After Trump reversed Obama's restrictions on private federal prisons, states started banning them instead

Back in 2016, it looked like the private prison industry would finally die, thanks to an Obama memo directing the DoJ to reduce their use for federal prisoners, but the sector retrenched, doubling down on the slave-labor camps it maintained for US immigration authorities, and aggressively lobbying states to jail their citizens in private prisons.

It's hard to overstate how terrible the private prison sector is, but here's a couple of examples: a paralyzed prisoner chewed his own fingers off when his Arizona private prison (operated by Corizon Correctional) refused to treat his incredible pain. Corrections Corporation of America's Louisiana prisons are so violent and corrupt that prisoners are literally starving in violent, hellish cages. Management and Training Corporation's private prisons guards (who receive less than 3 weeks' training!) watched as prisoners beat a shackled man they were transporting.

With the election of Donald Trump, things started looking up for America's gulag sector, with Core Civic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) opening slave labor camps to house asylum seekers, torturing those who refused to work; these detention facilities were so violent that prisoners begged to be kept in solitary confinement, and Uncle Sugar started handing out $1b, no-bid contracts with 100% occupancy guarantees.

As business boomed, the sector showered Republican lawmakers with cash Read the rest