he Washington Post has a thinly sourced article on the lobbying efforts of for-profit prisons. The two largest, the Corrections Corporation of America, on whose board of directors former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall's son actually sits, and GEO, a big benefactor, according to the Post, to Marco Rubio since his state legislature days. How extensive are CCA and GEO's lobbying efforts? Via The Post:
The two largest for-profit prison companies in the United States – GEO andCorrections Corporation of America – and their associates have funneled more than $10 million to candidates since 1989 and have spent nearly $25 million on lobbying efforts. Meanwhile, these private companies have seen their revenue and market share soar. They now rake in a combined $3.3 billion in annual revenue and the private federal prison population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute.
There are, according to The Post, 130 private prisons in the country with 157,000 beds. Assuming each and every bed is occupied by one prisoner, that's about 7 percent of the total U.S. prison population. But there's a far larger lobbies invested in large prison populations—corrections officers and their associated unions, whose bread and butter are the bodies the Post seems to worry only private prisons can "commodify," and police unions, whose jobs, too, are in part dependent on there being a demand to fill prisons up.
The California prison guards union, for example, poured millions of dollars to influence policy in California alone—it spent $22 million on campaign donations since 1989, more than CCA and GEO have combined, and continues to push for prison expansions. The National Fraternal Order of Police, meanwhile, spent $5 million on lobbying efforts since 1989, more than GEO did. That's not to mention the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which includes a "Corrections Union" and lobbies on behalf of all kinds of policies that seek to turn citizens into revenue sources for public employees. They've spent $187 million on campaign donations since 1989, making a far stronger case to be labeled the biggest lobby nobody's talking about than private prisons.
Everyone does it
Yeah but when private prisons do it, it's really, really bad.
Prison guard unions lobby and get privately owned prisons made illegal. Private business lobbies to make it legal. Some states and the feds then make use of private jails to save taxpayers money. Leftards pretend to care but are owned by the government unions. Even Arnold try to fix the broken Cal jail program but couldn't get passed the guard union. Private schools are teaching full time in school and public schools aren't. Seems to be a pattern.
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Put in place by YOUR elected officials.
Which party has had control of the house but chose to pursue dual impeachment “trials” over revising existing law?
Cry more crocodile tears, Kobe.