Modern Slave Auctions

[F]law School Episode 10: Mass Incarceration, Inc.

Jheri’ Richards

January 19, 2025

Summary:

In this episode of [F]law School, hosts Gauri Sood and Haley Florsheim explore the chilling reality of publicly traded private prisons with third-year law student Jheri’ Richards. Together, they reveal how corporations like GeoGroup profit from mass incarceration, relying on government contracts and the stock market to drive their growth. Drawing haunting parallels between private prisons and historical slave auctions, Jheri’ exposes how GeoGroup commodifies human lives. From shell companies and lobbying to the widespread involvement of everyday investors, this episode uncovers how law enables diabolical systems.

Editors:

Very special thanks to Nolan Mascarenhas for production and editing assistance.

Guest Bio:

Jheri’ Richards is a student at Harvard Law School in the Class of 2025. She is also a graduate of Yale University. Before law school, Jheri’ worked at Google in advertising technology. She is interested in criminal justice reform, democracy work, and family law. 

Music:

Our theme music is “I Been Waiting” by Crystal Squad, and you’ll also hear segments of “Palms Down” by Blue Dot Sessions.

[F]law Resources: 

Additional Resources (regarding topics mentioned in podcast): 

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Transcript 

 (This transcript was created by an automated process and contains errors.)

Flaw School – Mass Incareration, Inc.

Jon Hanson Introduction: Hi, everyone. In this episode of [F]law School, hosts Gauri Sood and Haley Florsheim explore the chilling reality of publicly traded private prisons with third-year law student Jheri’ Richards. Together, they reveal how corporations like GeoGroup profit from mass incarceration, relying on government contracts and the stock market to drive their growth. Drawing haunting parallels between private prisons and historical slave auctions, Jheri’ exposes how GeoGroup commodifies human lives. From shell companies and lobbying to the widespread involvement of everyday investors, this episode uncovers how law enables diabolical systems.

Gauri Sood Hey, welcome to flaw school a podcast that explores the flaws in our legal system We’re today’s hosts. I’m Gauri, an undergrad at Harvard University.  

Haley Florsheim And I’m Haley, a third year law student at Harvard Law School.  

Gauri Sood And we are so excited to be hosting today’s Law School episode. 

Haley Florsheim Every two weeks, we interview law students to uncover the role of corporate actors in producing many of our most urgent social problems and the troubling tale of corporate actors shaping, bending, capturing, and breaking the law in their favor. In this episode, we’ll be discussing publicly traded companies whose business is private prisons. 

Gauri Sood Today, we’re joined by Jheri’ Richards, a third-year law student at Harvard. Welcome to Flaw School, Jheri’. Class is in session. 

Haley Florsheim Thanks so much for being here. we’ve had the chance to get to know each other pretty well over the course of these past few years at HLS, but I was wondering if you could tell our listeners a bit more about who you are.  

Jheri’ Richards hanks, Haley. my name is Jheri’. I’m a third year law student, as Gauri mentioned. I’m from Houston, Texas, and I came to law school because I was really inspired during the pandemic, actually, to see how we were responding to the pandemic, how the law was being shaped and had already been shaped and equipped us or didn’t equip us to respond to the pandemic and just seeing the world around me. I thought that a law school education would be invaluable. So I decided to apply and I’m very grateful that I did. Since I’ve been at law school, I have become a member of the Board of Student Advisors, which is a group on campus that mentors first year students. We run the moot court competition. We also are teaching assistants for the legal research and writing class. We wear many hats. Haley is a lawyer. One of the members of this group with me, which is great. and it’s just been a really enriching experience in a way to be connected to Harvard Law School that I’ve really enjoyed getting to meet so many different students from so many different walks of life. So that’s been a really awesome part of HLS. 

Gauri Sood Awesome. Thanks for that. And you also wrote a great article for the Flaw Magazine this past year. So could you tell us a little bit more about that?  

