Feds Pay Off Private Prison Companies With Immigrant Lives
Article by Brigette Sarabi
The last year has been hard on the private prison companies. With numerous news stories about prisoner abuse, unsafe working conditions, poorly trained guards and understaffed facilities, the reputation of these companies was hard hit. And this translated into financial difficulties as Wall Street began to get nervous about incarceration for profit. Industry leader Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) neared bankruptcy as its stock prices dived throughout the year. In December, a jury in South Carolina delivered a verdict that CCA guards had abused the youths confined in their juvenile prison with use of force so malicious, and so “repugnant to the conscience of mankind” that they determined that CCA had to pay a $3 million punitive damage award. The next day CCA stock hit an all-time low of 19 cents a share.
As a result of massive bad press and numerous lawsuits against the industry, new state contracts for private prisons are hard to come by. But the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) has moved into privatization in a big way. In fact, the feds have essentially saved these failed and corrupt corporations. And they have done it on the backs of non-citizen prisoners in the federal system—a population the FBOP calls “criminal aliens.”
Non-U.S. citizens make up 26 percent of FBOP prisoners, or roughly 38,000 prisoners. The majority of these prisoners are Mexican or Latin American. Less than 2% of these prisoners are doing time for violent offenses—most have been imprisoned for drug offenses or immigration violations. And they will all be deported upon completion of their sentence in the U.S.
The FBOP, which is currently engaged in a huge prison building boom, has decided to construct new, privatized prisons to hold a majority of the non-citizen prisoners. Essentially, the FBOP is designing a segregated system. These new prisons, many of which will be located in the Southwest, will work hand-in-hand with the Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) to facilitate deportation. To date, the FBOP has put out requests for proposals for a total of 13,500 private prison beds. It is estimated, by the industry itself, that there will be a total of approximately 20,000 of these private prison beds. If this holds true, it will result in federal financial commitments of over $4.5 billion dollars to what has been, in recent years, a failing industry. The first contracts were signed last June with CCA, including a contract for 2,304 beds at their long-empty prison at California City, which the company had built on “spec.”
The federal bailout of the private prison industry is cause for great concern. Public funds are being used to prop up an industry that has been found to be inefficient, expensive, and a danger to prisoners, guards, and communities. The fact that this bailout is happening on the backs of non-violent, immigrant prisoners who have no legal recourse and no champions among elected officials is a national disgrace.
But a broad, national coalition called the Public Safety & Justice Campaign has formed to fight prison privatization, including the federal bailout. The PSJC asks other organizations to support the campaign, and to sign on to their statement of principles, which states: “For-profit private prisons, jails and detention centers have no place in a democratic society. Profiteering from the incarceration of human beings compromises public safety and corrupts justice. In the spirit of democracy and accountability, we call for an end to all for-profit incarceration.” For more information, visit the PSJC web site at: www.stopprivateprisons.org.
This article originally appeared in the Winter 2001 issue of Justice Matters, and is based on original research conducted by Judith Greene, a leading expert on prison privatization in the U.S.
