The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/corrections/private-prisons/)
The combined state and federal imprisonment rate of 419 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents in 2019 was the lowest imprisonment rate since 1995. The rate has declined further during this year’s pandemic.
The much-advertised bargain to taxpayers provided by private prisons is mostly eradicated by the longer terms served by their inmates, according to a Wisconsin economist. Her comparative study of prisons in Mississippi also found higher rates of recidivism among private incarcerees, further adding to public safety costs.
Fearing a Biden-Harris victory in November, the private prison industry’s campaign donations have increased 14 percent since 2016 while it also secures new contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As a result, the future of private prisons is all but secured.
A settlement approved this month by a federal judge closed a case alleging that private prison operator CoreCivic and its phone provider, Securus Technologies, illegally monitored and recorded inmate calls.
More than 120,000 inmates are housed in facilities operated by private corporations under contract with the federal and state governments. While that amounts to a relatively small fraction of the total U.S. incarcerated population, for-profit prisons “diminish equality” in the nation’s justice system and should be abolished, says a University of Baltimore Law Review paper.
“What’s happening out there is just ugly,” said Joe Allbaugh, recently resigned Oklahoma corrections director. “There’s no other way to describe it. Each time I bring it up, people see dollar signs. They don’t want to hear about money issues.”
At least 20 pension funds and plans have invested in Geo Group or CoreCivic, the two biggest private prison operators. Some of the largest investments, by pension funds for public sector workers such as teachers and firefighters, come from states with “sanctuary” policies, such as New York, California and Oregon.
It becomes the latest large U.S. bank to pull back on doing business with the private-prison industry amid concerns about the treatment of immigrants detained under the administration of President Donald Trump.
Private prison companies poured record amounts of money into the 2018 elections, more than three times as much as the industry spent in any other midterm year. Public records follow the trail of cash from Congress to state and local races.
Shane Bauer of Mother Jones turned his reporting on a private prison into a book, “American Prison.” NPR calls it “both the remarkable story of a journalist who spent four months working as a corrections officer, and a horrifying exposé of how prisoners were treated by a corporation that profited from them.”