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The Private Prison Industry

The private prison industry includes for-profit companies that provide correctional services. Most well-known are companies such as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, which has rebranded as "CoreCivic"), the GEO Group and Management & Training Corp. (MTC), which own and operate prisons, jails and other detention facilities. CCA and GEO are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

A wide variety of other correctional services are also privatized, and thus monetized -- including prison medical care, mental health care, food services, transportation services, pharmaceutical services, telephone services, money transfer services, commissary/canteen services, video visitation, secure email services and more. Together these companies make up the private prison industry, which directly profits and benefits from incarceration.


 Are you aware of private prison contract violations? 

We are interested in hearing from whistleblowers, including current or former private prison employees, who are aware of contract violations or fraud by private prison firms. For example, contracts may require that private prison operators provide specific services or programs that they are not providing, or specific staffing levels they have failed to meet. If you have documentation about contract violations or fraud at private prisons, please contact us confidentially via our contact page. Note that whistleblowers may be entitled to financial compensation for exposing fraud by government contractors.

 

Recent Articles

 

Pay-for-Play Tablets: The Costly New Prison Paradigm

Historically, prisons and jails have been loathe to give prisoners access to technology. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) didn’t even allow prisoners regular access to telephone calls until 2009. Access to internet-based services, which the non-incarcerated take for granted, is also forbidden by prison officials who cite vaguely-expressed ...

U.S. Justice Department Investigating Tennessee CoreCivic Prison After Mother of Murdered Prisoner Reaches Settlement

Pointing to “reports of staffing shortages, physical and sexual assaults, murders and a 188% turnover rate among prison guards just last year,” the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on August 20, 2024, that it was launching a civil rights investigation into Tennessee’s troubled Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC), ...

Failures Brought to Light in Arizona Prison System’s COVID-19 Response

The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry (DCRR) has faced bitter criticism for the healthcare provided to state prisoners, which a federal judge in 2022 called “plainly, grossly inadequate,” as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2022, p.1.] So it wasn’t surprising when its early response to the COVID-19 pandemic ...

Sixth Circuit Upholds $6.4 Million Jury Award Against Corizon Nurses For Michigan Jail Prisoner’s Fatal Alcohol Withdrawal

by Matt Clarke

On August 16, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the verdict and jury award of $6.4 million in compensatory damages against three nurses who worked for Corizon Health when it held the contract to provide healthcare at Michigan’s Kent County Correctional ...

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