The world’s largest private prison company. It owns and operates prisons and jails, including immigration jails and “community corrections” centers, and uses forced prison labor. It also provides e-carceration technologies, transportation, and other services as part of the criminal punishment system.
CoreCivic Inc, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, is a Nashville-based company that owns, leases, and operates prisons; jails, including immigration jails; and residential reentry centers in the United States. As of 2023, it operates 43 prisons and jails, 39 of which it owns, with a total capacity of 65,000 beds. This makes CoreCivic the largest private owner of prisons and jails, including immigration jails, in the U.S.
In 2023, CoreCivic generated 52% of its annual revenue from federal prison and immigration authorities, including primarily U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Marshals Services (USMS), and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The rest of the company’s revenue derived mostly from contracts with state and local government agencies.
Between 2013 and 2020, CoreCivic was incorporated as a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), which meant it was not subject to federal corporate income taxes. As a REIT, the company was required to distribute 90% of its income to stockholders, making it reliant on short-term loans from banks to fund its growth. Following announcements by most major U.S. banks that they would stop financing private prison companies, the company reorganized as a taxable corporation in January 2021.
Private Prisons
In 1984, CoreCivic became the first U.S. company to build and operate a private prison. The company operates its prisons under federal, state, and county contracts under three business models. Under the first, the company owns and manages prisons; under the second, it manages government-owned prisons through manage-only contracts; and under the third, it leases some of its prisons to third parties for use by government agencies.
CoreCivic operates 43 prisons and jails, including immigration jails, in the U.S. as of 2023. The company owns 39 of these, while four are government-owned but operated by CoreCivic. These include prisons and jails operated on behalf of ICE, USMS, and/or state Departments of Corrections, some of which are empty (“idle”).
In January 2021, President Biden issued an executive order ending federal use of private prisons. CoreCivic reported this as a major risk factor for its investors. The company has since sought ways to circumvent limitations to its federal contracts by contracting with county and state facilities that hold federal prisoners. For example, in May 2021, when one of its contracts with the USMS expired, CoreCivic signed a contract with Mahoning County, Ohio, to hold people detained by the agency.
CoreCivic’s prisons have long faced allegations of inhumane living conditions, excessive use of force, prolonged use of solitary confinement, forced prison labor (see more below), medical negligence, physical and sexual abuse, spying and voyeurism, overcrowding, understaffing, and civil rights violations.
In addition to its operations in the U.S., CoreCivic owns a 50% stake in AgeCroft Prison Management, a joint venture with Sodexo. Through this venture, the company co-operates HM Prison Forest Bank in Salford, England, on behalf of the U.K. government. CoreCivic constructed the prison in 2000 and will manage it until 2025.
Immigration Jails
CoreCivic has owned and managed private immigration jails since its inception. In fact, the company’s first prison in 1984 was a Houston motel that was hastily remodeled to incarcerate immigrants. As of 2024, the company owns and/or manages 16 immigration jails on behalf of ICE and USMS. Combined, these jails incarcerate up to 15,987 people.
ICE is the single largest client of CoreCivic, responsible for 30% of the company’s total revenue in 2023. Following the Trump administration’s 2018 announcement of its “zero-tolerance” immigration policy and plans to add 15,000 more beds to facilitate family detention, CoreCivic’s stock prices increased by 13%. The company’s CEO reported to shareholders that these policies have created “the most robust kind of sales environment [the company] has seen in probably 10 years.” In 2020, CoreCivic renewed a contract with ICE for 10 years, ostensibly to last through a two-term Democratic presidency. The following year, President Biden signed an executive order ending the federal use of private prisons, though this order exempted ICE.
CoreCivic lied about its involvement in family separation. Between 2014-2024, the company operated ICE’s largest immigration jail, the South Texas Family Residential Center, in Dilley, Texas. The jail, which CoreCivic leases from its owner, Target Hospitality, incarcerated up to 2,400 people and was designated for mothers and children until 2021. In 2024, ICE closed down this jail.
