Correction request from Corrections Corporation of America

Correction request from Corrections Corporation of America

I am writing on behalf of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to request a correction to the June 11 piece “Prison Divestment Campaign condemns tax-breaks for private prisons & Million Shares Club at REIT Conference”

(https://thewestsidegazette.com/prison-divestment-campaign-condemns-tax-breaks-for-private-prisons-million-shares-club-at-reit-conference/). This piece contains false information about our company.

The piece states,

“For-profit prison industry leaders, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) together with the Million Shares Club (major investors owning over one million shares combined of CCA and GEO stock) are largely responsible for racist laws that target people of color and immigrants for incarceration, and expand the police state in poor communities.”

This statement is false, as it pertains to our company. While we cannot speak for the other organizations the author mentions, it is CCA’s longstanding policy not to draft, lobby for or in any way promote policies that determine the basis or duration for an individual’s incarceration or detention. This includes both our internal and external government-relations teams, and we take this commitment seriously.

We respectfully request a correction to the inaccuracy in this piece. Please feel free to contact me at the information below to speak further about this issue.

Thank you,

Jonathan Burns

Director, Public Affairs

Corrections Corporation of America

My rebuttal to CCA’s statement: 

CCA’s attempt to downplay its active business in creating criminalized communities of color is disgusting on top of its shameful practices of profiting off the bodies of poor people of color.

It is well-documented that CCA was involved in the drafting and promotion of Arizona’s racist SB 1070 law, and has lobbied shadily but extensively around the immigrant detention bed quota which mandates that 34,000 immigrants are detained each night. CCA was also a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council in the 1990s while ALEC promoted mandatory minimums, truth-in-sentencing, and three-strikes laws across the country that continue to drive prison privatization and criminalization of communities of color. Recent studies highlight that private prisons, including CCA’s, disproportionately, incarcerate people of color, and hold those prisoners for longer. CCA opened the largest detention center in the country last year, a 2400 bed facility that is exclusively designed to hold immigrant women and children from Central America’s that is 2400 poor, brown women seeking asylum who are being detained in “soul-destroying” conditions. Since achieving REIT status in 2013, all CCA’s profits made from destroying communities of color and separating families have been tax free.

Enlace’s National Prison Divestment Campaign calls for an end to tax breaks for prison profiteers and an end to CCA’s money in politics. After CCA’s disgusting lobbying practices to criminalize people of color came into public attention, Pershing Square, CCA’s largest investor in 2011, and the United Methodist Church fully divested their CCA holdings. Enlace calls on all public and private institutions to divest as a way to limit CCA’s lobbying abilities.

Jamie Trinkle

Campaign Coordinator

Private Prison Divestment Campaign