People will read that headline and come away with the impression that private prisons are making billions. They're expenses are most likely scaling with their revenue.
If your concern is that private prisons exist or that detention is climbing, the dollar figure is secondary to other, better measures. Instead, revenue is (mis)used to give yhe impression that people are getting rich off of this and, while that may be true, the relevant number is the increase in income, not revenue.
In short, NPR isn't above clickbait that's biased towards their audiences.
"Swindle said that CoreCivic's total revenue went up by just over 27% this spring compared to the same quarter last year, for a total of $684.9 million."
> give yhe impression that people are getting rich off of this
CoreCivic is a public company, so we can see that the C-suite each earns over $1m annually in cash compensation. the Chief Development officer earns more cash compensation than the person holding the same title at Hilton, a company worth over 20x more.
Then, we can look at the insider roster to see that the CEO currently holds over $10 million in stock, the heads of HR and corrections each hold over $5 million, etc.
People should get the impression that people are getting rich off this because people are getting rich off this.
> Propensity score matching and regression analyses of the National Inmate Survey are used to examine individuals’ experiences and perceptions of environmental quality in public versus private prisons across key domains of prison life, with an emphasis on needs, behaviors, victimization, and attitudes. No differences are identified for women. Males in private prisons are more likely than men in public prisons to perceive there to be inadequate staffing and are less likely to report maintaining ties with people outside of prison. Men in private prisons are also less likely to report crowding to be an issue.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361439680_Private_V....
It is “for-profit prisons create a system with a financial incentive to increase the number of incarcerated people”.
A unique phenomenon that only exists in this industry and is clearly the reason you feel opposed to people performing the same sort of analysis they would on other businesses...
Also, nobody would assume a company with 1.4B in rev is "making billions" as that would be impossible based on their revenue being less than 2 billion.
Either way - publicly-run or private contractor, if the government is a good steward of public funds, they'll monitor well to avoid waste and remove people who are trying to unjustly enrich themselves. And if the officials are incompetent or corrupt themselves, they'll fail to recognize when those things are happen, or participate themselves. I don't see a big difference in public vs. private unless I imagine a fantasy government run only by officials who are smart and highly ethical.
raoulj•1h ago