In 2020, CoreCivic filed a defamation lawsuit in an attempt to silence reporting on its participation in family separation. The lawsuit was dismissed, finding that the company “did, in fact, operate detention facilities for parents separated from their children.” ICE released the last families that were held at Dilley in 2021 and started using the prison to jail adults.
Like its other prisons, CoreCivic’s immigration jails have been implicated in numerous human rights abuses, including sexual and physical abuse, forced labor, medical neglect, excessive use of solitary confinement, deprivation of food and water, and transfers to “harsher facilities” or deportations of individuals who protest these abuses. A 2020 congressional investigation found that CoreCivic’s negligence and systemic failures in medical care resulted in various injuries and the deaths of at least two other immigrants in 2017 and 2018.
Prison Labor
CoreCivic routinely uses prison labor as part of its operations, paying incarcerated people as little as 10 cents per hour to work as groundskeepers, janitors, landscapers, food servers, painters, orderlies, barbers, shoe shiners, and education or library aides. These jobs are exempt from most of the workplace protections and benefits that apply to non-incarcerated workers. This cheap, or sometimes free, labor saves CoreCivic millions of dollars each year.
Some people incarcerated by CoreCivic work for specialized industries, including carpentry, construction, masonry, plumbing, and electrical engineering. The company’s Crowley County Correctional Facility in Colorado, for example, operates a carpentry training program, which makes furniture for the non-profit Habitat for Humanity. Because they are labeled “students,” workers in the program are not compensated for their labor.
While CoreCivic portrays prison jobs as “voluntary work programs” or vocational training, some workers have been forced to perform labor under the threat of punishment. For example, a 2020 lawsuit filed by four individuals incarcerated at one of CoreCivic’s Colorado prisons alleged that they were forced to work for 42 cents per day. Refusal to comply with work assignments, such as sweeping kitchen floors for 10 cents per hour, resulted in the loss of visitation, good time earnings, and commissary access.
In another case, people incarcerated at CoreCivic’s Northwest New Mexico Correctional Center were reportedly forced to sew face coverings and other personal protective gear at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Although the New Mexico Department of Corrections claimed that those who made these garments did so voluntarily, its own policy states that individuals may be assigned work “without their consent…in order to meet the Department’s needs for inmate labor.”
Forced labor extends to CoreCivic’s immigration jails, where immigrants perform much of the day-to-day maintenance of the jails that incarcerate them. They are forced to wash laundry, clean, prepare and serve meals, cater law enforcement events, perform cervical work, provide barber services, manage jail libraries, and maintain the jails’ exteriors and landscaping. Regardless of how many hours they work, most report being paid only $1 per day. As such, forced labor programs at CoreCivic’s immigration jails are often referred to as “Dollar-a-Day'' programs.
Between 2017 and 2019 alone, CoreCivic was sued at least six times by immigrants who were forced to work in its jails. Two lawsuits, Owino v. CoreCivic and Gonzales v. CoreCivic, were filed in 2017 in California; three others, Barrientos v. CoreCivic, Ndambi v. CoreCivic, and Martha Gonzales v. CoreCivic, were filed in 2018 in Georgia, New Mexico, and Texas, respectively; and another was filed in 2019 in San Diego.
Five of these lawsuits alleged that CoreCivic’s prison labor program in its immigration jails—which the company has claimed is a “Voluntary Work Program”—violates the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s prohibition of forced labor. In November 2023, Barrientos v. CoreCivic was settled. As part of the agreement, CoreCivic must notify all detained immigrants participating in the work program at its Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., “of their rights, including their right to refuse to work,” and “the right to prompt monetary compensation, relevant training, necessary safety equipment and respect from staff.” Ndambi v. CoreCivic was dismissed in 2021, and the other cases are ongoing as of September 2024.
According to these lawsuits, detained immigrants who refused to work were threatened with punishment and the loss of basic necessities. CoreCivic requires these individuals to purchase everyday items, including soap, blankets, and toilet paper, from the company’s commissary, in addition to paying for phone calls. For many, the only way to afford basic necessities and phone calls is to participate in work programs. Those who refuse to work double shifts or work while sick, as well as those who protest unsafe conditions, are threatened with solitary confinement, the loss of family visitation, and criminal prosecution.
