您也许会纳闷：犯罪减少与入狱人数下降时，那些承诺对私营监狱入监率维持在80%或90%的州将会怎样？以科罗拉多州为例。该州的犯罪率在过去的十年里下降了三分之一。而且自从2009年开始，五家州立监狱已停止运行，因为不再需要它们了。其它州立设施则有更多的监狱空着床铺。可是，该州还是选择让那些床铺空着，因为民主党出身的州长约翰·希肯鲁泊与CCA达成一个协议——反而向CCA的三家位于科罗拉多的监狱投送3330名囚犯。科罗拉多州的纳税人买单只为让那些州立监狱闲置。三月，科罗拉多刑事司法改革联盟执行理事克里斯蒂·多娜估算，该州用CCA的私营监狱取代自己的州立监狱至少浪费了纳税人200万美元的钱财。
无论犯罪上升或下降，私营监狱运营商均能让美元滚滚而来，这只是其中一例而已。不出人意料的是，为了公众利益的报告呼吁县级、州级政府拒绝引入监狱容量标准甚至用新的立法废除该等标准。报告称，“随着政府优先考虑从如此之多的不同方面吸引公共资金，要纳税人赞助空置无用的监狱床铺在财务上是说不通的。”
参考资料：
《三振出局法》（Three StrikesLaw）规定，如果一个人已经有两次入狱的纪录，那么第三次再犯时无论罪行多么轻微，也要被判处20年（有的州规定为25年）以上乃至终身监禁的严厉刑罚，而且不得保释。
This Is How Private Prison Companies MakeMillions Even When Crime Rates Fall
—By Andy Kroll | Thu Sep. 19, 2013 9:43 AM GMT
CCA.com
We are living in boom times for the privateprison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation'slargest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Lastyear, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate theirstate-funded prisons. But what made CCA's pitch to those governors so audaciousand shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clausedemanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percentfull at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.
Occupancy requirements, as it turns out,are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In thePublic Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for privateprisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In thePublic Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancyrequirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilitiesbetween 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising orfalling, the state must keep those beds full. (The report was funded by grantsfrom the Open Society Institute and Public Welfare, according to a spokesman.)
All the big private prison companies—CCA,GEO Group, and the Management and Training Corporation—try to include occupancyrequirements in their contracts, according to the report. States with thehighest occupancy requirements include Arizona(three prison contracts with 100 percent occupancy guarantees), Oklahoma (three contracts with 98 percent occupancyguarantees), and Virginia(one contract with a 95 percent occupancy guarantee). At the same time, privateprison companies have supported and helped write "three-strike" and"truth-in-sentencing" laws that drive up prison populations. Theirlivelihoods depend on towns, cities, and states sending more people to prisonand keeping them there.
You might be wondering: What happens whencrime drops and prison populations dwindle in states that agreed to keep theirprivate prisons 80 percent or 90 percent full? Consider Colorado. The state's crime rate has sunk bya third in the past decade, and since 2009, five state-run prisons haveshuttered because they weren't needed. Many more prison beds remain empty inother state facilities. Yet the state chose not to fill those beds becauseDemocratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and CCA cut a deal to instead send 3,330prisoners to CCA's three Coloradoprisons. Coloradotaxpayers foot the bill for leaving those state-run prisons underused. InMarch, Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal JusticeReform Coalition, estimated that the state wasted at least $2 million intaxpayer money using CCA's prisons instead of its own.
That's just one example of how privateprison companies keep the dollars rolling in, whether crime is rising orwaning. Not surprisingly, In the Public Interest's report calls on local andstate governments to refuse to include occupancy requirements and even ban suchrequirements with new legislation. "With governmental priorities pullingpublic funds in so many different directions, it makes no financial sense fortaxpayers to fund empty prison beds," the report says.
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