From Private Prisons to Private Detention: Visualizing the Business of Immigration Enforcement

Abstract

The United States runs the largest immigrant detention system in the world, and it relies on private companies to do so. This visualization considers how private prison companies have made immigrant detention a central part of their business. I compile and report 20 years of revenues for the two dominant private prison firms in the United States. The revenues are disaggregated by customer and presented as proportional stacked area graphs, which show changes in the composition of companies’ revenues. The graphs reveal that revenues from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have increased, respectively, fourfold and sevenfold for CoreCivic and The GEO Group, and they now account for 30 percent and 43 percent, respectively, of corporate revenues. These firms’ growing reliance on ICE revenue coupled with ICE’s reliance on private contractors raises questions about democracy, governance, and punishment.