September 9, 2011
Private prisons profitting from 9/11
On a conference call with investors less than two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Wall Street executive Steve Logan predicted a new era of unbridled growth for his industry: the for-profit prison business.
"It is clear that since Sept. 11, there's a heightened focus on detention, both on the borders and in the U.S.," Logan, the chief executive of publicly-traded prison corporation Cornell Companies, told analysts on a quarterly earnings call. "More people are gonna get caught. ... So I would say that's positive."
Logan's upbeat assessment of the post-9/11 world would prove true, as the federal government has embarked on an unprecedented campaign to round up, detain and eventually deport illegal immigrants under the guise of bolstering national security. Since Congress brought immigration enforcement under the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the number of immigrants locked up each year has nearly doubled to more than 390,000, creating a lucrative opportunity for private corporations hired to build and supervise detention centers across the country...
LINK - HuffingtonPost.com
