October 13, 2021
If it looks like a private prison, swims like a private prison, and quacks like a private prison, then it probably isn't a duck
The group with the wealth and power under capitalism—the ruling class—divides into the propertied “haves” (bourgeoisie) and the property-less “have-nots” (proletariat). The legal system is designed to maintain dominance for the haves, and exploiting/controlling/penalizing the have-nots: the vast majority of prisoners are incarcerated for crimes related to property theft in order to avoid the sphere of pauperism. Larceny-theft is routinely at the top of the crime list, far outweighing any other crime – more than 7 million reported each year, making up almost sixty percent of all reported crimes. The next most prevalent crime is burglary, another property crime.
Private prison companies lie at a nexus of mass incarceration for controlling these have-nots, where some elements of the bourgeoisie prefer capturing state funding for profit, usually Republicrats, while other elements of the bourgeoisie prefer exploiting prisoners in the existing governmental apparatus to support their bureaucrats, usually Demopublicans. Private prisons are vulnerable to these changing strategies, but Demopublicans have now apparently squared the circle: ensuring both profits and progressive optics along with work for their petite bourgeois administrators through an outrageously transparent ‘bait and switch.’
The optics: days after President Joe Biden was inaugurated, his handlers ordered the Justice Department not to renew any expiring contracts with privately operated jails and prisons, and stocks sold off of private prison contractors like CoreCivic Inc. and GEO Group Inc., the prison industry’s two major publicly traded companies.
The bait and switch: but it has come to light that Biden’s handlers are facilitating multiparty contracts allowing the federal government to avoid a direct relationship with the private prisons, as required by the letter of January’s executive order, while allowing federal dollars continue to flow to prison operators indirectly, thereby gutting its spirit.
The overview: private prison operators are signing new deals known as ‘intergovernmental agreements’ involving municipalities (cities, counties) and the federal government.
The deets: the feds agree to pass custody of inmates to munis and pays them a per-diem rate for each prisoner. The munis pay the private prisons a per-diem rate to house the prisoners, at a similar rate to what the federal government pays the munis. Private prisons pay the munis—which are transferring a large share of the federal funding to the private prisons—a ̶k̶i̶c̶k̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ “service fee” to make the deal enticing.
In sum, these three-way agreements allow the feds to hand off custody of prisoners to localities. City and county law enforcement then transfer those inmates to private detention facilities they have contracted with.
“From the private prisons’ perspective, there’s not much difference between a direct contract with the federal government and intergovernmental service contracts, except that it allows the White House to say they are not directly contracted with the private prisons,” said Joe Gomes, a senior research analyst at investment bank Noble Capital Markets.
Biden’s handlers thus continue to arrange work for their petite bourgeois administrative elites managing the contracts, as well as the bourgeois prison population managers. Call this a win with the appearance of progressivism for the ruling class, and another loss in reality for the proletariat. In other words, business as usual.
Notes
https://www.wsj.com/articles/private-prisons-still-make-money-from-federal-inmates-despite-bidens-executive-order-11633685401?mod=itp_wsj&mod=djemITP_h