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Matt Katz: I'm Matt Katz filling in for Brian Lehrer today and now we go to Brian's weekly series with the Greene Space called Punishment and Profit. It's all about the business side of the prison industry. The question guiding these segments is who profits when people get put away? Every Tuesday evening through May 4th, the Greene Space, in conjunction with the advocacy group Worth Rises, will hold a virtual panel discussion about one business sector of the prison industry. Everything from prison labor, to companies that contract with prisons to provide health care, food, and other services. We have a segment previewing those weekly discussions on Mondays here on the Brian Lehrer show.

Last week, Brian talked to guests about prison construction, and what the physical design of a building says about how we think about the people serving time inside. This week, we're zooming out to talk about how private prisons came to be in this country, and how President Biden's recent executive order on private prisons affects the industry. With me now are Worth Rises', Executive Director Bianca Tylek and Eunice Cho, Attorney for the ACLU National Prison Project focusing on immigration detention. Welcome back Bianca and welcome, Eunice.

Eunice Cho: Thank you.

Bianca Tylek: Hi, how are you?

Matt Katz: I'm doing great. I'm so glad you guys are here. I'm going to start with Bianca to dial us back a little bit. Bianca, where was the first private prison in the United States and how did it come to be?

Bianca Tylek: Sure. The first private prison in the United States emerged in 1984 as a contract, actually with the federal government, it was around Texas and it was an immigration detention. It's actually quite an interesting story there. It was CoreCivic at the time, the company was called Corrections Corporation of America, the first and still one of the largest here in the country today. Originally it had secured a contract with the federal government for a new immigration detention facility that it would build. It run late on the contract and actually couldn't make the timeline and ended up renting a motel outfitting it with barbed wire. That was the first private immigration detention facility or private prison in the US.

Matt Katz: Wow, what year was that that they ended up opening in a motel?

Bianca Tylek: It was 1984. It was shortly after that, that the other largest competitor in the field, the GEO Group, also in 1985, opened its first private prison and that was also for immigration detention in Colorado.

Matt Katz: Bianca the segment last week, which I didn't catch live but I listened to the Brian Lehrer podcasts afterwards. It was fascinating. For those who didn't get to hear it, can you remind us how public prisons differ from private prisons in terms of the conditions for the people locked up inside generally speaking. What differences does it really make whether a prison is public or private Bianca?

Bianca Tylek: Sure. The reality is all prisons are terrible. In our country they're in a particularly awful state. Public and private facilities are inhumane and detrimental and traumatizing to those who are incarcerated there. That said, private prisons also have an additional layer of conditions, issues that were raised and revealed by the Obama administration back in 2016. When they did an investigation and compared private and public facilities and found that private facilities are in fact, even more inhospitable than publicly-run facilities. Probably the biggest and most grave issue around private prisons is the opacity that these facilities have, the lack of transparency to the public.

I always ask people to think briefly if there are prisons and jails, we as taxpayers pay for prisons and jails but we're not allowed to ever go into them. In fact, very rarely are even our elected officials are able to go in, or others. That begs a lot of questions about what happens behind those doors, behind those gates. That's even more unclear when it comes to private prisons that are not susceptible to the same Freedom of Information Act laws as public facilities.

Matt Katz: Listeners, have you spent time in a private prison either as an inmate, a detainee, an employee, a corrections officer, call in. Tell us about your experiences. If you have any questions about the history of the private prison system in this country, call in as well please 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. Eunice, I think when people hear private prisons, they think of disciplinary institutions for American citizens serving time for a crime committed or awaiting trial. They don't necessarily realize that so many private prisons are actually immigration detention centers holding people who are awaiting hearings on immigration violations. We just heard how the first private prison in the country came to be. Can you talk more broadly about how companies like CoreCivic today have changed immigration detention in this country, Eunice?

Eunice Cho: Absolutely. Well, immigration detention is one of the most significant areas of the federal government's use of private prisons. At this time last year, 81% of people in immigration detention were housed in facilities owned or operated by private prison companies. Much of the immigration detention system is made up by private prison companies, perhaps harkening back to the origin of these private prison companies themselves. Immigration detention actually makes up a huge portion of private prison company's revenues. In 2019, for example, 29%, of CoreCivic and GEO's revenues was from ICE detention contracts. They are making billions of dollars a year.

