The market for prison beds and prisoners

 Kim Krawiec points me to this article about prison space for rent, from the Brennan Center at NYU:

A Market for Holding Humans: The Correctional and Detention Bed Trade, by Lauren-Brooke Eisen and Ram Subramanian

"For decades, sher­iffs, correc­tions agen­cies, and for-profit firms have sought to alle­vi­ate prison and jail over­crowding by offer­ing avail­able beds to other juris­dic­tions in need of space. And the need is great. Despite the over­all decline in impris­on­ment rates since 2009, many places still have too many people to safely house. The same goes for deten­tions by U.S. Immig­ra­tion and Customs Enforce­ment.

"This market can be a much-needed source of revenue for local­it­ies. In Louisi­ana, for example, ICE pays $74 per day — nearly three times what the state prison system reim­burses local sher­iffs. Midland County, Michigan, where the local budget depends on jail bed rent­als, charges $45 per bed per day to other counties and $35 to the state.

...

"At one point, a website called Jail­Bed­Space.com covered 48 states, serving more than 150 agen­cies. The company matched jail admin­is­trat­ors with empty beds in facil­it­ies in other counties or states. Other so-called “bed brokers” have popped up over the years, all receiv­ing fees for each bed they rent out.

...

"The detained people bear the cost as they are shuttled across juris­dic­tional lines, hundreds or even thou­sands of miles from their famil­ies, friends, and communit­ies. Addi­tional miles and state lines present finan­cial and prac­tical barri­ers to retain­ing these import­ant ties. One man incar­cer­ated in Vermont who was moved in the middle of the night to Kentucky without warn­ing said, “This prac­tice of trans­fer­ring inmates out-of-state is horrendous. You’re taking people who, whatever support network they may have, is gone. . . . you’re alone. You’re isol­ated.”