Private prison companies are celebrating as states nationwide adopt stricter sentencing laws, anticipating an increase in prison populations and higher profits for investors, Tennessee Lookout reports. From Mississippi to California, many states have taken a tough on crime” tack over the past two years in a strengthening backlash to criminal justice reform efforts after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. These laws, advocates warn, threaten to reverse years of progress in the fight against mass incarceration. Instead, they would again trap people in prison for lengthy terms, ripping apart communities and exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequality, while enriching private firms that manage prisons and their shareholders. Tennessee exemplifies the recent sentencing crackdown and the potential benefits for private interests, hosting one of the world’s largest prison companies. Since 2022, lawmakers in Tennessee have enacted a slate of harsh sentencing laws expected to increase the state’s spending on incarceration by tens of millions of dollars annually.
On May 28, Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a measure ending "sentence reduction credits" in Tennessee, which reward inmates with shorter terms for good behavior. This law, affecting future offenses, is expected to substantially boost state spending on incarceration. One key beneficiary is Tennessee’s private prison contractor, CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, one of the world’s largest prison companies, which will almost certainly see new profits as a direct result of the legislation. The company, which spends millions of dollars a year lobbying both in states and on a federal level, has begun telling its investors that harsh sentencing laws across the U.S. will soon translate to bigger profits from the 70-plus prisons it runs nationwide. Damon Hininger, CoreCivic’s CEO, said he expected this development to lead to “pretty significant increases” in prison populations — good news for the prison company, which is often paid by how many inmates are housed in prison at a given time. Already, he said, higher occupancy rates in CoreCivic-managed prisons had led to, in turn, “strong financial results” for investors.