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This week’s private prison earnings calls make clear that Trump’s reign has been great for business.
“I would like to share how excited I am for and deeply proud of our team here at CoreCivic,” the company CEO, Damon T. Hininger, told investors. “Our team has always been mission and outcomes-focused, but this is such a significant moment of time in our company’s history. Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services as we are seeing right now.”
Hininger said that the company “exceeded its expectations for revenue and profit during the first quarter.” Yesterday, GEO Group, another private prison company, expressed its excitement about mass detentions and deportations of immigrants.
In addition to immigration lock-ups, CoreCivic operates jails, prisons, and “residential reentry centers,” also known as halfway houses.
“We do feel like there’s going to be a big push by this administration and DOJ leadership to really supercharge the capacity available in the private sector for community beds to really fulfill the goals and the intent of the First Step Act,” Hininger said on the call.
Trump signed the First Step Act during his first term. The legislation lets some federal prisoners shorten their sentences by participating in programming, such as therapy or drug treatment programs. Last year, the director of the federal Bureau of Prisons told a congressional committee that many people eligible for early release remained incarcerated due to a lack of space at halfway houses, although attorneys representing federal prisoners have argued that the BOP has the authority to release people on home confinement and does not have to wait for bed space to open up.
CoreCivic Chief Operating Officer Patrick D. Swindle said he is “optimistic” about potential business opportunities with the Bureau of Prisons on the “secure side,” referring to federal prisons.
“They’ve had challenges with infrastructure,” he said “It’s old and outdated, and they’ve had some staffing challenges. So we think we provide a great solution to be able to provide additional services to the BOP in our correctional facilities.”
By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
May 08, 2025
Source – www.theappeal.org