CoreCivic made 547 million in the year, GEO made 708 million with immigration detention and this number is just going up. In the last four years, the amount of contracts that private prison companies have made for immigration detention skyrocketed, ICE opened 40 new detention facilities, the majority of those beds went to private prison companies, over 90% of those beds. We know that private prison companies have a huge impact on immigration detention, and indeed, you can track the growth of immigration detention with the growth of private prison companies themselves.

Matt Katz: I should note that we actually have a private ICE detention center in our area right across the river in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It's owned by CoreCivic same company. I'm a reporter here at WNYC and I've reported on complaints about the conditions there. CoreCivic has long denied that conditions are subpar, they say they pass all reviews and accreditation. As an example, just last month, I got a letter from detainees who said small birds are nesting in the dormitory area and they defecate on detainees beds below.

This building is actually a former warehouse and it's caused some controversy over the last year because it's owned by a politically connected company called Elberon Development Group. Under pressure, they actually announced last summer that they were ending their lease with CoreCivic, but they haven't done that yet. I actually just learned this morning that they're in a dispute with CoreCivic to try to get out of their lease which doesn't expire until 2027. It's very interesting how this is playing out. I'm wondering if there might be any larger points we can extract from the situation in the local private prison for ICE here in our area.

CoreCivic and its landlord Elberon are not subjected to the same public scrutiny. Perhaps their contract, the lease is harder to get out of. I know that some of the county jails that contract with ICE, they can just eliminate the contract if the government body voted to do so. Eunice, do you see any points we can pull out from this in terms of the way the contracts are structured and then the way public pressure doesn't exist in the same way when it's a private facility?

Eunice Cho: Well, absolutely. What you're talking about in terms of just the complexity of contracting schemes that make up the immigration detention system, and the many actors that are actually profiting from immigration detention along the way is alarming. The other thing that we should note is just the failure of ICE to have any effective oversight over the health and safety of these detention facilities. In fact, there is a provision that was passed in federal law that says that if an immigration detention facility fails two inspections, the contract should be pulled.

What we're seeing time and time again, is that the oversight of these facilities is so shoddy. It's a rubber stamp that even with very serious concerns like negligent deaths, abuse of force, the use of rubber bullets on immigration detainees. Even when government inspectors have raised this as an issue ICE has hardly ever held detention companies accountable. What we're seeing is that it just metastasizes and we see abuses occurring over and over again in facilities around the country without any accountability.

The other thing to note that you mentioned is just the amount of capacity of opacity or lack of transparency and accountability with contracting. We've seen this time and time again. The number of different contractors that are benefiting from ICE detention as well as loopholes and, opening of detention facilities without justification, flouting internal agency guidelines. This is a pattern that's endemic to the ICE detention world.

Matt Katz: I want to take a caller, Dan from West Orange was apparently incarcerated in a private prison. Hi, Dan, are you there?

Dan: Yes, I'm here. How are you?

Matt Katz: Doing well, thank you. Tell me about your experience.

Dan: Well, I was on vacation, I think this was about a decade ago when I was a kid. I was driving through Georgia outside of Atlanta and I got arrested. Well, you're pulled over for doing 65 in a 65 and I got arrested with a gram of marijuana. They took that to the bank. Luckily I was able to post bail. I'm of the understanding that if I hadn't posted bail I would have waited nine months in holding for sentencing for one gram of marijuana. I think I was the only white guy in the entire damn building. I got to say even after I posted bail, they refused to release my probation to New Jersey. It was the Sentinel Probation Services that had tried to extort people. I understand that there was a class-action lawsuit afterwards. I was unable to transfer my probation to New Jersey. For that reason I had to pay Quest Diagnostics, extra money to watch me urinate in the cup, and mail it to Georgia exclusively so that they could profit I imagine. They sent me to NA for nine months over a gram of marijuana. George's is just a backwards place. Here's the most crazy part. At the very end when I tried to confirm the fulfillment of my probation, and finalize everything and clear my name. When I called the probation office to ask if I'd paid every fine, which, by the way was about $9,000. They told me on the phone, that I did owe them money, but they no longer could collect it because the dates had passed in which they could ask for it. When I asked what the hell they meant by that, they just hung up. It was clear that they're just trying to extort people.

