"Private prisons have been booming over the past eight years. From 2000 to 2005, the number of private prisons increased from 16% of all prisons to 23%. All of the increase in federal prisons has been in prisons owned or operated by private firms.
Immigrants are the fastest growing sector of the federal detainees and prisoners, and there are hundreds of millions of dollars to be made by enterprising businesses and governments. The annual Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget for 'detention and removal' is $1.2 billion...
...The prison executives even intimate that the economic crisis will fatten their business. When asked by an investment company representative about a possible downturn in detained immigrants as a result of new government policies, James Hyman, president of Cornell Companies, said, "We do not believe we will see a decline in the need for detention beds particularly in an economy with rising unemployment among American workers."
What is more, he told investors that there exists a pool of "10 million plus illegal immigrants" the company draws from and there is an "imbalance" between the number of immigrants and number of available prison beds."
The U.S of part of A. has the largest prison population in the world, and the largest percentage of its population in prison of any democracy. "Land of the free...paddywagon to the clink."
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