Private Detention Companies to Benefit from Trump Tough Immigration and Law Enforcement Policies?
The Associated Press analyzes the possibility that Donald Trump’s election may be a boon to the private industry, which seemed to be on the ropes in the final years of the Obama administration.
The population of American prisons is likely to rise for the first time in nearly a decade with President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to detain and deport millions of immigrants unlawfully in the United States and his selection of tough-on-crime Sen. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Private companies that operate many of the nation’s prisons stand to benefit.
A day after the election, CoreCivic Co., formerly Corrections Corporation of America, saw the value of its shares climb by 43 percent.
Shares of Geo Group, another private prison company, also jumped 21 percent.
The federal prison population had been trending down for nearly a decade when the Obama administration announced in August that it would phase out private facilities. The Justice Department had announced that it would be phasing out its relationships with private prisons after an audit found the private facilities have more safety and security problems than ones run by the government.
KJ