Okayyyy, I’ll join everyone else in responding to today’s news (instead of just sighing, gazing into middle distance). The profit incentive baked into private prisons is a mess. But you know what else is a HUGE MESS?

The revenue incentive in the federal jail market. 🧵

The federal government spends an estimated $1.3 billion to house people in a loose network of local jails. These agencies—primarily the US Marshals and ICE—are directly under federal control.

All of this federal $$ has incentivized counties to BUILD BIG when they’re thinking about adding local jail space.

The wonderful Jack Norton @jcknorton calls this “an intercounty carceral arms race... to build and bigger and bigger

As he point out in the piece, this was catalyze largely by “The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984,” which I like to “the lesser know crime Bill ™️.” After passage, the no.
of people detained by the Marshals increased 32 percent in ONE YEAR.

The fact that so many people are now held for ICE in local jails—or at least that the contracts are in place to allow that—is a legacy of this bill. And you know who was was among the bill’s biggest champions? That’s right, one @POTUS Biden.