http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/private-prison-quotas_n_3953483.html
Less than a year later, the company that runs the prison, Management & Training Corp., threatened to sue the state. A line in their contract guaranteed that the prison would remain 97 percent full. They argued they had lost nearly $10 million from the reduced inmate population.
State officials renegotiated the contract, but ended up paying $3 million for empty beds as the company continued to address problems, according to state documents and local news accounts.
Far from the exception, Arizona's contractually obligated promise to fill prison beds is a common provision in a majority of America's private prison contracts, according to a public records analysis released today by the advocacy group In the Public Interest. The group reviewed more than 60 contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments across the country, and found language mentioning quotas for prisoners in nearly two-thirds of those analyzed.
The prison bed guarantees range between minimums of 70 percent occupancy in a California prison to 100 percent occupancy requirements at some Arizona prisons. Most of the contracts had language mandating that at least 90 percent of prison beds be filled.
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I also recommend Michelle Alexander's
The New Jim Crow, and Douglas Blackmon's
Slavery By Another Name
Slavery By Another Name also has an online video.
http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/pbs-film/
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