Furthermore, individuals who refuse to work may be forced to remain in open-dorm housing units instead of safer, more private, two-person cells. Immigrants refer to these open dormitories as “El Gallinero,” or “the Chicken Coop” because of their overcrowded living quarters and harsh conditions.
CoreCivic’s use of forced labor extends beyond its prisons and jails to the company’s residential reentry centers. For example, in 2020, Denver councilwoman reported that she had received letters from residents and former employees of CoreCivic-owned halfway houses alleging forced labor.
Community Corrections and Residential Reentry Centers
CoreCivic is the second-largest private owner and provider of “community corrections” services in the U.S. As of 2023, it owns and operates 23 residential reentry centers (halfway houses) through contracts with the BOP and state and county agencies. These centers can hold up to 4,669 people who are either in the final weeks of their sentence or who have been diverted there as an “alternative” to incarceration.
CoreCivic began its expansion into the “community corrections” industry in 2013, with the acquisition of Correctional Alternatives Inc, a small company specializing in residential reentry programs and “home confinement” in San Diego. This expansion was, in large part, a strategic response to increased public scrutiny surrounding the use of private prisons in the U.S.
Between 2015 and 2016, CoreCivic aggressively expanded this side of its business by acquiring Avalon Correctional Services Inc, Correctional Management Inc, and four facilities formerly owned by Community Education Centers Inc. In 2019, CoreCivic acquired Rehabilitation Services Inc, which comprised two residential reentry centers in Virginia that serve the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
In 2015, CoreCivic stated that the “residential reentry space is an attractive place for [it] to be overall,” and that its continued expansion into the industry will build upon the capacity of its prisons, provide “attractive real estate investment[s],” and offer “solutions” to government agencies that may be resistant to the private prison industry.
Like its prisons, CoreCivic’s residential reentry centers have long-documented histories of abuse, neglect, mismanagement, and poor conditions. In 2019, for example, Colorado inspectors found that CoreCivic staff at two halfway houses failed to properly document 39 medical emergencies and 15 other serious incidents, eight of which were related to Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) standards. Residents and former employees of the centers also complained of the facilities’ unsanitary conditions, lack of sufficient food, and use of forced labor. Other centers have reportedly been plagued by poor conditions, including bed bug infestations, for years, and several deaths have been reported at other CoreCivic halfway houses, including in 2016 and 2017.
E-Carceration
Complementing its expansion into the “community corrections” industry, CoreCivic has also acquired several “electronic monitoring,” or e-carceration, companies over the years.
In 2018, CoreCivic acquired two such companies: Recovery Monitoring Solutions (RMS) and Rocky Mountain Offender Management Systems (RMOMS). RMS sells GPS tracking devices (such as ankle shackles), remote alcohol monitoring technologies equipped with facial recognition, and other surveillance tools to courts and other government agencies. As of 2019, the company claims that it monitors more than 33,200 people. RMOMS provides GPS monitoring devices and alcohol/drug testing technologies to more than 155 government agencies across eight states.
CoreCivic claims that its electronic monitoring systems and drug/alcohol testing technologies offer an “alternative to incarceration,” keeping individuals from returning to prison or from being incarcerated in the first place. However, activists, legal advocates, prison industry researchers, and individuals who have been placed under such monitoring and surveillance have argued that, instead of creating an alternative to incarceration, these technologies have created a new form of incarceration: open-air digital prisons.
Transportation and Deportations: TransCor
CoreCivic provides “prisoner and detainee transportation,” including deportation services, to federal, state, and local prison agencies through its subsidiary TransCor America, which it acquired in 1994. Serving over 2,000 agencies across the U.S. since 1990, TransCor is one of the largest prison transportation corporations in the country.
