State-Licensed Human Trafficking

by Will Grigg
Sep. 06, 2012

With prisons overflowing in Idaho, the state department of correction chartered a private jet to transport 120 inmates to the Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington, Colorado. That prison, like the Idaho Correctional Center , is owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. The inmates, who were clothed in orange jumpsuits and shackles, were greeted at the airport by a SWAT team in full stormtrooper regalia.

Eventually more than 800 prisoners will be sent from Idaho to Colorado. Prison overcrowding wouldn’t be a problem if the government were to stop imprisoning people for non-violent offenses, something the corporate prison lobby well understands.

Over the last decade, CCA spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying on behalf of policies that increase the demand for prison space. In a 2011 corporate report, GEO Group, another prison contractor, described how its profits depended on the state providing a steady supply of inmates. This is why the company opposes “the relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction, sentencing or deportation practices, [and] … the decriminalization of drugs and controlled substances[.]”

This is a system designed to expand the profits of politically connected corporations, not to protect the public from violent crime.