Increase in inmates opens door to private prisons
Source: By Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times (CA), August 24, 2007
...... Childress is a part of a first wave of about 700 male convicts that California has shipped to privately owned and operated prisons in Arizona, Tennessee and Mississippi. "I feel good, like I could do another 10 years," he said, half-jokingly. The nation's big private prison companies like it too. Having long lusted after a share of California's 173,000-inmate population, they now foresee a steady stream of business. Depending on the outcome of legal challenges, California could be "one of the longtime drivers of growth for the private prison industry," industry analyst Kevin Campbell said.
...... For decades, these companies attempted to win contracts to house convicts in privately owned or leased in-state prisons, only to see their efforts thwarted by the wealthy, politically influential California prison guards union.