Public policy and private prisons : a probe into legislation that populates private prisons with immigrants

Abstract

States have become increasingly active in proposing, enacting, and enforcing immigration policies, challenging division of power with the federal government. Certain southern border states have taken the lead in implementing anti-immigration legislation and policies while for-profit, private prisons have increased their presence. The main hypothesis of this thesis is that states that have the most severe anti-immigration policies will have more private prisons than states that do not. Using information from a sample of 27 states, a severity index scale is created to gauge immigration policy activity in relationship to private prison data. The results indicate that there is a positive correlation between the severity of immigration legislation and a private prison presence (i.e. states that have more severe immigration policies have more private prison beds per capita than those states with less severe immigration policies). Future work building from this thesis could examine how all fifty states rank on the severity index and correlate them to private prison influx, and could include how various private prisons' interest get translated into more severe laws in the states.