Mental health workers in privatized prisons struggle to appropriately meet the needs of inmates, to help them recognize and overcome behaviors that landed them in trouble, and to help them cope with the stress of incarceration without acting out...

Mental health workers in privatized prisons struggle to appropriately meet the needs of inmates, to help them recognize and overcome behaviors that landed them in trouble, and to help them cope with the stress of incarceration without acting out again. Due to the corporate focus on profit, rather than a successful outcome, staff are stretched beyond any limit. A preoccupation with the bottom line, compounded by a bureaucratic need for paperwork, also creates unsafe conditions as there is simply not enough manpower to go around. Most important, by cutting corners, cheating the personnel, and ignoring prisoners' health care needs, these corporations create a revolving door - offenders returning to prison - at a tremendous cost to taxpayers, to society, and to the incarcerated people themselves.

Trump Sets Private Prisons Free The incarceration industry was having a tough time. Then Trump got elected. By James Surowiecki.           The New Yorker, December 5, 2016 Going into Election Day, few industries seemed in worse shape than America's private prisons. Prison populations, which had been rising for decades, were falling. In 2014, Corrections Corporation of America, the biggest private-prison company in the U.S., lost its contract to run Idaho's largest prison, after lawsuits...

Trump Sets Private Prisons Free The incarceration industry was having a tough time. Then Trump got elected. By James Surowiecki.           The New Yorker, December 5, 2016 Going into Election Day, few industries seemed in worse shape than America's private prisons. Prison populations, which had been rising for decades, were falling. In 2014, Corrections Corporation of America, the biggest private-prison company in the U.S., lost its contract to run Idaho's largest prison, after lawsuits relating to understaffing and violence that had earned the place the nickname Gladiator School. ..[T]he department announced that it would phase out the use of private prisons at the federal level. Although most of the private-prison industry operates on the state level (immigrant-detention centers are its other big business), the news sent C.C.A.'s stock down by thirty-five per cent. Donald Trump's victory changed all that: within days, C.C.A.'s stock had jumped forty-seven per cent. His faith in privatization is no secret, and prison companies aren't the only ones rubbing their hands. The stock price of for-profit schools has also rocketed. Above all, Trump's hard-line position on immigration seems certain to fill detention centers, one of the biggest money spinners for private-prison operators. Read the article in the New Yorker...