Private Prisons Analysis

arly in August, the Associated Press reported that America's three largest private prison companies, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group, Inc and Management and Training Corp spent in the region of $45m over the past 10 years in lobbying state and federal governments. During the same period, these companies saw their profits soar as they scored more government contracts.

The state of California spends about a fortune in state prison and parole operations, which is about $7.9 billion. But with the passing of The Three Strikes Initiative, such an amount can be reduced, and thus more money will be saved. In a fiscal report by the state’s legislative analyst, it is stated that “Net state savings related to prison and parole operations

Throughout mankind, the ideas of avarice and prosperity have pushed companies to work harder, although sometimes this can come with a price. Corruption infiltrates all manners of society like government and industries and the American prison system is no different. Since America must provide housing for those who are incarcerated, they build one prison per week due to the increased rate of criminals (Franklin). Many peoples’ crimes do not fit their punishment and additionally the duration of the punishment does not match the crime committed. Why is that? The corruption of state and local governments have an incentive to maintain a certain population within prisons. This is a current conflict within the United States. Therefore, state and local governments should not have the power to dictate the amount people who reside in America’s prisons. Further, financial incentives from companies should be banned from influencing the population of prisons.

However, the mandated reductions, the prison inmate’s population would still be 137.5 % over its allowed capacity (Liptak 2014). In opposition, the State of California submitted an appeal for the federal order to the Supreme Court seeking protections under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (Newsman and Scott 2012). In 2011, the Supreme Court 5-4 decision upheld three-judge panel’s federal order requiring California state prisons to reduce its population by 30,000 inmates (Liptak 2014).The Supreme Court judges emphasized the notion that overcrowding inflicted pain on prisoners, and, therefore, violated inmate’s constitutional rights (Newsman and Scott 2012). After the Supreme Court’s decision, Jerry Brown advocated realignment in the state prisons that would transfer non-violent, non-serous, and non-sexual offenders to county jails (Ravi 2014). Likewise, to comply with the federal order Brown allocated 6 billion in state funds to be transferred to counties aiding the realignment reforms (Ravi

A prison is a building made up of hard, cold, concrete walls and solid steel bars in which individuals, known as inmates, are physically confined and deprived of their personal freedom. This is a legal consequence that is imposed by the government to lawbreakers as a punishment for a crime they have committed and for the protection of the community. A private prison is much like a public prison except people are incarcerated physically by a “for-profit” third party who has been contracted by a government agency. These private prisons enter into an agreement with the government, and the state pays a monthly amount for every prisoner who is confined in the private facility. In both public and private prisons, incarceration cannot be imposed without the commission and conviction of a crime. Even though public and private prisons may seem to be the same in several aspects and are used to serve the same purpose, there are numerous differences between the two. At one point the Obama administration opted to put an end to private prisons; on the other hand, the Department of Homeland Security and current President Donald Trump fought for them to stay in place. The U.S Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons will realize that keeping private correctional facilities in place is a huge mistake; therefore, will opt to phase out such facilities and will stick to housing inmates in the public state-run prisons.

The second major key cost driver is payment for the officers who patrol cellblocks; especially to those who work overtime. Overtime costs in California “topped half a billion dollars in 2006, with 15 percent of the corrections workforce earning at least $25,000 in overtime that year” (Pew Center). Based on the same article there were six employees who earned more than the $212,179 annual salary set aside for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. To help the state from struggling to keep its 33 prisons staffed, Gov. Arnold proposed releasing more than 22,100 inmates before their terms are up. His proposal would save the state $1.1 billion.

By contrast, DHS’s immigration detention program detains around 400,000 people every year. The growth of immigration detention has been astonishing. In 1994, approximately 6,000 noncitizens were detained per day. The daily average had surpassed 20,000 individuals by 2001 and 33,000 by 2008. To manage the growing detainee population, ICE has increasingly turned to contracted facilities such as for-profit prison corporations. This growth has allowed private prison companies such as GEO Group (GEO) and CoreCivic (formerly known as CCA) to significantly profit from labor savings. Private companies are incentivized to cut medical staffing and deny care to maximize shareholder return. Maximizing that return is the primary goal. These companies have managed to accomplish their goal by forcing their detainees to work and upkeep the facilities for little to no pay, saving millions in labor costs. In the year 2012, “GEO brought in an estimated $33 to $72 million in profits.” CCA, estimated profits ranging from “$30 to $77 million, or about 25% of the company’s total profits.” To give some perspective, a facility in Adelanto California, owned and operated by GEO, would pay $109,865 annually in detainee wages at $1 a day. If GEO were to pay the state’s minimum wage, they would be spending $7,910,280 annually in labor. This gives GEO a total savings of

Today, the private prison industry is big and extremely profitable. The industry is dominated by two large companies, Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) and the GEO group. The annual combined revenues for both companies amount to over $3 billion while their top executives get compensation of over $3 million each. However, the way these companies operate is wholly unethical.

Thesis: Private prisons actually exacerbate many of the issues they were designed to solve by incentivizing increased incarceration, and at the same time they produce lower value than regular prisons while ultimately costing more, such that private prisons should be abolished and incarceration should remain exclusively public.

Across the nation, both local and federal prison systems have looked to private corporations to provide beds for

Texas Prison System becomes something from the past, and the private prison system becomes the future due to limited budgets and events? Squaring off the full cost of state prisons in Texas requires accounting for expenditures in all areas of government that support the prison system not merely those within the corrections budget. “Due to supplementary budget to taxpayers can include expenses consolidated for governmental determinations such as employee benefits and capital costs, and services for inmates funded through other agencies. The prison also costs the cost of subversive, contributions to corrections wage earner pensions and retiree health care plans; states must pay the remainder of those contributions in the future.”(n.d.)

They profit by putting people in cages, and are responsible for the prisoners getting harsher sentences than they deserve. The cycle of money and power created by PPC’s is unsustainable: The PPC’s lobby in congress, which allows them to get more money, which allows them to lobby more in congress. This lobbying is worsened as more politicians succumb to the allure of riches and reelection, rather than focusing on their obligation to protect their constituents constitutional and human rights. Politicians like Marco Rubio, who reportedly contracted the large Florida PPC GEO Group to house a majority of Florida’s detained immigrants and prisoners for one hundred and ten million dollars (Cohen). This contract came after Rubio was elected to be Speaker of The House in Florida. Rubio’s campaign to become speaker had received over forty thousand dollars from the GEO group, and Rubio had selected a former trustee of the GEO group to he one of his economic advisers

The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops

California is suffering from a crisis in the prison system. Its facilities are operating at double capacity and " grossly deficient medical care" is the cause of at least one inmate death per week (Wood, 2008, para. 2). Because of this need for reform, the federal government is stepping in to direct the state prison’s operating procedure. Although the financial choices of each state should be free from federal control, the federal government is still known to put pressure on states to make decisions, especially when lawsuits arise. An example of federal legislation commanding state behavior is busing. The states felt that they should have the autonomy to decide whether racial integration was right for them. The federal government,

Currently, many prisons are beginning to be run by private corporations. If a company is running a prison then they need prisoners to stay in business. Around 1 in every 107 Americans is currently being housed in a prison. The United States has about 5 percent of the world’s population yet 25 percent of its prisoners(ACA, 2008). This is the easiest way to maintain a large prison population is by maintaining the current drug war. The largest private prison company in the United States is Corrections Corp. of America(ACA, 2008). In the last twenty years, CCA has donated nearly $5 million dollars to certain political