Analysis by Emma Peca: Private Prison Corporations Want to Influence American Politics

It’s hard to overstate the importance of understanding the influence of money in politics, especially in private detention corporations. Which is why I'm incredibly proud of Emma Peca for publishing this excellent article, Private Prison Corporations Want to Influence American Politics in LA Progressive.

Emma is an outstanding MPA graduate student at Syracuse University who is working with me on immigration research.

With the truly unbelievable amount of money being made in the private detention business, it should come as no surprise that those corporations are spending money in politics to ensure that they benefit from America’s obsession with detaining immigrants.

The contracts with these corporations often enjoy guaranteed minimums, meaning that even if less asylum seekers are detained due to any variety of factors, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will still pay them for empty beds. President Biden has taken action to end the use of private prisons by the federal government, but for-profit immigrant detention facilities have been specifically excluded from these reforms.

Read Emma’s analysis here and, in the spirit of supporting emerging scholars, please help me share her work.