Private Prisons

What sort of criminal is the target of most federal prosecutions? Mobsters? Bank robbers? No: illegal immigrants. And where do they go? To private prisons, for whom America's immigration system is a giant profit center. A new report from the ACLU takes a deep look at Criminal Alien Requirement [CAR] prisons—privately run federal prisons designed to house people convicted of breaking immigrations laws. You might be shocked to learn how big of a business this has become. From the report: Nationwide, more than half of all federal criminal prosecutions initiated in fiscal year 2013 were for unlawfully crossing the border into the United States—an act that has traditionally been treated as a civil offense resulting in deportation, rather than as a criminal act resulting in incarceration in a federal prison. This is dramatically changing who enters the federal prison system. The tipping point came in 2009, when more people entered federal prison for immigration offenses than for violent, weapons, and property offenses combined—and the number has continued to rise each year since. Thanks to very deliberate choices on the part of our legal system, more immigration violations now end with prison, rather than with deportation.