Alex Friedmann, “Apples to Fish: Public and
Private Prison Cost Comparisons,” Fordham
Urban Law Journal, December 2014, pp. 43-
46, https://tinyurl.com/o9donbp; “How Private
Prison Companies Increase Recidivism,” In the
Public Interest, June 2016, pp. 3-6, https://
tinyurl.com/za7og9j.
30 “GEO Continuum of CARE 2017 Annual
Report,” The Geo Group Inc., 2017, https://
tinyurl.com/y6upydq6.
31 “Locked Up & Shipped Away: Interstate Pris-
oner Transfers and the Private Prison Industry:
Winter 2016 Update,” Grassroots Leadership,
January 2016, https://tinyurl.com/ycrtvpa5.
32 Hadar Aviram, “Are Private Prisons to
Blame for Mass Incarceration and Its Evils?
Prison Conditions, Neoliberalism, and Public
Choice,” Fordham Urban Law Journal, 2015,
https://tinyurl.com/ybfz5clp.
33 Sharon Dolovich, “State Punishment and
Private Prisons,” Duke Law Journal, December
2005, p. 450, https://tinyurl.com/ycyulq98;
Eisen, op. cit., 14.
34 Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Inside Private Prisons:
An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass
Incarceration (2018), pp. 15-17.
35 Gaylene S. Armstrong and Doris L. MacKenzie,
“Private Versus Public Sector Operation: A
Comparison of the Environmental Quality in
Juvenile Correctional Facilities,” May 5, 2002,
p. 5, https://tinyurl.com/yaerf4y4; Orlando
Faulkland Lewis, The Development of American
Prisons and Prison Customs, 1776-1845 (1922),
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36 Armstrong and MacKenzie, op. cit., p. 5;
“Private Jails in the United States,” FindLaw,
https://tinyurl.com/yafc5exj; “Facility Over-
Oct. 19, 2018 891
 FOR-PROFIT PRISONS
view: San Quentin State Prison,” California tional Juvenile Justice Assessment Centers: The Congress.gov, https://tinyurl.com/yblv349s.
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, impact of deinstitutionalization on recidivism 57 Peter T. Kilborn, “Rural Towns Turn to Prisons

undated, https://tinyurl.com/y8s8acju. and secure confinement of status offenders,” to Reignite Their Economies,” The New York
37 Dan Chaddock, “Unlocking History: Explore Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Times, Aug. 1, 2001, https://tinyurl.com/y7drtpy5.
San Quentin, the state’s oldest prison,” Inside Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice, 1985, 58 Patrick Bayer and David E. Pozen, “The

CDCR, Dec. 4, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y8xbr77f.
38 Todd R. Clear, Michael D. Reisig and George
F. Cole, American Corrections (2018), p. 58,
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39 David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parch-
man Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
(1997), pp. 56-61, https://tinyurl.com/y9cn6kra.
40 David Shapiro, “Banking on Bondage:
Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration,”
American Civil Liberties Union, November
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41 “Historical Information: Before looking ahead
you must look behind,” Bureau of Prisons,
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46 Joseph Dillon Davey, The Politics of Prison
Expansion: Winning Elections by Waging War
on Crime (1998), pp. 118-19; Margaret Werner
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29, 63-64, https://tinyurl.com/y85p64rx.
47 Scott Christianson, With Liberty for Some:
500 Years of Imprisonment in America
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48 Eisen, op. cit., pp. 18-19; Cyndi Banks,
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59 Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), U.S.
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60 Rachel Poser, “Why It’s Nearly Impossible

https://tinyurl.com/ycc7j25z; William A. Rich-
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49 Donald Cohen, “The History of Privatiza-
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50 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics,
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61 Jeff Gerth and Stephen Labaton, “Prisons

y7c932wz; “Crime Data,” Crime and Justice “Privatization: Toward a More Effective Gov- for Profit: A special report; Jaib Business
Atlas, 2000, p. 4, https://tinyurl.com/q5vzo9g. ernment,” Report of the President’s Commis- Shows Its Weaknesses,” The New York Times,
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bation Under the Federal Youth Corrections 51 Gary W. Bowman, Simon Hakim and Paul 62 Eric Schlosser, “The Prison-Industrial Com-

Act,” Chicago-Kent Law Review, vol. 53, April Seidenstat, eds., Privatizing Correctional plex,” The Atlantic, December 1998, https://
1976, http://tinyurl.com/oo3jdzc. Institutions (1994), p. 52. tinyurl.com/y7fk5ay5.
44 Eisen, ibid., p. 18; Lyndon B. Johnson, 52 Madison Pauly, “A Brief History of America’s 63 Michael Block, “Supply Side Imprisonment

