Are private prisons slipping

On April 24, thinkprogress.org published an article by Annie-Rose Strasser about private prisons. She writes that three investment groups are divesting from the huge private prison corporations CCA and GEO. In all, the divestment comes to $60,000,000. That is not immense, in view of the fact that together the two corporations earn more than three billion dollars each year on their private prisons. But it is very significant.

According to the ACLU, the private prison industry grew about 1,600 percent  between 1990 and 2009. But last year, CCA lost four prison contracts with states.

Writer Strasser quotes Carl Takei, private prison expert of the ACLU's National Prison Project:

"To the extent that investment firms are committing themselves publicly to divestment, that is a very important step. To the extent that investment firms are deciding that private prisons are a bad investment, that’s even more important... We’ve started to turn the corner on mass incarceration and if that’s something that makes private prisons a bad investment, that’s important." Takei added that if investment firms chose to divest for ethical reasons, it is “an important first step,” but that “the financial reasons justification would be huge.”

Strasser ends with these words:

"Studies have found that private prisons spend millions on lobbying to send more people to jail for longer periods of time. The facilities are often rife with abuse and neglect, too; accusations against the companies range from wrongful death to bad sanitation and even forcing a woman to give birth in a toilet. They do no favors for states that support them, either; Idaho was one of the places that ended its contract with CCA after the company handed over a $1 million settlement for falsifying staff hours and leaving mandatory monitoring spots unattended."