The oldest and largest for-prison company is not what it would have you believe, at least according to Anonymous. A faction of the hacktivist group released a report this morning concluding that the publicly traded prison operator Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is not an efficient, profitable free-market solution — but a bad investment for shareholders.
Companies like CCA currently profit from America’s addiction to incarceration – converting a bloody trail of prison riots, deaths, and general human misery into black balance sheets. The conventional financial wisdom is that CCA will be reliably profitable in the future because of its strong history of growth over the past thirty years. But this growth has been fueled by an historical anomaly. Between 1970 and 2005, the U.S. prison population grew by 700 percent, far outpacing both population growth and crime. As a result, our country now has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners.
CCA did not exist before this massive expansion of incarceration – and the company depends on it to survive. But Anonymous’ report shows us that as America weans itself from that addiction, CCA’s ledgers will quickly turn red.
Read more on this story at aclu.com
