PUBLIC PROBLEM

cause; according to the American Economic Journal, this alone erases most of the already minor cost savings offered by private contract- you were selling cars, hamburgers.”

Beasly, co-founder of to INC in 1988

“The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices

- The Corrections Coporation of America to investors in 2O1O

As for the rest of the money? Nobody knows. As the Brennan Center for Justice explains, private prisons have almost no oversight, in operations or finances. Some might disappear in civil lawsuits (recently, a GEO Group shareholder sued due to the company hiding tens of millions of dollars of lawsuits from investors), others in “expenses” and other

Where the profit goes, however, is a much easier question to answer. Revenue of private prisons is hard to measure—again, due to lack of oversight—but according to the Berkeley Business Review, the two largest companies made over 3.5 billion of revenue in 2015. GEO’s chairman received just a minor compensation: 3.1 million. Private prisons do not cut costs. They do not help the public. They sell the freedom of citizens so a politician, judge or CEO can have a new summer house.

Thankfully, the period of unmitigated growth that private prisons experienced from 1999 to the mid 2010’s seem to be, if not coming to an end, at least slowing. But solving the problem is not as simple as doing away with

In 2021, president Joe Biden announced the DOJ would end the use of federal private prison contracts. However, not only was the impact of this order extremely limited, due to the majority of private prisons being licensed by state, but it also led to creative workarounds. For example, a number of private prisons converted to “immigration detention centers,” centers that, due to recent anti-immigration

Fixing private prisons is not a silver bullet. Without system-wide action, mass incarceration will continue. But as long as corporations are allowed to profit off of misery and injustice, people who don’t deserve to suffer will. From 1844 to 2023, private prisons have been