Jheri’ Richards Yes. So my article was about publicly traded private prisons. So I came across This during my research, I’ve been interested in understanding and uncovering the drivers about mass incarceration and through that research ended up on the topic of private prisons and specifically publicly traded private prisons, which I didn’t even know existed. the idea of prisons being private at all was something that shocked me, but knowing that we were trading stocks on the stock market for, you know, imprisonment was something that really blew me away. And so through my research, what I came to conclude was that publicly traded private prisons mirrored a slave auction. we’re investing in the unfree, in the free labor of unfree people. So that was my main takeaway from my research. And there’s a lot more that I uncovered in doing that.  

Haley Florsheim I’d love to talk about a few concepts that I think are pretty central to the article itself. I’m familiar with Private prisons and broad strokes or I was familiar with private prisons and broad strokes before reading your article But I think your framing is really helpful to just understanding how they work what exactly does it mean for a prison to be private? 

Jheri’ Richards So private prisons are for profit imprisonment. So public prisons are more common understanding of the prison system is the state is funding the prison and they are in charge of the management of that prison. They are in charge of all of the economics, I would say, behind it. Private prisons are supposed to be a solution to the problem that prisons have become very burdensome on the government and the cost of, you know, Managing prisons, running prisons is very high because so many people are now incarcerated. So in our capitalist system, one of the ways we have decided to create solutions for those problems of inefficiency and high cost is to privatize. So a corporation owns the prison and is contracting with the government to be able to run and own that prison. and it’s the idea that the government would be spending 100 a day to run the prison if they had to run it themselves. Taxpayers are paying for that. So a private prison can do that for 75 dollars a day, which sounds good in theory. the privatization model can work in other forums, for instance, with TSA pre-check or things like that. Other, other systems we think about being privatized, but the idea of privatizing prisons and privatizing, a company that is requires human beings and bodies in order to continue to make money is something that I think is really, really unsettling. 

Gauri Sood That’s super interesting. Okay. So how do private prisons make money? What exactly makes them financially viable?  

Jheri’ Richards So there are multiple ways that private prisons make money. The first way that they fund themselves is through the government contracts that I previously mentioned. So working with the federal government, with the state governments, in order to have these contracts that make up a lot of their bottom line, but don’t cover all the money that they need in order to be fully functional. And I would say that private prisons need capital even more than normal companies, because they’re not selling a product that you’re buying, in the store or online. They’re working off of human capital. And the more people incarcerated, the more money they make. So they need beds filled in order to continue to make money. So, because of that they also are invested in continuing to incarcerate more and more people, without that human capital, they’re not able to keep the lights on. So if we think about the idea of prison in theory being for rehabilitation, that is completely antithetical to a private prison model. Because if you rehabilitate everyone and they’re not coming back in the doors, You, one, are relying on more people continuing to commit crimes and you’re losing out on a swath of people who have now been rehabilitated. So you are not able to meet your bottom line and continue to be profitable. So that’s something that I find striking about the private prison model specifically, and why publicly trading private prisons is something that they’re actually very invested in because public trading allows for these companies to access more capital. than they could just in their normal course of business. 

Haley Florsheim Let’s just pause on this to make sure I’m understanding this correctly. When you say publicly trading, does that mean that average people, like your everyday person, might end up sometimes investing in private prisons or having their own financial stake in private prisons?  

Jheri’ Richards Yes, exactly. So publicly trading private prisons means that they have a ticker code, they’re on the New York Stock Exchange, and they are able to be traded by your everyday person on a Robinhood account, on your app on your phone, or through a broker, things like that. Any of the normal means in which you could invest in a stock, you’re able to invest in these private prisons, which is really jarring, thinking that you could. Maybe stumble upon the stock, not even know what it is. If you’re an everyday investor, people don’t typically know all the ins and outs of the things that they’re investing in. so that’s something to keep in mind. And then also lots of people are invested in private prisons through index funds or mutual funds, which are this aggregated fund full of different companies, that people might not even know what is specifically in that index. and so GEO Group, other private prisons are part of these index funds. People are passively investing in those index funds, maybe through retirement plans, pension plans, things like that. so yes, I would be, I would say that it’s, there are more people invested in these private prisons than they even think.and that’s something definitely to watch out for. 

Gauri Sood Yeah, so the title of your article, which was publicly traded private prisons, the modern slave auction, it evoked this really powerful image of the modern slave market. Could you tell us a little bit more about the historical basis for that description?  

