Friday, September 20, 2013

Lockup Quotas Help For-Profit Prison Companies Keep Profits High and Prisons Full

Lockup Quotas Help For-Profit Prison Companies Keep Profits High and Prisons Full
"For-profit prison companies like Corrections Corporation of American and GEO Group are no strangers to controversy. Their business model rests on incarceration, and their profits soared throughout the 1990s and 2000s as harsh sentencing laws, the War on Drugs, and tough immigration enforcement led to a dramatic rise in detention and incarceration. But with crime rates dropping for more than a decade and a new push for sentencing reform and cost-effective alternatives to incarceration, for-profit prison operators have found a new way to keep beds full and profits high. They call them "bed guarantees"."