The Corruption of Imprisoning People for Profit

 

Hertford County, NC

According to a big investigation in today's NandO, the GEO Group, a worldwide private prison operator and impresario of confinement, "is in talks with Trump officials about reopening prisons, including the Rivers Correctional Institute in Hertford County." The facility was built in 2001, and featured multiple buildings, recreational areas, a central programs building, and a prison industries building. At the time of its closing, it housed about 1,000 Federal prisoners and employed almost 300 local residents. 

In 2021, President Biden signed an executive order phasing out federal private prison contracts, "citing a desire to reduce the financial incentive to put people in prison for profit." That was the (temporary) end of Rivers Correctional Institute. The company has reportedly and unsuccessfully tried to market its shuttered facilities to other corrections agencies. Prospects brightened considerably with the election of Donald Trump. After all, a lawyer who had been on the GEO Group payroll, Pam Bondi, was destined to preside over all American justice as Trump's Attorney General. That change of government was a lightning strike bringing plenty of rain: Just over a month after Trump’s inauguration, ICE awarded the GEO Group a 15-year contract to hold its detainees in a 1,000-bed New Jersey prison. And in June, it modified an existing GEO Group contract to repurpose more than 1,800 beds in a Georgia prison facility. According to a GEO press release, over the last eight months GEO Group has been awarded multiple government contracts, one of them worth more than $1 billion.

GEO knew how to get there:

GEO Group donated millions of dollars of political contributions through its subsidiaries, political action committee and employee contributions during the leadup to last year’s presidential election, according to the company’s 2024 political activity report. The vast majority went to Republican candidates and conservative political committees, OpenSecrets reports. That includes a $1 million donation to Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc, and a $775,000 donation to the Congressional Leadership Fund.

Hertford County is mainly a sparsely populated coastal plain way up on the Virginia border. No ocean-front to draw tourists. Not even a major road pointed at the coast. A perfect out-of-the-way and desperate-for-revenue place to put a large prison. Its potential reopening, even with the burden of hundreds of brown detainees, makes local electeds fairly giddy. The prison comes under the heading of economic development. Salaries, services, life's blood. The county seat of Winton supplies its water when the prison operates, and the town would like that income. 

According to the NandO's report, GEO Group representatives met with U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who represents the district where the prison is located, in December 2024, before the Trump admin was installed.