In the Public Interest (ITPI) released a damning report that reveals an overwhelming majority of contracts between for-profit prisons and local governments include “lockup quotas” and “low crime taxes”, language that basically guarantees a profit.

Sixty-five percent of the 62 private prison contracts ITPI analyzed included bed occupancy guarantees—whereby the state promises to keep 80 to 100 percent of private prison beds filled with prisoners at all times—and taxpayer penalties that force the state to pay for unused beds when they fail to meet an occupancy quota. 

This means that when crime falls, state and local governments locked in these contracts must either ramp up arrests for bullshit crimes to keep beds full to capacity or pay a fee at the expense of their residents. As the report highlights, lockup quotas in Colorado forced taxpayers to pay $2 million to the Corrections Corporation of America or CCA (one of the largest and most abusive private prison companies) due to a decline in crime over the last decade.

In Ohio, where crime has also been on the decline, a 90 percent occupancy quota led to “cutting corners on safety, including overcrowding, areas without secure doors and an increase in crime both inside the prison and the surrounding community,” at the Lake Erie Correctional Institution, run by CCA.

These contracts incentivize harsher sentences and higher incarceration rates for the benefit of parasitic private companies that profit from locking human beings in cages, the opposite of what we need in a country that imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation in the world.

For the more visual learners among us, ITPI created a wonderful infographic highlighting the most important aspects of their study.