Private prisons are corporations that turn profits through incarceration. The industry leaders are Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO group. They are both publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, making profit for shareholders, their sole objective. The details, effects, and consequences of private prisons in America provides a discouraging insight into the underlying ways our country operates that are challenging to face.
Private prisons exist because they are a cheap alternative to federal prisons. Federal prisons are non-profit, funded by the tax-payer, and are more expensive in the short run. Typically, whenever something is privatized it is implied the task can be done more efficiently and cheaply. In this case, while prisons are run more affordably, the lack of efficiency in the prison system is setting our population's competitive advantage back against rising world powers that triple our population. Private prisons then affect the young generation. Children whose parents are unjustly imprisoned grow up in dysfunctional households, embedding a resentment for the system that is exploding in our present day. We need to educate and train our people to increase our nation's productivity to compete with rising economic powers.
For these prisons to make money they need prisoners occupying each bed. They are paid a stipend by the government for each prisoner they house. Many are bonded by government contracts requiring 80-100% occupancy, most frequently 90%. To fill these beds, private prisons require strict law enforcement, strict parole enforcement, jail time for unpaid fines like parking tickets, and for minor drug offenses. According to Federal Bureau of Prisons in the month of September, 46% of all inmates were imprisoned for minor drug chargers, and the next most popular charge was illegal immigration at 8.7%. CCA has released statements about how demand for their facilities and services could be adversely affected by relaxation of enforcement and decriminalization of, “certain activities that are proscribed by our criminal laws.”
As a lobbying force, they spend millions on campaigns, mainly state campaigns, to mold laws and enforcement that keep their prisons full. This is shown through policies like the war on drugs, drafted by Richard Nixon. Hilary Clinton was actually recently exposed for taking lobbyist money from private prisons like CCA. Conveniently, her campaign pinky-promised to never take any more money from private prisons and to donate what they have received to charity. In poor neighborhoods across the country, residents are fined for petty offenses. They subsequently cannot afford to pay their fines that progressively get more expensive. The penalty for not paying their fines is jail time. This is obvious suppression of our people. It is no surprise that Americans make up 5% of the worlds population but 25% of the worlds prisoners.
Cost cutting every nook and cranny of the business is the name of the game for private prisons. Profits from cost cutting are then passed on to executives and investors, like any other business. For example, new guards at CCA receive a meager four weeks of training, a walkie-talkie, a minimum wage salary, and are sent out completely outmatched to do their job. It is no surprise employee turnover rates are 90% at private prisons, according to the Hamilton Project. The prisons are also completely understaffed with many jobs replaced by technology. This lack of surveillance results in private prisons being infested with weapons, drugs, and extreme violence.
Health costs are cut by hiring extremely unqualified nurses and doctors that are often banned for malpractice lawsuits. There is typically just one social worker in charge of all prisoners. Healthcare in these facilities is the bare minimum. Its extent can be summed up by the experience of one inmate who complained about gangrene for months. He was simply given a couple Motrin and sent on his way. Eventually the man lost his legs and fingers due to the illness.
On the mental health side, inmates on suicide watch are simply put by themselves in a cell, with not much more than some toilet paper, a tear proof blanket, a tear proof shirt, while being fed the “worst food in the prison,” according to inmates. Many eventually kill themselves once out of suicide watch.
All of this begs the question, what kind of people would want to invest in an industry like this. Turns out not many people do. According to Bloomberg, 91% of CCA’s stock is held by investment firms. Some of the companies holding millions of dollars of shares in CCA are Wells Fargo, Bank of America, the California public employee pension, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, State Street, and many more. They hold shares in this industry because it is clearly profitable and there is little competition. These companies have a fiduciary duty to obtain returns for shareholders. While funding such operations is detrimental American life, it's important to take their investment as a cue that the way our prison system is designed needs to be changed. This is the dynamic we as students and voters need to work to change.
