STRS and Private Prisons

This post is not about COVID-19. But the COVID-19 era has also become the (maybe) Black Lives (really do) Matter era. STRS, the Ohio teacher's retirement system, has fairly significant investments in two companies that operate for-profit prisons, GEOGroup and CoreCivic. For many educators, myself included, this is real moral problem. Our deferred compensation is supporting the school to prison pipeline. The school to prison pipeline is one of the key drivers of the inequity that BIPOC (and poor white) our students face. We want our support for that system stopped, just as the California teacher retirement system decided to do. 

I will write more later about the huge moral and actual operational problems involved with private prisons soon. That conditions are bad (for both inmates and staff), that it incentivizes the unequal sentencing that is the reason for its existence and that private prisons are terrible at rehabilitation. Which makes sense because they have a vested interest high recidivism rates. And we can talk about the whole problem of kids in cages. Right now I want to focus on the idea that they are probably not that great an investment. 

Private prisons were supposed to make things better by being cheaper than publicly operated prisons and increasing the quality of services by inducing competition. In the 1990s, when we were building prisons like mad, this seemed to some like a good idea. For the most part, neither of these "good" outcomes has has happened. The research is somewhat mixed but it is fairly clear that there are at least not any big savings. On the other hand, there is considerable pressure to stop using private prisons. While the Trump administration reversed an Obama administration decision to phase out the use of private prisons at the federal level, it seems likely that Joe Biden will be elected president in November and re-implement the policy. A Biden presidency would also likely see big changes in our use of private prison operators for detentions at our borders. In fact, just the Democratic control of the House of Representatives does this. Furthermore, there is growing support for decriminalizing marijuana and already a lot of moves being made to move to treatment over incarceration for opioid and other addictions. All of these factors could very quickly make the stock prices of private prison operators tumble, and tumble rapidly. The rosiest up side predictions are that they might produce modest growth if we don't see a change in administrations. The stock values simply do not provide anywhere near the level of potential returns to justify this level of risk. And certainly not enough to justify the moral issues with teachers using their deferred compensation to support the school to prison pipeline and children in cages at our borders.

To sign the petition to call on STRS to divest from private prisons, please go to: https://alleyesonstrsohio.com/