Privately owned prison investors are banking on incarceration instead of rehabilitation by supporting politicians who are “tough on crime,” according to a new report analyzing how corporations affect U.S. prison policy.
From 1995 to 2010, the privately owned prison population in the U.S. rose from three percent to eight percent because more criminals are being sentenced under harsher laws and are receiving longer sentences.
Many states transfer inmates from overcrowded prisons to privately owned prisons instead of implementing evidence-based rehabilitation policies, according to the report. Those policies have shown to reduce overcrowding by lowering recidivism rates.
Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group are the two major privately owned prison contractors in the U.S. They grossed more than $3 billion in 2011.
The report claims private prisons are plagued with a lack of oversight and poor medical conditions. It adds that women, the mentally ill or serious offender are not likely to be housed in private prisons because of the high cost it will take to care for them.
“Private prisons experience a higher proportion of Inmate-on-inmate assaults” due to the lack of oversight, the report says.
In 2008, the U.S. Immigration and Custom detained Hui Lui “Jason” Ng, and transferred him to a privately owned facility. Ng died while in the custody of the private prison because officials thought he was faking his medical condition, according to a lawsuit filed on his behalf.
Another report, by the Justice Policy Institute, details how corporations such as CCA, GEO and Cornell Company donated over $3.7 million to politicians, party committees, and ballot measures. These corporations also spent more than $1.5 million on federal lobbying.
Privately owned prison corporations, according to the report, influenced laws such as California’s Three-Strikes Law and other sentencing laws intended to increase the length of imprisonment.
A legal challenge of Arizona’s immigration bill, now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, shows that 36 co-sponsors of the bill received donations from lobbyists tied to the prison industry, the report says.
Privately owned prison investors oppose sentencing reform or legislation that will reduce the need for more prisons, the report concludes.
The report, Prison Bed Profiteers: How Corporations Are Reshaping Criminal Justice in the U.S., was prepared for the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.