Thread by @BiancaTylek

$Prison 1: @CoreCivic

Founded in 1983, CoreCivic is the nation's oldest private prison corp. It generates nearly $2Bn in revenue each year with over half coming from federal contracts despite claims from the Biden admin that it has rolled back private prison use. 🧵

CoreCivic founder Tom Beasley, fmr Chairman of TN GOP, once said, "You just sell [prisons] like you were selling cars or real estate or hamburgers."

Other founders incl Rob Crants, Beasley's college roommate & Don Hutto, fmr warden who used prison labor on his family plantation.

CoreCivic's first private prison was a motel it transformed into an immigration detention center. Immigration detention has rescued the corp from bankruptcy several times and continues to makeup roughly 25% of its business.
static1.squarespace.com/static/58e127c…

IMPORTANT NOTE: Private prisons make up only about 8% of all prison and jail beds, but nearly 80% of immigration detention beds.
aclu.org/news/immigrant…

In the '80s and '90s, CoreCivic executives were in leadership on ALEC's criminal justice task force, where they worked with conservative legislators to draft model legislation for mandatory minimums, three strikes, and truth in sentencing that exponentially grew incarceration.

Today, CoreCivic measures its revenue in compensated "man-days," revenue earned per person per night. In 2020, CoreCivic was compensated for over 20 million man-days.

CoreCivic, and other private prisons, include occupancy guarantees, as high as 90%, in a majority of their contracts. These guarantees drive govts to send people to their facilities by requiring govts to pay for unused beds.
prisonlegalnews.org/news/2015/jul/…

But CoreCivic also claims that there are a lot of factors that can negatively impact its profitability that are out of its control, such as, a reduction in crime rates, sentencing and parole reform, the expansion of alts to incarceration, and decriminalization.

In 2013, CoreCivic became a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), which meant that the company did not have to pay federal taxes so long as it paid out 90% of profit in dividends to investors. For years, it paid ZERO federal taxes.

But its REIT structure left it vulnerable...

Its REIT status made CoreCivic dependent on debt for growth. So, in 2019, advocates pressured the 8 major banks that made up 87% of the industry's financing to stop giving private prisons money. Within a year, CoreCivic was forced to drop its REIT status.
truthout.org/articles/priva…

Over the past 5 years, CoreCivic's stock has plummeted 67%. The corp is now trying to pivot into community corrections, more specifically day reporting centers, which were heavily funded by the First Step Act.

But CoreCivic hasn't given up on private prisons. It continues to launch major construction projects, often failing (more on that another day).

Now, it just puts out ESG reports & partners with other private prison corps to lead the private prison trade assoc @TheDay1Alliance.

CoreCivic also recruits many former correctional administrators and government officials, including the son of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, to serve as board members, executives, and lobbyists.
corecivic.com/investors/boar…

What can you do? Tell @POTUS to end ALL federal contracts with private prisons NOW. Tag $Prison.

Tomorrow we'll talk about GEO Group, the nation's largest private prison corp.

NOTE: This series will cover A LOT MORE than just private prisons, we're just starting here.