When he was picked to chair the Tennessee Republican Party’s annual Statemen’s Dinner on June 15, 2024—billed as “the largest political event of the year” in the Republican-­dominated state—Damon Hininger, CEO of private prison operator CoreCivic, brought his firm into the spotlight at the GOP fundraising gala, tickets for which were priced at $300 each.
But the company is already among the state’s top political spenders, lavishing $3.6 million since 2019 on lobbying and political donations to state lawmakers—mostly Republicans, who enjoy trifecta control of the state House, Senate and governor’s office. They hold power over lucrative government contracts that are key to CoreCivic’s business—operating prisons, jails and other detention facilities that brought in revenues of $1.9 billion in 2023. A hefty chunk of that gets invested back into the political process in order to secure more contracts and revenues.
Critics call this cycle anything but virtuous because it drives mass incarceration. Though CoreCivic counters that it merely provides prison cells the state would otherwise have to build, Hininger let the truth slip in an earnings call with investors on May 9, 2024, when he said that “adjustments to sentencing reform” by state lawmakers are expected to drive “pretty significant increases” in prison populations.
One of those bills under consideration is a “three-­strikes” law that by itself is estimated to require a new prison for some 1,400 additional state prisoners, at a taxpayer cost of $384 million. The provision mirrors a disastrous California law that drove prison populations sky-­high before voters abandoned its most draconian provisions, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2020, p.44.] Tennessee lawmakers have also moved to drastically restrict early prisoner release with passage of SB 2044, dutifully signed by Gov. Bill Lee (R) in May 2024.
CoreCivic can perhaps be excused for pushing its agenda so hard; after state lawmakers adopted a measure limiting the number of privately run prisons to just one, the firm successfully lobbied to insert a loophole for CoreCivic. It now has four prisons in the state, under contracts that annually generate about $200 million in total.
Gov. Lee collected $65,400 in CoreCivic donations during his successful campaigns in 2018 and 2022. He is term-­limited from seeking a third, but one of those considering a run to replace him is Hininger. As for criticism that CoreCivic has faced for excessive violence and staff turnover, those probably didn’t get addressed at Hininger’ $300-­a-­plate fundraiser.   

Additional sources: Nashville Tennessean, Tennessee Outlook