“Statement by the President on Establishing
the President’s Commission on Law Enforce-
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53 Form 10-K for year ending 2002, Wackenhut
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Policy,” in “Two Views on Imprisonment Poli-
cies,” Annual Research and Evaluation Confer-
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64 Ann L. Pastore and Kathleen Maguire, eds.,

trol and Safe Streets Act,” Public Law 90-351,
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45 “The detention and jailing of juveniles: Hear-
ings before the Subcommittee to Investigate
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https://tinyurl.com/ohy5f6d; “Reports of the Na-
54 “Private Jails in the United States,” FindLaw,
https://tinyurl.com/yafc5exj; “Privatization:
Toward a More Effective Government,” op.
cit., p. 147.
55 Eisner, op. cit., p. 22.
56 Ibid., p. 25; “H.R. 3355 Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,”
Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2001,
U.S. Department of Justice, 2002, p. 87, https://
tinyurl.com/yakjlepu; Paige M. Harrison and
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Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice,
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65 Marc Levin, testimony before the Senate

Judiciary Committee, Sept. 18, 2013, https://

About the Author
Christina L. Lyons, a freelance journalist in the Washington,
D.C., area, writes primarily about U.S. government and politics.
She is a contributing author for CQ Press reference books,
including CQ’s Guide to Congress, and was a contributing
editor for Bloomberg BNA’s International Trade Daily. A
former editor for Congressional Quarterly, she also was
co-author of CQ’s Politics in America 2010. She has a
master’s degree in political science from American University.
tinyurl.com/y7dqualg; Brandi Grissom, “With
crime, incarceration rates falling, Texas closes
record number of prisons,” The Dallas Morning
News, July 5, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y77afoxc.
66 Ed Pilkington, “Jailed for a MySpace parody,
the student who exposed America’s cash for
kids scandal,” The Guardian, March 6, 2009,
https://tinyurl.com/yc7q6nej; Nina Bernstein,
“Officials Hid Truth of Immigrant Deaths
in Jail,” The New York Times, Jan. 9, 2010,
https://tinyurl.com/yb8nreea.
67 Chris McGreal, “America’s serious crime