Matt Katz: Thank you for calling and sharing your experience. I appreciate it. Bianca, is there anything that we can learn from Dan's experience about the role of private corporations in what happened with him?

Bianca Tylek: Yes. I appreciate Dan sharing that story. Actually, it was so interesting as I was listening, I was listening to at least what seems like a handful of people who were agencies or institutions that were finding a way to profit off of that particular experience right from LabCorp rather to Sentinel. Sentinel actually is a very notorious probation, electronic monitoring business down in Georgia, that Dan is right did have a class action lawsuit and has actually moved out of Georgia. As well as private prisons that are down in Georgia, and incentivize that type of really draconian response to in many cases, very, very minor offenses that rope people in for it looks like years, and certainly for thousands of dollars.

Matt Katz: I want to turn back the clock a quarter-century right now. I have a clip here from President Bill Clinton. It was President Clinton in his 1995 state of the Union. He talked about the now infamous 1994 Crime Bill. Can we hear a little bit of former President Clinton?

President Clinton: I know the members of this Congress are concerned about crime, as all the citizens of our country. I remind you that last year we passed a very tough Crime Bill, longer sentences, three strikes and you're out. Almost 60 new capital punishment offenses, more prisons, more prevention, 100,000 more police.

Matt Katz: Bianca, your report lays out that private prison groups champion the proposals laid out in the Clinton Crime Bill and even helped draft portions of the legislation. Can you explain how the 1994 crime bill meant more contracts ultimately for private prisons and how that became even truer going forward with some amendments to the bill?

Bianca Tylek: Sure. What happened around that time through the 1990s CoreCivic, GEO Group, these other private prison companies are working with a trade group called the American Legislative Exchange Council or for short ALEC. Which is a conservative trade organization that helps lawmakers, helps corporations to draft legislation. CoreCivic was actually on the criminal justice task force of ALEC, in some cases even being the corporate chair and helped draft the model legislation behind mandatory minimums, or strike laws, truth-in-sentencing laws. Many of which were then adopted by faith and also codified in the 1994 Crime Bill.

What the 1994 Crime Bill also did, was they allocated a tremendous amount of money of federal grants to states that would also adopt these really draconian laws for the purpose of building new prisons. They said, basically, to these states, "Here are these federal laws. We can't actually tell you state A, B, C that you have to take up this law. What we can say is we'll give you a few billion dollars if you do." Many states as you can imagine, did. Then it was in the coming few years, in 1995, 1996, that they passed a few additional laws drafted that came out of ALEC. The Private Correctional Facilities Act, and The Prison Industries Act that essentially allowed for that federal money to be applied in contracts with private prisons, and for the expanded use of prison labor.

Matt Katz: Fascinating. Private prisons are compensated by the government for each day that an inmate or detainee occupies a bed. They maybe have a financial incentive to keep people locked up longer. Is that right Eunice? I believe you've cited a stat that says states that rely on private prisons keep people in prison longer. How does that work?

Eunice Cho: That's right. Well, there have been academic studies that have shown that jurisdictions that have private prisons tend to keep people in prison longer. That's because a number of reasons. You'll see offenses that take place within the correctional institution, then being added on to extend people's time in detention. You see just the system's working together to keep people in longer.

This is really an important thing to look at when you're looking at the perverse financial incentives that private prison companies have to keep people in for longer. That certainly is reflected in state jurisdictions that have private prisons. I also want to add that, the 1996, Illegal Immigration Responsibility Act that was passed, also under the Clinton administration had a huge impact in terms of increasing the explosion of immigration detention itself. That law, really worked to criminalize immigration status and increase the immigration consequences of criminal convictions. Not only did those earlier 1994 laws, coupled with the immigration reform laws passed two years later by the Clinton administration, really helped to increase the number of immigration detention facilities nationwide, also benefiting private prison companies.