Over the years, TransCor has faced numerous accusations that its drivers have physically and sexually assaulted incarcerated individuals during transport. A 2020 lawsuit, for example, alleged that TransCor drivers’ negligence resulted in the death of Roxsana Hernandez, an incarcerated woman who was transported 11 hours from San Diego to a CoreCivic prison in New Mexico. After allegedly being denied access to a restroom, adequate medical care, and sufficient food and water during the journey, Hernandez died just days after arriving in New Mexico. Other allegations of TransCor sexually, physically, and emotionally abusing its passengers span some 30 years.
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In April 2021, Barclays Capital pulled out as the lead underwriter for a bond that would have provided an estimated $3 billion for Alabama state to lease two new prisons from CoreCivic. Barclays decision followed mounting criticism as this private prison bond came two years after the bank pledged to no longer finance private prison companies.
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In March 2021, Canada’s largest public sector pension fund, PSP, sold all 600,000 of its shares in CoreCivic and GEO Group. This was following a public campaign led by the Public Service Alliance of Canada, a union that represents the majority of federal employees.
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In April 2020, Danish pension funds PKA, which runs pension funds in the social and healthcare sector, and Lærernes Pension, the Danish teachers pension fund, divested from CoreCivic and GEO group.
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In October 2019, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest pension fund in the U.S., announced that it will sell its stocks of private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic.
- In August 2019, PNC Bank became the seventh major bank to announce that it would not no longer finance private prisons and immigrant detention centers, including private prison companies CoreCivic and GEO Group.
- On August 6, 2019 the Denver City Council voted to not renew future contracts with private prison companies CoreCivic and GEO Group to operate halfway houses in the city. The future contracts were directed to community corrections facilty operations and would have been worth $10.6 million.
- On July 31, 2019, Barclays PLC announced that it will stop providing future financing to companies that manage private prisons and immigration holding facilities, joining other major lenders in shunning the industry.
- On July 15, 2019, Fifth Third Bank became the sixth major bank to announce that it would not provide future financing to companies that manage private prisons and immigration holding facilities, including CoreCivic. The decision came at the heels of SunTrust Bank and BNP Paribas' decisions to end future financing of private prison companies.
- On July 12, 2019, BNP Paribas announced it will no longer provide future financing for US private prison operators including CoreCivic. BNP Paribas became the fifth major bank and first foreign bank to distance itself from the industry, announcing the decision only days after SunTrust Bank's decision to end future financing of the private prison industry.
- On July 8, 2019, SunTrust Bank, the fourth largest bank in the U.S., announced that "Following an ongoing and deliberate process, SunTrust has decided not to provide future financing to companies that manage private prisons and immigration holding facilities." SunTrust will maintain its contractual obligations with CoreCivic until 2023. SunTrust's decision follows three other major US banks deciding to end future contractual relations with CoreCivic and GEO Group.
- On July 5, 2019, it was revealed that the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) which manages $299 billion USD in pension funds, has quietly removed CoreCivic and GEO Group from its list of foreign public equity holdings. In December 2018, the CPPIB held nearly $8 million USD in GEO Group and CoreCivic stock. Federal MP Charlie Angus argued that public pressure convinced the CPPIB to drop its holdings. Advocacy groups SumOfUs and LeadNow collected more than 55,000 signatures calling CPPIB to divest GEO Group and CoreCivic.
- On March 5th, 2019 JPMorgan announced that it would no longer finance private operators of prisons and detention centers, citing the bank's ongoing evaluations of the costs and benefits of serving different industries.
- On December 31, 2018, Wells Fargo's Annual Business Standards Report described how as part of the company's environmental and social due diligence, its "credit exposure to private prison companies has significantly decreased and is expected to continue to decline." On March 12, 2019, Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan declared that the bank decided two years ago to end its business relationships with CoreCivic. A bank's spokesperson later confirmed that Wells Fargo had "cut ties" with CoreCivic.
- On November 7, 2018, the Teachers’ Retirement Board of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System voted to direct investment staff to remove the Fund’s holdings in the two U.S. publicly-held companies that operate private prisons: CoreCivic and GEO Group.
- On July 17, 2018, the Metro Nashville City Council voted to pass a resolution to not invest or contribute to any private company going forward. The resolution specifically targeted CoreCivic.
