A lack of oversight

CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, has been cited numerous times for abuses in its prisons. In 2010, the Kentucky governor ordered more than 400 female prisoners removed from a CCA prison after learning inmates were being denied medication and were sexually abused by guards. After an AP investigation in 2013 found that guards in Idaho’s largest prison were listed as working 48-hour shifts, CCA admitted it had understaffed the prison by thousands of hours in violation of the state contract; one prisoner had his head stomped, suffering permanent disability, after guards failed to stop a fight. In 2012, minors were abused at a GEO Group juvenile facility in Mississippi that a judge described as a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions.” Given the lack of public oversight of private prisons, said Lauren-Brooke Eisen of NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, “it is impossible to know what other injustices are being done.”