How private prisons became a booming business
The numbers and policies behind the immigration-incarceration economy. Immigrant detention is now the fastest-growing form of incarceration in the United States, an increasingly lucrative business that costs taxpayers $2 billion per year. Its roots reach back to the early 1980s, with then-President Ronald Reagan’s “war on drugs” and “tough on crime” laws. The surging numbers of Central Americans fleeing civil war were an easy target for the Reagan administration’s focus on illicit drug activity, helping justify the growing use of detention as a means of immigration enforcement. Enforcement picked up steam during the Clinton administration. After 9/11, immigration policy shifted even further, from regulation to enforcement, punishment and deterrence. The result was a growing merger of the criminal justice and immigration systems. Click to view larger. Although politically popular, the criminalization strategy came under fire from those working inside the system. In 2008, Heather W...