The chief executive of the nation’s largest private prison company reassured investors this month that with either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the White House, his firm will be “just fine,” The Intercept reports. Damon Hininger of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was speaking at the REITWeek investor forum. Private prisons have received a great deal of criticism this election cycle, with Democrat Bernie Sanders campaigning to end for-profit incarceration, followed by Clinton taking up a similar pledge. After the Clinton campaign received campaign donations from private prison lobbyists, activist groups confronted Clinton, leading her to announce that she would no longer accept the money and later saying, that “we should end private prisons and private detention centers.”
CCCA apparently is not concerned. Asked about prospects under Trump or Clinton, Hininger argued that his company has prospered through political turnover by taking advantage of the government’s quest for lower costs. “I would say that being around 30 years and being in operation in many, many states, and also doing work with the federal government going back to the 1980s, where you had Clinton White House, you had a Bush White House, you had Obama White House, we’ve done very, very well,” Hininger said. He added, “I think about the next president, whoever that is, if it’s Hillary Clinton or if it’s Donald Trump, there’s going to be so many things that he or she are going to have to deal with next year or next administration, both nationally and internationally, that I think having a view on our business, our industry is going to be really, really low on the priority list.”