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  • Hacker News
  • It's intentionally misleading to use revenue in this headline.

    People will read that headline and come away with the impression that private prisons are making billions. They're expenses are most likely scaling with their revenue.

    If your concern is that private prisons exist or that detention is climbing, the dollar figure is secondary to other, better measures. Instead, revenue is (mis)used to give yhe impression that people are getting rich off of this and, while that may be true, the relevant number is the increase in income, not revenue.

    In short, NPR isn't above clickbait that's biased towards their audiences.

    by parineum
  • >> They're expenses are most likely scaling with their revenue

    A unique phenomenon that only exists in this industry and is clearly the reason you feel opposed to people performing the same sort of analysis they would on other businesses...

    Also, nobody would assume a company with 1.4B in rev is "making billions" as that would be impossible based on their revenue being less than 2 billion.

    by moate
  • It's a useful figure in that it shows how fast an industry, which shouldn't exist, grows:

    "Swindle said that CoreCivic's total revenue went up by just over 27% this spring compared to the same quarter last year, for a total of $684.9 million."

    by diabllicseagull
  • Independent reporting on the treatment of detained immigrants might reasonably lead one to believe that expenses are not scaling linearly with increased revenue.
    by woodruffw
  • This "well actually" feels like it's in the same vein as tobacco companies funding cancer research. 30 seconds with Google shows that CoreCivic's Q1 earnings for 2026 are ~%50 higher than earnings reported for Q1 from last year. So yeah, they're getting rich off this.
    by forgetfreeman
  • No. Revenue is a generally accepted business metric. It is normal to discuss revenue without being also compelled to discuss profits at the same time. You don't have to like the common way of discussing business, but that doesn't change this.

    > give yhe impression that people are getting rich off of this

    CoreCivic is a public company, so we can see that the C-suite each earns over $1m annually in cash compensation. the Chief Development officer earns more cash compensation than the person holding the same title at Hilton, a company worth over 20x more.

    Then, we can look at the insider roster to see that the CEO currently holds over $10 million in stock, the heads of HR and corrections each hold over $5 million, etc.

    People should get the impression that people are getting rich off this because people are getting rich off this.

    by runako
  • Oligarchy! Sad!
    by achillesheels
  • Ah yes, slavery
    by isodev
  • You mean to say that we AREN'T rehabilitating these people? /s
    by downrightmike
  • I'm so brain rotted I read that as a new Prison-1.4B model release
    by greenavocado
  • YoY Net Income from CoreCivic's own financials (2025-2022): 116.50, 68.87, 67.59, 122.32
    by raoulj
  • Always interesting to answer the question of who benefits from certain policies.
    by moomin
  • Apparently it is the luxuriating inmates: “an average rate of $307,000 per bed.”
    by cwmoore
  • Deportations should be efficient and swiftly follow after apprehension. Delay only funnels public funds to companies such as these.
    by throwawaypath
  • Yes, but where’s the cruelty that this administration so strongly desires? These people need to be punished for what they’ve done regardless of if they’ve done it. Additionally, efficiency means lower revenue and that simply can’t happen.
    by hightrix
  • Yeah, it is not as if the people deported have family, children, pets, belongings, responsabilities... /s
    by Arodex
  • What false positive rate are you willing to accept?
    by kelseyfrog
  • The entire concept of "for-profit incarceration/detention" should not exist. Such a system only incentivizes cruelty.
    by jameskilton
  • Does it? The alternative is non-profit incarceration/detention, in which the incentive is to not put people in prison, leading to more crime, lower trust and more victims.
    by moi2388
  • > "for-profit incarceration/detention"

    Those had a different name in WW2, in another part of the world. It seems US took the concept, like many other from there, and inovated it.

    by hulitu
  • It could incentivize good outcomes if we chose to pay more for some measurable amount of rehabilitation.

    The nice thing about outsourcing to for profit entities is that you don't have to come up with the ideas, you can just pay for the end result.

    Unfortunately, they're just being paid to babysit so that's all they do.

    by parineum
  • What we really need is a prison voucher program. The prisoners get to go to whatever prison they want to, and then the prison they go to gets paid. Incentives aligned!
    by pfannkuchen
  • In practice, it doesn't seem to make much difference:

    > Propensity score matching and regression analyses of the National Inmate Survey are used to examine individuals’ experiences and perceptions of environmental quality in public versus private prisons across key domains of prison life, with an emphasis on needs, behaviors, victimization, and attitudes. No differences are identified for women. Males in private prisons are more likely than men in public prisons to perceive there to be inadequate staffing and are less likely to report maintaining ties with people outside of prison. Men in private prisons are also less likely to report crowding to be an issue.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361439680_Private_V....

    by virissimo