CoreCivic
CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers and operates others on a concession basis. Co-founded in 1983 in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas W. Beasley, Robert Crants, and T. Don Hutto, it received investments from the Tennessee Valley Authority, Vanderbilt University, and Jack C. Massey, the founder of Hospital Corporation of America.[2]
As of 2016, the company is the second largest private corrections company in the United States.[3] CoreCivic manages more than 65 state and federal correctional and detention facilities with a capacity of more than 90,000 beds in 19 states and the District of Columbia.[4]
The company's revenue in 2012 exceeded $1.7 billion.[5] By 2015, its contracts with federal correctional and detention authorities generated up to 51% of its revenues. It operated 22 federal facilities with the capacity for 25,851 prisoners.[6] By 2016, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) along with GEO Group were running "more than 170 prisons and detention centres". CCA's revenues in 2015 were $1.79bn.[7]
CCA has been the subject of much controversy over the years, mostly related to apparent attempts to save money, such as hiring inadequate staff, extensive lobbying, and lack of proper cooperation with legal entities to avoid repercussions.[8] CCA rebranded itself as CoreCivic amid the ongoing scrutiny of the private prison industry.[9]
Immigrant detention facilities[edit]
The prison industry declined in the late 20th century, as the crime rate was decreasing nationally and privatization was under attack by critics and legislators. There had been widespread reports of escapes, inmate violence, and deplorable conditions in such private facilities. Speculative prison building, sometimes supported by small municipalities hoping to increase local employment, had increased competition and the pressure to keep prisons filled.
The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which became CoreCivic in October 2017, as well as the industry as a whole, rebounded in the early 2000s. This followed a massive increase in detentions of undocumented immigrants by the federal government in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which created a new market for its facilities. From 2001 to 2011, CCA's revenue increased 88 percent, and it received at least $1 billion in revenue for each of the eight years from 2003 to 2011.
In 2012, CCA derived 30 percent of its revenue from federal contracts. In 2012 some $546 million for CCA came from federal contracts with the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service. Although they have denied lobbying, private prison corporations specifically target Republican legislators over "immigration reform". The companies' success in lobbying for immigrant detention was similar to their harnessing the zeitgeists of the preceding decades, from "Tough On Crime" and privatization in the 1980s and 1990s.[42] By 2015, CCA derived 51% of its revenue from federal contracts.
In March, 2017 President Donald J. Trump announced he would increase immigrant detention. The administration decided it would be in the best national interest to radically expand the United States' detention capacity, specifically for women and children, by over four-hundred fifty per cent (450%). United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Asylum chief John Lafferty stated that he planned to expand the number of mother-child "beds" in immigration centers near the border from the current 3,500 beds up to 20,000 beds. This signaled the largest increase in immigrant detention since World War Two.[43][44]
Williamson county commissioners in Taylor, Texas, voted 4–1 on June 25, 2018, in the wake of a widely publicized crisis of immigrant detention of children separated from their mothers who had been taken into custody, to end the county's participation in an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with CoreCivic, effective in 2019. The T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor was holding some of those imprisoned mothers.[45]
Although the combined revenues of CCA and GEO Group, a competitor, were about $4 billion in 2017 from private prison contracts, their number one customer was U.S. ICE.[46]
Closed facilities[edit]
Colorado[edit]
CCA closed the Huerfano County Correctional Center at Walsenburg, Colorado, in 2010. CCA appealed an initial county assessment of $30.5 million in property taxes for 2010. CCA's contract with the county had specified that CCA would pay only $19 million for 2011 and $15 million for each of the next three years.[64] It also closed Kit Carson Correctional Facility at Burlington, Colorado in 2016.
Controversies[edit]
Treatment of inmates and disclosure of shortcomings of oversight[edit]
Responding to a detainee's death in 2006 at CCA's immigration jail in Eloy, Arizona, government investigators found the medical care provided meant that "detainee welfare is in jeopardy." A subsequent detainee death at the facility resulted in an additional inquiry and "another scathing report," according to The New York Times.[84]
In August 2009 the ACLU filed suit against CCA and related government agencies because government officials who were responsible for overseeing the care provided failed to provide data about conditions. The Obama administration acknowledged that immigration detention facilities had overlooked and omitted 1 in 10 deaths among detainees from a list of deaths presented to Congress earlier that year. Two of those deaths took place at CCA's Eloy Detention Center.[85] CCA's Eloy prison had nine known fatalities – more than any other immigration jail under contract to the federal government, according to documents obtained in 2009 under FOIA requests by The New York Times and the ACLU.[85]
In 2013, CCA confirmed that an internal review showed the corporation had falsified records involving about 4,800 employee hours over a period of seven months, at its Idaho State Correctional Center.[86] In 2014 a subsequent KPMG audit showed the actual overbilling was for over 26,000 hours. Governor Butch Otter ordered Idaho State Police to investigate to see if criminal charges should be brought. Otter had received a total of $20,000 in campaign contributions from employees of the company since 2003.
[87] In March, the state announced that the FBI was taking over the investigation, as well as investigating CCA operations in other states.[88]
CCA has been criticized for hiring executives from agencies with which it has contracted, in what is known as a "revolving door" of personnel. For instance, Harley Lappin and J. Michael Quinlan, former directors of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, were hired soon after they resigned from BOP following scandal at the agency.[89]
In the fall of 2012, state auditors of the Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Ohio, which CCA had acquired and operated since January of that same year, deducted $500,000 for contract violations and inadequate staffing. The prison had suffered a high rate of violence and contraband drugs after CCA took it over.[90]
In July 2017, federal lawsuits were brought against CoreCivic by inmates and employees at the Metro-Davidson county jail in Nashville, Tennessee, after the corporation had failed to adequately respond with referrals, diagnosis, medication, treatment, and prevention to a widespread, long-term scabies outbreak.[91] At least 40 male inmates and as many as 80 females were infected, and inmates who complained reportedly suffered retaliation from management. Laundering of clothes and bedding were not frequent enough or managed appropriately to contain the outbreak.[92] The outbreak had spread to courthouse employees and their families.[93] After being pressured by elected officials, Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall said there would be a "serious effort" to take over CoreCivic contract in 2020, although he indicated a takeover by the county would be difficult.[94] Hall is the former president of the American Correctional Association, which has accredited CoreCivic's prisons around the nation, and a former program manager with CCA.[95] In a separate action, the state of California leased the CCA's California City Correctional Facility, which had been faced with closure, and volunteered to hire any current employees who could pass the more stringent background check and complete the rigorous eight weeks of training required in the hiring of state correctional officers.[96]
Lobbying efforts[edit]
CCA lobbyists have worked to shape and support private prison legislation in many localities, including Texas, New York, Illinois and Tennessee.[97] Between 2002 and 2012, CCA spent $17.4 million lobbying the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Office of Management and Budget, the Bureau of Prisons, both houses of Congress, and others. This sum included $1.9 million in campaign contributions.[98][99]
According to the Boston Phoenix, CCA spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter criminal laws and mandatory sentencing terms, in order to generate prisoners.[100] CCA responded that it does not lobby lawmakers to increase jail time or push for longer sentences under any circumstance, noting that it "educates officials on the benefits of public-private partnership but does not lobby on crime and sentencing policies."[98]
Among its risk factors listed in its 10-K annual report, as required by the SEC, CCA includes the following:
