With Obama’s federal government reducing the role of private prisons in the incarceration of Americans, companies like Corrections Corporation of America (now known as Corecivic) and GAO aggressively moved into providing detention facilities for people awaiting deportation, like the 2,000,000+ people deported under the Obama administrations.
These detention facilities were, if anything, even more cruel and inhumane than the private prisons that warehoused so many Americans. The Verge made FOIA requests to ICE for information on conditions in their privately contracted detention centers, and these documents reveal that under Obama, “life inside the facilities can be so dangerous and hostile that numerous detainees have voluntarily admitted themselves to solitary confinement just to seek refuge from the general population,” and the remaining solitary confinement cells were routinely used to punish inmates for minor infractions like “horseplay” and talking back to guards, a punishment visited indiscriminately against detainees with severe mental illness.
Solitary confinement is classed as a form of torture by the UN.
Donald Trump has reversed the Obama policy of preventing private companies from providing federal prisons. The share prices of GAO and Corecivic have increased significantly since the inauguration.
