Obama's Immigration Reform Push To Begin This Month

"It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," Shakyra Diaz, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, tells HuffPo. "In order to have it at 90 percent, you need to be able to make criminals to fill it at 90 percent." Diaz can relate better than most — Ohio sold off a prison to the CCA last year after learning that they stood to save $3 million each year through the transaction. Other Buckeye State institutions have since followed suit, and one prison put itself on the market last year only for the CCA to swoop it up for $72.7 million.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the 48 states the CCA is appealing to right now have immigration laws that will ensure that the prisons will stay packed. That’s where the Corrections Corp. notes an eligibility factor for facilities that might be interested in selling. In order to be considered for purchase, the prisons approached by the CCA must be able to house no fewer than 1,000 inmates, while also guaranteeing that the facility will stay at a minimum of 90 percent of capacity during the length of their contract.

It’s the privatization of America’s prison system and with it comes an almost guaranteed promise of putting more citizens behind bars. As states fall on hard times, an offer of millions might seem like an easy sell to many, as evident by the list of facilities that have already followed through with the decision. In the end though, the payoff that goes to a billion-dollar private business comes at a cost to civil liberties of the rest of America, as citizens become less of a voice of the state and more a profitable hot commodity.

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