892 CQ Researcher
rate is plunging, but why?” The Guardian,
Aug. 21, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/y768p2bg;
Brown v. Plata, 563 U.S._ 2011, U.S. Supreme
Court, https://tinyurl.com/ybm9tfnu.
68 Saki Knafo and Chris Kirkham, “For-Profit
Prisons Are Big Winners Of California’s Over-
crowding Crisis,” HuffPost, Oct. 25, 2013,
https://tinyurl.com/yd87epjl.
69 Eisen, op. cit., pp. 115-16.
70 Dina Gusovsky, “A billion-dollar-plus indus-
try Clinton may sentence to death,” CNBC,
March 4, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/ycdk9myu;
Amy Brittain and Drew Harwell, “Private
prison giant, resurgent in Trump era, gathers
at president’s resort,” The Washington Post,
Oct. 25, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ybsbekl2.
71 “Phasing Out Our Use of Private Prisons,”
news release, U.S. Department of Justice,
Aug. 18, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y9rtryxe.
72 Matt Zapotosky, “Trump White House vows
it won’t coddle ‘the rioter, the looter, or the
violent disrupter,’ ” The Washington Post, Jan.
20, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y7pgpfh2; “The
private prison industry, explained,” The Week,
Aug. 6, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ycqeevrf.
73 Matt Zapotosky and Sari Horwitz, “Ses-
sions vows crackdown on violent crime in
first major speech as attorney general,” The
Washington Post, Feb. 28, 2017, https://tinyurl.
com/ybn7b9th; Sari Horwitz and Matt Zapo-
tosky, “Sessions issues sweeping new criminal
charging policy,” The Washington Post, May
12, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y84tg2lr.
74 John Gramlich, “5 facts about crime in the
U.S.,” Pew Research Center, Jan. 30, 2018,
https://tinyurl.com/y9v32ymj.
75 “Highest to Lowest — Prison Population
Rate,” World Prison Brief, Institute for Criminal
Policy Research, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/
ybt8p67l; Carson, “Prisoners in 2016,” op.
cit., pp. 1-2.
76 “What Trump proposed cutting in his
2019 budget,” The Washington Post, Feb. 16,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/yadgc78p; “Commit-
tee Approves Fiscal 2019 Commerce, Justice,
Science Appropriations Bill,” news release,
House Appropriations Committee, May 17,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/yc3orezp; and “Com-
mittee Advances FY2019 Commerce, Justice,
Science Appropriations Bill,” news release,
Senate Appropriations Committee, June 14,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/yceb2ryo.
77 “What Trump proposed cutting in his 2019
budget,” ibid.; “Appropriations Committee
Releases Fiscal Year 2019 Homeland Security
Bill,” news release, House Appropriations
Committee, July 18, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/
www.cqresearcher.com
FOR MORE INFORMATION
ACLU National Prison Project, 125 Broad St., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004;
212-434-3840; www.aclu.org/other/aclu-national-prison-project. Division of human
rights advocacy group that analyzes criminal justice policies affecting incarceration
rates and treatment of inmates.
American Correctional Association, 206 N. Washington St., Suite 200, Alexandria,
VA 22314; 703-224-0000; www.aca.org/aca_prod_imis/aca_member. Membership or-
ganization representing the correctional profession.
Brennan Center for Justice, 120 Broadway, Suite 1750, New York, NY 10271;
646-292-8310; www.brennancenter.org. Law and policy institute that researches
criminal justice policies and advocates for an end to mass incarceration.
In the Public Interest, 1939 Harrison St., Suite 150, Oakland, CA 94612; 202-429-
5091; www.inthepublicinterest.org. Research group that analyzes public-private con-
tracting issues in the U.S. corrections system.
Reason Foundation, 5737 Mesmer Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90230; 310-391-2245;
reason.org. Libertarian advocacy organization and think tank that analyzes and
promotes private industry’s role in the corrections industry.
The Sentencing Project, 1705 DeSales St., N.W., 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20036;
202-628-0871; www.sentencingproject.org/. Advocacy group seeking alternatives to
incarceration.
y8t4az4z; and “Department of Homeland ybej4b5r; and “Kentucky Reluctantly Returns
Security Appropriations Bill, 2019, Senate to Prison Privatization,” Prison Legal News,
Committee on Appropriations, June 21, 2018, Oct. 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yb365jrk.
pp. 48-49, https://tinyurl.com/yckv4t8j. 86 James Mayse, “Work advancing on prison-
78 “Total Federal Inmates,” U.S. Bureau of industry partnership in Kentucky,” Corrections
Prisons, accessed Sept. 20, 2018, https:// One.com, Aug. 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/
tinyurl.com/jk2afd8. y928sj45.
79 Rob Urban and Kristy Westgard, “It’s a 87 Abigail Hess, “California is paying inmates
Great Time to Be a Prison Landlord, Thanks $1 an hour to fight wildfires,” CNBC, Aug. 14,
to the IRS,” Bloomberg, Aug. 9, 2018, https:// 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yaumulj7.
tinyurl.com/ycodrhlp. 88 Kate Morrissey, “Judge allows case over
80 Ibid. alleged forced labor in immigration detention
81 Eli Watkins, “Rebuffing Sessions, senators to move forward,” San Diego Union, May 17,
advance criminal justice reform bill,” CNN, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yde3zpld.
Feb. 15, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7specyk. 89 Kieran Nicholson, “Immigrants can sue