- On July 13, 2018, New York State announced that it will fully divest from private prisons and private immigrant detention center corporations, becoming the first in the country to eliminate private prison stock holdings in CoreCivic and GEO Group. The campaign was led by Make the Road New York with the support of Enlace.
- On October 26, 2017, the Philadelphia Board of Pensions and Retirement divested $1.2 million from private prison companies, including The GEO Group, Inc., CoreCivic, Inc., and G4S plc.
- In August 2017, Cincinnati City Council proposed divesting $2.5 million from companies involved in private prisons, stating that the city "should not support an 'immoral' system." The companies the city is proposing to divest from include G4S, CoreCivic, and the GEO Group.
- On June 8, 2017, New York City's pension funds divested $48 million from private prison companies, including CoreCivic, Inc.
- On January 29, 2017, the University of California decided to terminate $150 million worth of contracts and a $300 million line of credit with Wells Fargo, after previously terminating $25 million commercial paper contract with the bank on November 2016. The decision was the result of protests by the Afrikan Black Coalition and the Prison Divestment Campaign.
- On February 25, 2016, University of California Davis ASUCD passed prison divestment resolution that urges “both the Board of Regents of the University of California (UC Regents) and the ASUCD to undertake practices of corporate social responsibility by divesting in corporations which are directly and indirectly involved in the private prison industry,” including CoreCivic, The Geo Group, Inc., and Wells Fargo.
- On February 22, 2016, the city of Portland’s Social Responsible Investments Committee unanimously voted to recommend to the city to divest from Wells Fargo & Company for its ties to private-prison companies, such as CoreCivic.
- On February 10, 2016, California State University, Los Angeles administrators have agreed to divest from private prison companies, including CoreCivic, after pressure from CSULA Black Student Union.
- In December 2015, University of California Chief Investment Officer announced that the UC endowment, covering 10 campuses across the state, divested from private prisons, including CoreCivic.
- In December 2015, the California Endowment divested its holdings from "companies that derive significant annual revenue from private prison services," including CoreCivic.
- In October of 2015, the FCC passed new rules regarding the cost of local and long distant calls, it eliminates or limits exorbitant fees commonly tacked on by providers, such as CoreCivic.
- In July 2014, Columbia University divested from CoreCivic after a student lead campaign. The decision also prohibits any future investment in the prison industry.
- In April 2014, three investors, Scopia Capital, DSM, and Amica Mutual Insurance all pledged to remove their collective investments of about $60,000,000 from the CoreCivic and The GEO Group, Inc. DSM President Hugh Welsh explained, “In accordance with the principles of the UN Global Compact, with respect to the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights, the pension fund has divested from the for-profit prison industry.”
- In December of 2013, Systematic Financial Management divested 2,754,722 shares of CoreCivic stock, thereby exiting from the private prison industry completely. Systematic Financial Management is an investment company that manages over $13 billion in investments for local governments, retirement funds, corporations, wealthy individuals, and unions.
- In 2012, the United Methodist Church voted to permanently divest its shares in CoreCivic and simultaneously moved to institute a screen against future investment in any prison-related industry.
- In 2012, General Electric divested 2.7 million shares in CoreCivic
- In 2011, Pershing Square Capital Management fully divested its CoreCivic holdings of over 7 million shares worth $180 million
- In 2007, Farallon, the hedge fund responsible for managing Yale University's endowment, sold its entire $90 million stock in CoreCivic, including Yale's $1.5 million stock in the company. The decision followed a concerted campaign by Yale's Graduate Employees and Students Organization against CoreCivic, supported by teachers and students at eight other universities managed by Farallon.
- In 2001, a student campaign resulted in six US universities (American University, SUNY-Albany, Goucher College, Evergreen State, James Madison University, and Oberlin) dropping their contracts with Sodexo SA due to the company's investment and close relationship with CoreCivic. The loss of contracts caused Sodexo to sell all of its shares in CoreCivico, and CoreCivic's president also resigned from Sodexo's board of directors.