Matt Katz: If you're just joining us-- Please.

Bianca Tylek: I was going to add one other point to what Eunice just said. Which was that, in fact, it was actually during this time in the mid to late '90s, that private prison company stock started to tank. It was in fact in 1996 Immigration Bill that helped resurrect private prisons and anchor their presence in our society and culture. It is to Eunice's point just really, I think upsetting and frustrating to know that private prisons were started off immigration detention and in a few different cases saved by the federal government from bankruptcy through immigration detention contract.

Matt Katz: Fascinating. I want to introduce you guys again. If you're just joining us, I'm WNYC reporter Matt Katz, filling in for Brian Lehrer. I'm speaking to Worth Rises’s Executive Director Bianca Tylek, who you just heard from, and Eunice Cho, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU National Prison Project focusing on immigration detention. I want to fast forward to where we are now. We know that former President Trump doubled down on the use of private prisons. President Biden signed an executive order last month directing the Department of Justice not to renew its contracts with private prisons. Let's hear a bit of Biden and then talk about what that means.

President Biden: This is the first step to stop corporations from profiting off an incarceration that is less humane and less safe as the studies show.

Matt Katz: Eunice can you explain how far this executive order goes and whether it expands on anything that president Obama had done, because he had also tried to end the use of private prisons by the federal government. What does this order mean?

Eunice Cho: Well President Biden's order is a huge first step. It regards the use of private prisons by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and affects about 14,000 federal prisoners currently in privately run facilities, but there are about 120,000 prisoners in public federal prisons. This is an important step, but it won't end mass incarceration. It's going to help to curb an industry that has a financial interest in perpetuating mass incarceration.

This follows an earlier attempt that President Obama had made to also curb the influence of private prisons in federal prisons. However, of course the Trump administration came into office soon after and reversed that right away. The one thing to note is that President Biden's order doesn't affect immigration detention, and that is also very important because the Biden administration had made campaign pledges that the federal government shouldn't use private facilities for the detention of immigrants.

Matt Katz: Why doesn't it? Yes, please. Bianca, go ahead.

Bianca Tylek: If I could add, I think that on top of that, it also doesn't affect any of the contracts that private prisons have with state and local agencies. As Eunice mentioned earlier, GEO Group and CoreCivic, about 29% of their revenues come from immigration, which this executive order rather doesn't touch at all. Roughly 50%, or a little less than 50% of their revenues come from state and local contracts, which once again are not touched by the executive order. It really only hits existing or rather expiring contracts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Which means it also doesn't touch any contracts that might have expiration dates that are out 4, 5, 9, 10 years even.

It's actually like quite limited in its reach, though I agree a really important step. The last thing that I'll note is that in President Biden's comments, he says this is a step in curbing corporations from profiting off of people who are incarcerated. That's true, but this is specifically private prisons. There's an $80-billion prison industry, only 5 to 6 billion of that is private prisons. The majority of that is many, many private corporations making money in other areas that they have privatized in the prison industry.

Matt Katz: Like medical care, food services and the like?

Bianca Tylek: Exactly. Correct.

Matt Katz: Let's take a caller Antonio from Nassau County. Hey Antonio.

Antonio: How are you doing today?

Matt Katz: We're doing well. Thanks. I understand you have some experiences in this regard

Antonio: Yes, because in Florida, the private prisons were places where people wanted to go to because the state had caught vocational programs out. Those private prison was running vocational programs. You had to go to school, you had to attend different self-help programs and in the state facility you could just sit there in like a warehouse.

Matt Katz: Were you incarcerated in both the public and private facilities down in Florida?

Antonio: Yes. I spent more than a decade in the Florida System. What I'm saying is I wouldn't have left prison without computer knowledge and without a CDL if I wasn't going to a GEO Group prison that was cleaner and better. They're air conditioned and the other ones aren't air conditioned.

Matt Katz: That's really interesting. Thank you very much, Antonio. Bianca, what do you make of that? Antonio had a better experience, said there were more services in the private facility. Are there cases like that? What does that indicate to you?