82 Nicholas Fandos and Katie Rogers, “Senator federal detention center in Colorado over
Says He Has Trump’s Backing for Prison Bill forced labor, appeals court says,” The Denver
Vote Late This Year,” The New York Times, Post, Feb. 9, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9mu8ter;
Aug. 23, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9uopvpr. Alexandra F. Levy, “Who has most to gain from
83 “H.R. 1980 — Private Prison Information Trump’s immigration policies? Private prisons,”
Act of 2017,” Congress.gov, https://tinyurl. The Washington Post, June 29, 2018, https://
com/y7y65ecu. tinyurl.com/yaehdyf5.
84 Andrew Pantazi, “Florida’s prisons are 90 Gaby Neal, “Securities Class Action Complaint
more expensive than ever. What will the next Against CoreCivic Upheld,” Correctional News,
governor do about it?” Florida Times-Union, Jan. 9, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybevmqro.
Aug. 17, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9fbrxxd. 91 Barnini Chakraborty, “Trump administration
85 Tom Latek, “Committee eliminates funding reversal on private prison use faces pitfalls,”
for private prisons,” Kentucky Today, March Fox News, March 16, 2017, https://tinyurl.
26, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybgjxofm; Adam com/y9mbhg4c.
Beam, “Kentucky Official: State Prisons to Run 92 “Highest to Lowest — Prison Population Rate,”
Out of Space by 2019,” U.S. News & World World Prison Brief, Institute for Criminal Policy
Report, Jan. 30, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ Research, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybt8p67l.
Oct. 19, 2018 893
 Bibliography
Selected Sources
Books
Bauer, Shane, American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover
Journey into the Business of Punishment, Penguin
Press, 2018.
A Mother Jones reporter, working undercover as a guard
for $9 an hour, describes prisoner mistreatment and severe
understaffing at a private prison in Winnfield, La.
Eisen, Lauren-Brooke, Inside Private Prisons: An
American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration,
Columbia University Press, 2018.
A senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program
provides a detailed, balanced account of the private prison
industry’s history and its current activities in the U.S. cor-
rections system.
Pfaff, John, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass In-
carceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, Basic
Books, 2017.
A Fordham law school professor examines potential causes
of the high incarceration rate in the United States and argues
that the private prison industry is not to blame.
Articles
Galvin, Gaby, “Underfunded, Overcrowded State Prisons
Struggle With Reform,” U.S. News & World Report, July
26, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ycb5dk7r.
Delaware is one of at least a dozen states trying to cope
with prison overcrowding and understaffing.
Lichtblau, Eric, “Justice Department Keeps For-Profit
Prisons, Scrapping an Obama Plan,” The New York
Times, Feb. 23, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y754fjg9.
Reversing an Obama-era policy, the Trump administration
announced it will continue to use private prisons to house
thousands of federal inmates because of the need to ease
overcrowding.
Schlosser, Eric, “The Prison-Industrial Complex,” The
Atlantic, December 1998, https://tinyurl.com/y7fk5ay5.
In a landmark article, a journalist describes the industries
and interest groups that backed laws leading to a record
number of prisons and inmates in the United States.
Schwartzapfel, Beth, “How Bad Is Prison Health Care?
Depends on Who’s Watching,” The Marshall Project,
Feb. 25, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ya4g8w5w.
Arizona prison inmates have sued the state corrections
agency for “cruel and unusual punishment” resulting from
what they allege is inadequate medical care provided by a
for-profit company.
894 CQ Researcher
Reports and Studies
“Prison Health Care Costs and Quality: How and why
states strive for high-performing systems,” Pew Charita-
ble Trusts, Oct. 18, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yd543396.
The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Vera Institute of Justice
detail each state’s spending on prison health care from fiscal
2007 to 2011, showing a decline after 2009.
“The Prison Industrial Complex: Mapping Private Sec-
tor Players,” Urban Justice Center, April 2018, https://
tinyurl.com/y8s4xxha.
An anti-poverty group examines the hundreds of private
corporations that provide prison services, ranging from
construction to health care. It estimates that more than half
of the $80 billion spent on incarceration annually goes to
the vendors.
“Private Prisons in the United States,” Sentencing Project,
Aug. 2, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybybrhoo.
A Washington-based group that supports reducing incar-
ceration rates provides statistics on the number of inmates
in private prisons in each state in 2000, 2015 and 2016.
Benenson, Laurence, “The Math of Immigration Deten-
tion, 2018 Update: Costs Continue to Multiply,” National
Immigration Forum, May 9, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/
yc8dobng.
Federal spending on the detention of nonviolent undocu-
mented immigrants increased from $1.8 billion in fiscal 2010
to $3.1 billion in 2018, according to a pro-immigration group.
Luan, Livia, “Profiting from Enforcement: The Role of
