Thank you to Dr. Nathaniel Roberts for sending me this story. According to a letter obtained by the Huffington Post, the Corrections Corporation of America, the private operators of Lake Erie Correctional Facility, offering to purchase correctional facilities from 48 states for 20-year contracts. Their management of these facilities would be contingent on maintaining a 90% occupancy rate.
Curious about the authenticity of the document, I dialed the number listed on the letter, which led me to the voicemail of the "executive office of the CCA."
The privatization of prisons is a new phenomenon that is gaining political momentum at an alarming rate. Further information to come. Comments welcomed!
Interesting post! Private prisons seem to have an incentive that public prisons lack: maintaining a high occupancy rate. While I suppose a private prison operator cannot keep occupancy high through legislating criminalization, I wonder whether this moral hazard (of sorts) can affect the rehabilitative efforts of private prisons? It would seem that private prisons would benefit from repeat customers..
ReplyDeleteDavid, you are right. Private prisons cannot legislate, but they sure as heck do drop a lot of money on lobbying, PACs, and other forms of collusion to keep the laws on the books and power structures that keep institutions full.
ReplyDeleteAnd, you are on to something about this moral hazard affecting rehabilitative efforts. Think about it. Vocational training, education, drug treatment are all things that prevent recidivism, or in the eyes of GEO and CCA, things that cut into their pockets.
Last year, the Justice Policy Institute published a report callled, "Gaming the System" that details the flow of money through the private prison industry.
The link to this document, for anyone interested, is:
Deletehttp://www.justicepolicy.org/research/2614
This piece echoes a recent article by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker (that DHC posted on a few weeks ago). He writes:
ReplyDelete"No more chilling document exists in recent American life than the 2005 annual report of the biggest of these firms, the Corrections Corporation of America. Here the company (which spends millions lobbying legislators) is obliged to caution its investors about the risk that somehow, somewhere, someone might turn off the spigot of convicted men:
Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. . . . The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." [my emphasis]