Between 1970 and 2005 the US' prison population grew by a massive 700%, far outpacing both
population growth and crime rates.
Today it's got to the stage where America is home to 5% of the world's population but
a quarter of the world's prisoners.
And not only does America have the highest imprisonment rates of any country in the entire
world, but it also has the highest rate of youth incarceration.
Over 130,000 juveniles are detained in the US every year and on any given day there are
over 70,000 youths in detention.
But the biggest winners of this mass incarceration haven't been the American public, but the
private prison companies who are making giant profits out of people being in jail.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, in 2010 the two largest prison companies
alone received nearly $3 billion dollars in revenue, while their top executives each received
annual compensation packages worth more than $3 million.
Private prisons didn't really exist before the early 1980s when US states and the federal
government needed a solution to the overcrowding in public prisons.
But between 1990 and 2009 the number of people in private prisons increased by a massive
1,600%.
And the business model of these private prison companies essentially depends on locking more
and more people up.
The biggest of the US' private prison companies is the Corrections Corporation of America,
otherwise known as the CCA.
In its 2010 Annual Report to shareholders the CCA stated:
"The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the
relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing
practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are
currently proscribed by our criminal laws."
The CCA seems to be particularly concerned about the decriminalization of drug use and
any potential changes to immigration 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."
Because of these concerns private prison companies spend a LOT of money on lobbying politicians.
According to analysis by the Associated Press, between 2002 and 2012 the CCA, along with
the US' second and third largest private prison companies, Geo Group, Inc. and Management
and Training Corporation (MTC) spent around $45m on lobbying state and federal governments
between them.
. And in addition to lobbying, these three companies
also pour hundreds of thousands of dollars every year into the election campaigns of
governors, state legislators and judges.
And a report by the National Institute on money in state politics revealed that between
2003 and 2011 the CCA alone hired 199 lobbyists in 32 states.
While GEO hired 72 lobbyists in 17 states.
Worryingly, private prisons in America have been linked to numerous cases of violence
and poor conditions.
This CCTV video shows the brutal beating of 24-year-old Hanni Elabed by another inmate
at the CCA-run Idaho Correctional Center in January 2010.
Elabed was left with permanent brain damage from the attack and later died in 2012, though
it was unclear whether his death was related to the injuries he sustained in prison.
Following the attack on Elabed, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against
the CCA on behalf of a number of inmates at the Center.
The inmates claimed that violence at the Center was so widespread they called it "Gladiator
School", and that under-staffing and mismanagement by CCA officials was contributing to the violence
rate.
The CCA denied these claims but agreed to a settlement in which they were instructed
to carry out operational changes and increase staffing levels.
However, more than two years later in September 2013, a federal judge found the CCA in contempt
of court for violating this settlement.
And then the following month the CCA announced that it would be leaving Idaho.
The ACLU has also filed a lawsuit against the state of Missippi over conditions at the
East Mississpi Correctional facility.
Donald Weeks is a former prisoner at the facility, which was run by GEO until July 2012, and
is now run by MTC.
"It was run by GEO for the first two months that I was there.
It was dirty, nasty, unsanitary conditions I mean people get stabbed in there, they're
bleeding or they get in a fight and they're bleeding they don't give no cleaning chemicals
to clean the place up or nothing.
The sewer kept backing up in the zones.
The toilets kept stopping up.
The stench was so bad in there I couldn't eat anymore."
A spokesperson for MTC says that conditions have significantly improved since the company
took over from GEO, but the ACLU disputes this.
This track record is all the more worrying because many of those in private prisons are
some of the most vulnerable people in the system.
Nearly 40% of all detained juveniles are committed to private facilities, while nearly half of
all immigrant detainees are now held by private companies.
And to be clear, most immigrant detainees are being held while waiting to have their
cases decided in court, not serving time for a crime they've been convicted of committing.
In 2012 a federal judge transferred all prisoners out of the formerly GEO-managed Walnut Grove
Youth Correctional Facility in Missippi after finding it to be "a picture of such horror
as should be unrealised anywhere in the civilised world".
Prison staff had sex with imprisoned youths in what investigators called "among the worst
we have seen in any facility in the nation".
According to GEO the abuses documented occurred before the company had taken over Walnut Grove
in late 2010 but this is disputed by the US Justice Department.
This map, produced by the ACLU following a freedom of information request, also shows
allegations of sexual abuse of detainees since 2007 at immigration detention facilities across
the US.
In total, there have been nearly 200 reports of sexual abuse during this time but the ACLU
believes that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that many other cases have gone
unreported.
Unfortunately for the private prison companies however, crime rates in the US have actually
been on the decrease for the past decade, and so they've been been resorting to more
aggressive tactics to make money.
A 2013 report from the In The Public Interest resource center revealed that some companies
have been signing contracts with states that contain clauses guaranteeing high prison occupancy
rates.
Some contracts require 90 to 100 percent occupancy.
This means that if the private prisons in question aren't filled to the agreed capacity
then either the state has to find more people to put in those prisons, or pay the company
for the unused beds.
And three companies in Pennsylvania even resorted to bribing officials to get beds in their
facilities filled.
In August 2011 former Luzerne county judge, Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced to 28 years
in prison after sending children to detention centers owned by these companies in return
for illegal payments amounting to millions of dollars.
Some of those he sentenced were as young as ten years old and now campaign groups at the
ACLU and Brave New Foundation fear that private prison companies could be set to profit from
federal immigration reform.
The US House Judiciary Committee has passed the safe act which if turned into law would
turn millions of undocumented immigrants into criminals over night and make not having papers
punishable by months or even years in US prisons but if business starts to go bad private prison
companies in the US then there's always the rest of the world.
The UK currently has a 106% prison occupancy rate creating an opportunity for private prison
companies to jump in as they did in the US in the 1980's while Australia's controversial
immigration detention system is now operated entirely by private companies.
And last year GEO saw 14% of its revenues coming from international contracts.