Bianca Tylek: Yes, we do hear that from time to time. I will say it's not the overwhelming experience by any means. In particular Florida is unique because my guess and obviously, I don't know Antonio's experience precisely, but GEO Group is headquartered in Florida. They have a facility down there that they like to bring media and do the show boating and that facility in particular happens to have some of these things really mainly for the purpose of being able to demonstrate that to the public.

On a whole really not the experience that most people have in private facilities. The comparison to the state is the reason I said at the beginning, our conversation around this is not to suggest at all that publicly operated facilities are good. In fact they have many, many, many issues as well. It's an anecdotal piece of somebody's experience, which is obviously important, but has in many cases on the whole not carried.

Matt Katz: Let's take Mike-- Oh, did you want to add something Eunice?

Eunice Cho: Yes. I think the other thing to remember is, like Bianca said, it is not actually only private prison companies that profit from imprisonment, incarceration, or immigration detention. When we look at the immigration detention system, for example, local law enforcement agencies also rent out their beds and county jails to ICE, and they also see it as a way to make money.

One of the most notable examples of this is the Etowah County Jail in Gadsden, Alabama. Where until recently a sheriff could legally pocket the money personally, that he saved on cutting food costs to prisoners and detainees and that is exactly what happened. When we interviewed people at the Etowah County Detention Center people talked about losing weight, starving because they weren't getting enough food. That's an extreme example, but we see everywhere where local jurisdictions, including county jails that are renting out their space to ICE detention are also seeing this as a money making profit.

Matt Katz: I've reported on the three County gels in New Jersey, Essex, Hudson, and Bergen that all hold ICE detainees. These are all democratically run counties but they get 110 or $120 a day per ICE detainee. Even though there's been a lot of pressure from their political left, they don't want to end the contracts because they use the money to keep taxes down and to keep people employed at the jails. It's not a private arrangement, but it's still a moneymaking arrangement, right Eunice? That's still a driver here and potentially a motivator?

Eunice Cho: That's right. I think this is why it's so important for us to look at what is actually happening behind closed doors at these local prisons and jails as well. Local prisons and jails and house immigration detainees also have appalling conditions where people are dying, where people are contracting COVID at record rates. Where we see abuses happening, including beatings, hunger strikes, use of tear gas, rubber bullets. These types of things that are happening all in the name of profiting from ICE detention.

Matt Katz: Bianca, what should people expect from tomorrow's Greene Space panel? How can they sign up to watch? And what are you guys going to be talking about? Give us a little a heads up so people can tune in.

Bianca Tylek: Sure. People can definitely sign up by going to thegreenespace.org and taking the, or filling out the registration there. Tomorrow's panels is an exciting panel. We are going to have four advocates from across the country who are approaching private prisons from really different perspectives in terms of advocacy practices. One Matt Carrier is a local advocate who himself spent time in a private prison. Who is working with others in his community to actually cancel a contract that their local jail has with a private operator and they have been successful in getting the County council to do that. It will be an exciting opportunity to learn from somebody who did advocacy inside and out.

We'll have also Robert Craig who is a litigator, who is challenging the constitutionality of private prison contracts altogether down in Arizona with our partners at the NAACP and he's from Abolish Private Prisons. We'll also have Rachel Gilmer from Dream Defenders a grassroots advocacy organization down in Florida that actually will be able to speak to Florida and the GEO Group in particular. When they raised issues around Geo Group's participation in a family separation GEO Group issued them a cease and desist letter and threatened to sue them. Rachel will be telling us about their experience.

Then finally Dana [unintelligible 00:29:41], who's been a leader in Families Belong Together and they've been challenging the financial stability and going after those who, the banks that gave credit financing and been successful in removing almost 90% of all credit financing to private prisons. It will be a great opportunity for people to hear about, what are we doing next and wwhat are we expecting?

Matt Katz: Very good. We'll see you tomorrow virtually at the Greene Space and Brian will continue this discussion every Monday for many weeks going forward. Worth Rises’s Executive Director, Bianca Tylek and Eunice Cho Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU National Prison Project. Thanks so much for coming on this morning and giving us a bit of an education on private prisons. Really appreciate it.

Eunice Cho: Thank you.

Bianca Tylek: Thank you so much.

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