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Why Private Prison Stocks Soared When Trump Got Elected
from The Daily Bell:
Why did “private” prison stocks soar the day after Trump got elected?
It is almost like people in the industry knew something that the public didn’t. The former Attorney General Yates said that private prisons would be phased out. So before any cabinet members had been announced, why were stockholders betting that private prisons would not be phased out after all?
It could just be Trump’s tough on crime stance in general. But something else happened days earlier that suggests Washington insiders already knew what was going to happen.
…just before the election, two of Sessions’ former Senate aides, David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux, became lobbyists for GEO Group, one of the two largest private prison companies, and that the two were specifically engaged to lobby on government contracting.
Sessions was chosen for Attorney General on November 18, and in February 2017 announced that private prisons would not be phased out because that would have “impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”
And now we are starting to understand what those future needs are. Sessions wrote in a memo that law enforcement should charge defendants with the most serious crimes possible, especially when they carry mandatory minimum sentences.
It is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense…
By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.
Of course, many mandatory minimum sentences apply to drug crimes, which means the Justice Department will be wasting more tax dollars keeping people in cages for non-violent victimless crimes.
The drug war has been so successful already, why not double down, spend more money, and ruin more lives? This is what investors sought to capitalize on when they heard the news of Trump’s election.
But the evidence suggests Sessions doesn’t really care about crime or law and order. He has connections to the private prison industry and will be able to steer contracts in their direction as America’s top cop.
