Montana Viewpoint: Making money
Jim Elliott
The recent economic reports may not be as good as the present administration wants, but there is a bright spot! Because of the detention of immigrants, aliens, and even some U. S. citizens by the Immigration guys, the private companies who run the detention centers are making good money, building more detention centers, securing contracts for prisoners with the U. S. government, and they are hiring prison guards!
Who says government can’t create jobs?
CoreCivic, the nation’s largest private prison company, whose motto is “Better The Public Good” said in their yearly earnings report (issued February 11 th , 2026) that their 2025 earnings had increased by 116% over 2024. CoreCivic’s CEO Patrick Swindle (yes, that’s his real name) said “We anticipate 2026 will be a continued period of increased demand from our federal, state, and local government partners.”
He went on to say, “Management revenue from U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), our largest government partner, more than doubled from the fourth quarter of 2024”.
CoreCivic also owns and operates the Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, Montana. They are under contract with the state of Montana.
GEO Group is the second largest private correctional company in the United States, they also own a company, GEO Transports, that transports and deports detainees for the United States government.
According to their earnings statement issued on February 12, 2026, their net revenue for 2025 was $254 million compared to their 2024 net revenue of $32 million. GEO was sued by the State of Washington claiming that GEO failed to pay Washington State’s minimum wage to workers incarcerated in GEO’s Washington detention facilities. They paid workers $1 a day to perform virtually all non-security jobs. Besides being able to pocket the difference (amounting to $125 a day per prisoner) in labor costs to boost their bottom line, GEO essentially also denied Washington workers the ability to do the jobs performed by the incarcerated.
CoreCivic and GEO are grateful to our government and especially to the Congress which included 45 billion dollars to ICE for detention center construction and administration in the One Big Beautiful Bill last year. They have expressed their gratitude by contributing millions to campaign coffers and Presidential inaugurations.
Sometimes I wander about in an article searching for what point I really want to make.
As I have been working on this one—I take all day, sometimes—I began to think about a friend of mine in the Montana Senate, and his eloquent argument against the death penalty. Jim Shockley was a Marine, a decorated Vietnam Veteran, and a Republican.
“Outside of war,” he said, “I don’t believe the government should be in the business of killing people.” Jim is dead, now. He was a good man and my friend, and my memory of his death penalty speech has concentrated my thoughts. Here is what I want to say.
I do not believe that prisoners should be a commodity that private enterprise can make money on. I believe prisoners should be incarcerated by the government that we elect, and that human beings, even the bad ones, should not be treated as a capital good traded like chattel property. In short, I do not believe that the profit motive that monetizes criminals is anywhere close to an ethical or moral tool that fits well in a just society. With the creation of private “corrections” companies, there was created a
demand for bodies to house as a means to making profits.
Governments can provide the supply, and it can be as endless as the governments want to make it, simply by rounding up people who don’t matter.
I am happy to pay taxes to keep miscreants in government facilities. I am not happy that my tax dollars will go to line the pockets of executives and shareholders of private prison firms.