Private Prisons in U.S. Immigration Detention,” Migration
Policy Institute, May 2, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9bbmxgu.
A writer for a liberal immigration policy think tank describes
the private prison industry’s support for policies aimed at
strengthening immigration enforcement and detention.
Video
“Hidden in Plain Sight,” Delaware Correctional Officers
Association, 2018, https://hiddeninplainsightdoc.com/.
Delaware correctional officers describe the dangers and
challenges of working in the state’s prison system.
“Video: Poor Medical Care Linked to Deaths in U.S.
Immigration Detention,” Human Rights Watch, June 19,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/ycrnpyxr.
An international advocacy organization reviews govern-
ment medical records and concludes that of the 15 deaths
in immigration detention centers between 2015 and 2017,
poor care was responsible in eight of the cases.
 The Next Step:
Additional Articles from Current Periodicals
CoreCivic and GEO
Elinson, Zusha, “Trump’s Immigrant-Detention Center
Plans Benefit Private Prison Operators,” The Wall Street
Journal, July 2, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ydemqm55.
The financial outlook for the nation’s two largest private
prison companies — the GEO Group and CoreCivic — is
improving in the wake of Trump administration policies on
immigration and crime.
Margolies, Dan, “Bombshell In Leavenworth Tapings Case:
1,300 Public Defender Calls Recorded Over Two Years,”
KCUR, June 6, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7ugq9el.
A lawsuit accused CoreCivic of impermissibly recording
inmate phone calls to their attorneys.
Mazza, Sandy, “CoreCivic prison operator to relocate,
sells Nashville headquarters for $12.6M,” The Tennes-
sean, Oct. 1, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yawppqen.
The private prison company says it’s moving its headquar-
ters to Maryland to accommodate its growing enterprise.
Health Care
Kiefer, Michael, “Did Arizona inmate-care provider deny
care to avoid fines? Judge hears testimony in case,” The
Republic, Feb. 27, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yaqoqsxp.
A physician formerly employed by a prison medical care
contractor testified that the company delayed or withheld
treatment to sick inmates in an effort to avoid compliance
with a 2014 court settlement.
McKillop, Matt, and Alex Boucher, “Aging Prison Popu-
lations Drive Up Costs,” Pew Charitable Trusts, Feb. 20,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/ycm2p9ar.
The rapidly aging inmate population will send prisons’
health care costs soaring, according to a Pew analysis.
Tollefson, Phoebe, “Private Montana prison didn’t treat
former inmate’s brain injury soon enough, lawsuit says,”
The Billings Gazette, Sept. 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.
com/y942kqdh.
A former inmate at a CoreCivic facility is suing the com-
pany, alleging it failed to treat a serious brain injury until
five days after he began showing severe symptoms.
Immigration Detention Centers
Betz, Bradford, “Lawsuits over inmate pay lack merit,
Republican lawmakers tell DOJ,” Fox News, March 24,
2018, https://tinyurl.com/yavbfmzg.
A group of Republican lawmakers say lawsuits by former
detainees at GEO-run immigration detention centers who
claim they were forced to work for $1 a day “lack legal
merit and should be dismissed.”
www.cqresearcher.com
Roberts, Deon, “ ‘Stop financing hatred:’ Charlotte banks
criticized for ties to ICE detention centers,” The Charlotte
Observer, Oct. 4, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yaecnxo8.
Protesters demand Bank of America and Wells Fargo sever
their ties with companies that manage immigration deten-
tion centers.
Shoichet, Catherine, “Inspectors found nooses hanging
in cells at an ICE detention facility,” CNN, Oct. 3, 2018,
https://tinyurl.com/yapfeldp.
A surprise government inspection at a GEO-run immigra-
tion detention center in California revealed negligent medical
care and misuse of solitary confinement.
Security and Safety
Blakeslee, Nate, “The Dickensian Conditions of Life in
a For-Profit Lockup,” The New York Times, Oct. 1, 2018,
https://tinyurl.com/y8e9r278.
A journalist working undercover at a private Louisiana
prison described unsafe conditions, low pay for guards and
high staff turnover.
Knapp, Andrew,“After South Carolina riot, 48 ‘problematic’
inmates shipped to private Mississippi prison,” The Post
and Courier, June 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9popxgo.
A CoreCivic prison took on 48 inmates from a South
Carolina prison after a riot left seven dead.
Williams, Timothy, “Inside a Private Prison: Blood,
Suicide and Poorly Paid Guards,” The New York Times,
April 3, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7o9tooe.
A privately run Mississippi prison accused of unsafe condi-
tions says, “We can say — unequivocally — that the facility
is safe, secure, clean, and well run.”
CITING CQ RESEARCHER
Sample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography
include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats
vary, so please check with your instructor or professor.
MLA STYLE
Mantel, Barbara. “Coal Industry’s Future.” CQ Researcher 17
June 2016: 529-552.
APA STYLE
Mantel, B. (2016, June 17). Coal Industry’s Future. CQ Re-
searcher, 6, 529-552.
CHICAGO STYLE
Mantel, Barbara. “Coal Industry’s Future.” CQ Researcher,
June 17, 2016, 529-52.
Oct. 19, 2018 895
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