Private-prison operator sees bottom-line boost at city’s jail
Youngstown facility saw revenue grow $10.7M in 2016-17.
The Northeast YOUNGSTOWN — Ohio Correctional Center, where five faith leaders were arrested for trespassing last week, is one of the key drivers of growth for CoreCivic Inc., the Nashville, Tenn.-based company that owns 94 correctional, detention and residential facilities nationwide.
Despite public perceptions about private prisons, CoreCivic says it plays a necessary but limited role on the U.S. immigration system, and has served both Democratic and Republican administrations for more than 30 years.
“While we know this is a highly charged, emotional issue for many people, much of the information that has been shared about our company is wrong, resulting in some people reaching misguided conclusions about what we do,” spokesman Rodney King said via email. “Our sole job is to help the government solve problems in ways it could not do alone — to help manage unprecedented humanitarian crises, dramatically improve the standard of care for vulnerable people, and meet other critical needs efficiently and innovatively.”
The clergy members and organizers at the demonstration Aug. 20, who were refused the chance to meet with and administer communion to detained immigrants, said they were acting independently of the activists who protested at CoreCivic’s headquarters in Nashville on Aug. 6. Those protesters formed human chains to block entrances and disrupt business at its offices, and brought concrete-filled barrels that said CoreCivic “profits from separating families,” and “Seeking asylum is not a crime,” according to The Tennessean.
CoreCivic stresses that it does not house or operate shelters for unaccompanied minors. “We don’t enforce immigration laws, arrest anyone who may in violation of immigration laws, or have any say whatsoever in any individual’s deportation or release,” it said.
“At CoreCivic, we care deeply about the people entrusted to our care and work hard to provide them with a safe, humane and appropriate environment while they prepare for the next steps in their immigration process. All of our facilities, including Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, are monitored very closely by the government,” including by more than 500 ICE officials assigned to its detention facilities to ensure “real-time accountability,” King said.
Nevertheless, the company has clearly benefited from the change in administrations.
Under former President Barack Obama, CoreCivic’s business outlook had been threatened by his decisions to house fewer federal inmates in private prisons, because of reports that they had more safety and security problems than government-run facilities. CoreCivic’s share price dropped, and it laid off employees company-wide, including 185 from the Youngstown prison.
But when Trump was elected, with his well-known preferences for private prisons and harsher immigration penalties, CoreCivic’s stock price soared. The day after Trump became president, CoreCivic’s stock price jumped 43 percent to $20.31 per share (it now trades at more than $25 per share).
One Connecticut investment firm even called CoreCivic the stock “best poised to benefit from President Trump’s election” and his administration’s contracts with for-profit prisons.
In December 2016, CoreCivic announced a new renewable contract with the federal government to help ICE with unspecified “detention needs” at its Youngstown prison, prompting the company to start hiring again. A few months later, it won a contract with the state of Ohio for another 996 offenders in Youngstown, for a term through June 2032 with unlimited renewal options.