CCA helped draft Arizona’s immigration law. CCA got the detention contracts. Here is the chain.

In December 2009, a small group of state legislators met in Washington with corporate lobbyists at a session of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Among the lobbyists were three executives from Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest private-prison company [5]. They left the meeting with a model bill called the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.” Twelve months later, that text became Arizona’s SB 1070 [1], the law that, if upheld, would fill the detention beds CCA was paid to operate. Critics called the law a license for racial profiling. Supporters called it necessary border enforcement. Almost no one writing about it at the time mentioned that the language had originated in a meeting where the people who would profit from its implementation had drafted it.

What neither side mentioned in the immediate coverage: a private prison company helped write it.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, had circulated a model bill called the “No Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigrants Act” to state legislators across the country. ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force [5], where the bill originated, included representatives from Corrections Corporation of America, now known as CoreCivic. The company stood to benefit directly from increased immigration detentions. Arizona’s SB 1070 was substantially based on that model legislation [1]. Within a year of its passage, CCA held contracts to house immigration detainees in Arizona worth tens of millions of dollars.

This is not a coincidence. It’s a business model.

The Two Companies That Run American Incarceration

GEO Group and CoreCivic together operate more than 200 facilities across the United States [6]. Their combined annual revenue sits around $4 billion [6]. They house roughly 8 percent of the total U.S. prison population [6], plus the majority of immigration detainees held by the federal government.

Both companies are publicly traded. Both describe themselves as providing cost-effective solutions for government detention needs. Both have spent decades building relationships with the legislators who set those needs.

GEO Group spends approximately $2.5 million per year on federal lobbying [3]. CoreCivic allocates around $1.5 million annually [4] to the same effort. These figures, drawn from OpenSecrets lobbying data, don’t capture state-level spending, where both companies have been equally active. They also don’t capture campaign contributions, which flow primarily to legislators who sit on judiciary and appropriations committees, exactly the committees that write sentencing laws and prison budgets.

The Occupancy Guarantee Problem

Private prison contracts routinely contain what the industry calls “lockup quotas” or “bed guarantees.” These clauses require states to keep facilities at a minimum occupancy rate, typically between 80 and 90 percent, or pay the company for unused beds regardless.

A 2013 report by In the Public Interest analyzed 62 private prison contracts and found that 41 of them contained such clauses [2]. Arizona, Louisiana, and Oklahoma had contracts requiring occupancy rates of up to 100 percent [2]. Colorado had a contract requiring 75 percent occupancy in a facility housing immigrants under contract with ICE [2].

The financial logic is straightforward. Empty beds don’t generate revenue. If a state decriminalizes marijuana possession and the prison population drops, the company bills the state for the difference. The result is a contractual structure that creates financial pressure against criminal justice reform. Legislators who want to reduce incarceration must also be willing to pay private prison companies for the privilege.

ALEC’s Legislative Assembly Line

ALEC works like a policy wholesaler. Corporations pay membership fees and participate in task forces that draft the model legislation. Legislators, overwhelmingly Republican, attend ALEC conferences, receive the model bills, and introduce them at home. The bills are pre-built with industry-favorable provisions, tested for constitutionality, and designed to replicate across dozens of state legislatures simultaneously.

For private prison companies, ALEC has been invaluable. Beyond the immigration enforcement template that contributed to SB 1070, ALEC has circulated model truth-in-sentencing legislation requiring inmates to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences, eliminating parole options and extending average stay lengths. It has pushed mandatory minimum sentencing templates that remove judicial discretion and guarantee longer sentences for drug offenses. Each of these policies increases the prison population. Each of them increases occupancy rates in private facilities.

CCA was one of ALEC’s founding corporate members [5]. GEO Group has also maintained membership. Both companies have donated to ALEC’s legislative scholarships, which fund travel for state legislators to attend conferences that distribute the model bills.

The Revolving Door

The relationship between private prison companies and government isn’t only about lobbying and campaign checks. It’s also structural.

GEO Group’s board of directors has included former members of Congress. CoreCivic has employed former state prison commissioners, former federal Bureau of Prisons officials, and former legislative staff as lobbyists and executives. The pattern is familiar from defense contracting and pharmaceutical lobbying: people move between regulator and regulated, carrying institutional knowledge of procurement processes, contract structures, and regulatory weaknesses.

In 2016, the Obama administration’s Department of Justice announced it would phase out the use of private federal prisons, citing safety concerns and cost overruns. The announcement came shortly after a DOJ Inspector General report documented higher rates of assault, disciplinary incidents, and lockdowns at private facilities compared to federal ones.

The Trump administration reversed that policy in 2017 [6]. A GEO Group subsidiary had donated $225,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC [3] during the 2016 campaign. CoreCivic stock rose 18 percent on election night [4].

Immigration Detention as a Growth Market

Federal immigration detention has become the industry’s most reliable revenue stream. ICE detention contracts with GEO Group and CoreCivic are collectively worth more than $1 billion annually [3]. Unlike state prison populations, the federal executive controls immigration detention almost entirely, meaning policy changes happen faster and the executive branch can ramp up enforcement without legislative action.

Between 2016 and 2019, the average daily population in ICE detention facilities rose from around 34,000 to more than 55,000. GEO Group and CoreCivic held contracts for the majority of that capacity. Both companies lobbied for the expansion of detention capacity and for policies, including the separation of migrant families, that critics argued the companies and their allies designed in part to drive detention numbers higher.

In 2021, the Biden administration announced it would not renew private prison contracts at the federal level [6]. That announcement has not been fully implemented. As of 2024, both companies continue to hold significant federal contracts.

The pattern that produced the private prison industry, pay legislators, capture procurement, lock in occupancy, also runs in private equity’s takeover of America’s emergency rooms.

What Changes This

The through-line in all of this is money. Not ideology, not public safety philosophy, not honest disagreement about the role of punishment in criminal justice. The private prison industry has a direct financial interest in high incarceration rates and has spent decades building the policy infrastructure to maintain them.

Meaningful reform would require, at minimum: eliminating occupancy guarantee clauses from government contracts; banning direct campaign contributions from prison companies to legislators who vote on prison appropriations and sentencing laws; and building competitive procurement processes that reward rehabilitation outcomes rather than occupancy rates.

None of these reforms are particularly radical. Most democratic countries with private prison sectors have adopted some version of them. The U.S. has not, because the companies that profit from the current system have been effective at preventing it.