American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

In the 1980s, as the U.S. prison population skyrocketed, prisons as labor factories were less of a viable option. Instead, they became “warehouses” where inmates were stored, like cattle on a factory farm. The need for more prisons, however, became a financial burden for state governments, and with Reagan-era privatization in vogue, private for-profit prisons were the logical next step. When two friends from West Point, Dr. Robert Crants and Thomas Beasley, hit upon the idea of a private prison system, they partnered with T. Don Hutto who had a history of managing prisons for profit, and CCA was born. Although CCA’s bid to assume control of Tennessee’s entire prison system failed, Bauer writes that “it planted an idea in the minds of politicians across the country” (38). Privatization seemed like a win-win proposition: States could save money on prison construction and still have enough space to lock away the growing numbers of people sentenced under the era’s draconian new drug laws.

According to Bauer, CCA’s business model is a capitalist’s dream. Starting with two juvenile detention centers and two immigrant detention centers, it quickly expanded to its current 80 detention centers, generating a net profit of over $200 million. It builds new facilities on the mere assumption that there are bodies waiting to fill them, and its current contract with Louisiana stipulates that Winn remain 96 percent full at all times, with the state paying for any vacancies.