Sentencing Project

Today, in the U.S., there are privately owned for-profit prisons that contractually require states to maintain a certain number of prisoners. If prison populations fall below the agreed upon quota, there are fines the states have to pay to these prison corporations.

There is something terribly wrong with America. 

You can even invest in for-profit prison corporations, or the partnership corrections industry, as they prefer to be called.

One such company is Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA for short, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CXW. Started in 1983, the Corrections Corporation of America was the first for-profit prison company.

The more prisoners a facility holds, the more profitable the corporation is. That is good for stockholders, but not for the rest of the citizens of America

In their 2010 annual report, CCA wrote, “Historically, we have been successful in substantially filling our inventory of available beds and the beds that we have constructed. Filling these available beds would provide substantial growth in revenues, cash flow, and earnings per share.

One company was so desperate to keep their prison populations high that it was willing to bribe two Pennsylvania judges to do so. Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan were sentencing children without proper representation to harsh penalties for petty crimes while receiving kick-backs from the prison corporation for their efforts.

In 2011, Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced to 28 years and made to pay a $1.2 million restitution after it was found out that he accepted more than $2 million in bribes from Robert Powell and Robert Mericle who built and owned, respectively, the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention centers. Michael Conahan, received 17 and a half years for charges stemming from the bribes.

The true tragedy is the cost to the prisoners. These are actual human beings, most often not white, who are being preyed on by people in the more affluent sectors of American society. Lives are ruined every day so that stockholders can enjoy a better return on their investment.

According to The Sentencing Project,  when CCA was founded in 1983, there were about 400,000 people in prison in America for various crimes. By 2012, that number had risen to more than 1.5 million people. In 1985, states were spending $6.7 billion on housing inmates. By 2010, states were paying $53.3 billion.

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