On Jan. 27, President Joe Biden signed an executive order which prevents the Department of Justice from renewing its contracts with federal private prisons. He stated that this order, which also targets discriminatory housing policies, was an effort on his part to prevent large corporations from profiting off of incarcerated people and to set an example for the US government to change its whole approach on the issue of racial equity.
Though this order does not directly end governmental use of private prisons, as immigration detention facilities are still utilizing them, it will curb the industry. Only the 10 percent of all US prisoners who are held in federal custody are affected by this order, but the largest single customer of the privatized prison companies is the federal government, as state governments are the second largest. As the industry loses this support, the system will slowly start to falter. This will not happen immediately after the passing of this order, because the privatized prison system is a multi-billion dollar industry, but it does enact a serious obstacle that could become fatal to it.
What are private prisons, exactly?
Private prisons are prison facilities, such as jails, prisons and immigration detainment centers, run by private, for-profit corporations whose services and beds are contracted out by state and federal governments. Privatized prison labor was popular in America through the convict leasing system, where prisoners were leased out from prisons to plantations to perform grueling labor acts. The states would then receive a cut of the profits from lessees, and the US Commissioner of Labor found in 1886 that where leasing was practiced generated four times the revenue of the cost of running prisons, so they found their incentives to continue the practice.
As it continued and plantations eventually turned into prison facilities known today, the government made contracts with large corporations to keep a certain amount of beds filled in their prisons. The two largest corporations in the private prison system today are CoreCivic and The GEO Group Inc., which together had a combined revenue of $3.5 billion in 2015.
Inmates in private prisons are subject to extreme expenses and unsafe conditions. They are required to purchase their own uniform and necessities from the prison’s commissary for upcharge prices. In privatized ICE facilities run by GEO Group, detainees will receive a salary of $1/day for their work, but toothpaste that sells for $5 at Target will be sold to the inmates for $11.02. If detainees are lucky enough to have family deposit money into their commissary, the money is eaten away by prison fees.
Journalist Shane Bauer went undercover as a corrections officer in a CoreCivic facility, and he speaks openly about the unsafe situations found in the prison. He states that only 24 guards would be on duty at a time for a facility of 1500 inmates, only armed with radios. In their training, they were told to simply shout to stop fighting, not to intervene to protect the company’s reputation because they wanted to please the corporation’s shareholders. They were told that if the inmates wanted to cut each other, “Well, happy cutting.” The well-being of the inmates is not a consideration to these corporations.
Private prisons contribute to the larger system of mass incarceration.
America imprisons more people per capita than any other country in the world. While the populations of total prisons in the US saw a 7 percent decrease between 2009 and 2017, the private prison system in 2018 was increasing at a rate 47 percent faster than the total prison population. The private prison system plays a large role in the overall mass incarceration complex. The entire system of mass incarceration already has financial incentives built in and is already privatized without needing to be in a private facility. For example, individuals have to pay for phone services, and some companies have contracts to provide healthcare or to make materials specifically for prisons.
A known statement when it comes to conversations regarding private prisons, higher profits require more prisoners suggests that these private corporations have an increased financial motive to keep people incarcerated and in unsafe conditions. In order for these companies to make profit, they are relying on the imprisonment of people.
Corporations such as CoreCivic and GEO Group will pay to be members of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to work with politicians to create and enact policies that contribute to higher prison populations–mandatory minimum sentencing, three strikes laws, and truth-in sentencing. Because they influence this legislation, they convince the government to build or privatize prisons rather than reforming the criminal justice system in which laws would reduce incarceration rates and limit corrections spending.
In addition to financially incentivizing incarceration, private prisons contribute to the mass incarceration system by impairing rehabilitation. Prisons of all kinds struggle with the rehabilitation aspect of the prison system. Private prisons ignore the violence against people experiencing incarceration, mentioned earlier, and do not attempt safe communities. Corrections officers in many private complexes are undertrained in dealing with an outbreak in confinement. They are quick to become overtly violent, and solitary confinement becomes a typical form of punishment.
Furthermore, private prisons will contract with states to send inmates outside of their home states. This negatively affects their relationships with their families because it creates a barrier to visitation, which in turn makes life post-incarceration harder because relationships with their families and friends are strained due to the distance. Overall, the private prison system emphasizes the most negative aspects of the mass incarceration system as a whole.
What next?
Though President Biden’s executive order does not directly abolish private prisons, it is a helpful first step in closing an industry where companies gain profit from the incarceration and dehumanization of individuals. An effective way to further this progress is for this executive order to become official legislation. Executive orders can be canceled or revoked by future presidents. If this order were to become legislation, the damage done to the private prison system would be more concrete.
A step further against private prison corporations would be to contact our state representatives and ask them to follow the federal government’s lead and end their contracts with private prisons. If private prison corporations lost their largest two customers, it would be difficult, maybe impossible, for them to continue.
If you would like to know more about the history of private prisons, check out American Prison by Shane Bauer or Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Lauren-Brooke Eisen.
Also, check out other Novel Hand articles written by Emma S and Eve about the role universities play in the prison industrial complex!
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