County Correctional Center in New Mexico. Together, these deals are estimated to be worth $760 million to CCA over ten years. In 2002 CCA was rewarded again with a $103 million CAR contract to fill its struggling McRae Correctional Facility in Georgia. Analyst Judith Greene has referred to these CAR contracts as a "virtual bailout" for CCA.
The same watchdog report hints at the sentiment that may be shared by many in CCA thanks to the Arizona immigration law. A 10-K filing from CCA from nearly a decade ago reads:
"We believe that recently proposed initiatives by the federal government in connection with homeland security should cause the demand for prison beds, including privately managed beds, to increase. The proposed funding [for homeland security] is intended to support the agencies' efforts to prevent illegal entry into the United States and target persons that are a threat to homeland security. We believe that these efforts will likely result in more incarceration and detention, particularly of illegal immigrants, and increased supervision of persons on probation and parole
Those who hear Marg Baker talk about supporting Japanese internment camps for illegal immigrants should not think she is that crazy. She is merely expressing the solution to the sentiment of fear that the businessmen working in the private prison industry in Arizona wish to implement.
Her notion is totalitarian but so is the notion that you can incarcerate and control a prison population and make money. And the people of Arizona should fear the existence of an industry that depends on "criminals" to succeed because if crime isn't high then the industry will always work to find a way to "criminalize" a population for profit.
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