By Betsy Woodruff
Corrections Corporation of America is getting rich from jailing children and pregnant women—and no one seems to care.
If you’re looking to make some money, try locking up toddlers.
One for-profit prison company has found that incarcerating infants, toddlers, children, and mothers—as long as they’re undocumented immigrants—is a great way to boost their revenue by upward of $49 million over the previous year.
The latest quarterly finance report from Corrections Corporation of
America, a for-profit prison company, indicates that its contract with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement to manage a detention center packed
with immigrant mothers and children is very helpful to its bottom line.
Part of the reason their deal is so lucrative? The public isn’t particularly bothered by it.
The
company can thank President Obama. Facing enormous political pressure
and eye-grabbing headlines, the Obama administration moved last summer
to dramatically expand the federal government’s capacity for locking up
young mothers and kids.
Before last summer—when
thousands of mothers and young children fleeing gang violence and bad
governance in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador crossed the southern
border into this country—the detention of immigrant families was rare.
Antonio Ginatta, the U.S. advocacy director for Human Rights Watch,
said there were only 90 beds or fewer in facilities designated for the
detention of these immigrants. But then last summer happened,
and the number of young children—many entering the country without
parents—and young mothers crossing the border went up dramatically.
“There was no family detention in the United States, practically, a
year and a half ago,” said Ginatta. “And now we’re in the thousands.”
Click here for the full article.
Source: The Daily Beast
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