Jheri’ Richards Yes. So, when I was coming across slave auctions, this topic in my research, the thing that really stuck out to me with public trading specifically was how visceral of a reaction I had because of the spirit of a slave auction that it evoked. so historically speaking, During slavery, people would be sold in the public square or through other means, into slavery. And people would be purchasing them, people would also just be there watching this spectacle. And the idea that now we could just sit on our computers and click a button to invest in companies that are directly modeling enslavement is something that I found very striking. historically as well, we have the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, but created a loophole for slavery to continue through incarceration. And I think that through line specifically from slavery to imprisonment, and then adding in this extra, Step of purchasing capital for that imprisonment is why the slave auction came to mind. And how also imagery of a slave auction of people kind of gawking or just being there and not  Having to actively participate in it is something that also came to mind. not everybody is invested in these stocks directly or a shareholder in these companies, but knowing that something like this is happening and watching it happen or not speaking up about it is something that I also thought really critically about when doing my research and writing this article. 

Haley Florsheim You touched, before on the way that shifting from public, this public function of the prison to the private function of the prison impacts our carceral system as a whole. I was wondering if you could lay that out a little bit more. 

Jheri’ Richards Yeah, so public prisons are in the business, business of punishment, not necessarily in the business of profit. Private prisons shift that model where they’re supposed to be solving this  inmate problem and that we have too many inmates and not enough resources from the government, but their bottom line and the shareholders making money is something that’s at the top and the forefront of their minds when they’re making decisions, so they have different incentives on how they want to commodify human beings for profit in a way that public prisons don’t have the same incentive structure. so there is this financial investment and incentive in maintaining this constant supply of people. who are commodities to these private prisons. and so like with slavery, there was an incentive to continue to have slaves and to continue to maintain a supply of those slaves who were also commodities in the same way inmates are serving as commodities for these prisons to continue to make money. And benefit the investors. And so having that as the foundational idea behind why they’re trying to keep the lights on and keep the doors open  is different than what a public prison is trying to do as it’s been presented. and private prisons  have found a way to  utilize the unfree labor that they have there to also make more money for themselves. While public prisons do utilize unfree labor as well,  private prisons have found a way to take inmates and make them make products that the private prisons can then sell with other companies, work with other corporations to create products that then they can sell and make more money on themselves, which is an added layer  of the incentive shifting from public to private prisons. 

Gauri Sood So understanding that privatization incentive system sort of backdrop is really helpful. I’d like to shift our focus a little bit to the publicly traded company that you concentrate on in this article. Let’s talk a little bit about it. So what is GeoGroup?  

Jheri’ Richards So GeoGroup is one of the two largest,  publicly traded private prisons in the country. The other is CoreCivic. GeoGroup originally started as a security company, and as our incarceration system grew, they also grew. they are now in private prisons, they have immigration detention centers, they have mental health facilities. And as that world has continued to grow, so has GeoGroup. They work directly with the federal government they’re one of the largest federal government contractors, or they, they were. and we can talk a bit more about how that’s shifted and changed with different administrations. but they’ve grown to be a worldwide company. they are in multiple different countries doing a lot of the same work. and I thought they were an important company to focus on specifically because of their reach and how big they’ve gotten, and they’ve been public since the 90s, and they’ve only continued to grow, as their, as mass incarceration has continued to grow, GeoGroup has grown and benefited from that as well. and in the article, I have two pictures that I think are really, important to put in conversation with one another. There’s the picture of the GeoGroup. On the day that their stock goes public and they’re all smiling and excited and happy because they’re finding a way to make more capital for their company. And then I have another photo of, people in prison working and doing hard labor, not looking nearly as happy as the GEO Group board members who were standing up there at the New York Stock Exchange. And I just found seeing those together really, really important to think about why there’s so much joy and  importance being taken in this moment of going public. And who’s actually impacted by that and who’s actually affected and you groups one of the main players that has benefited from it and is not really thinking critically about the consequences of the capital that they’re raising and trying to continue to raise.  

Hailey Florsheim I think that dichotomy really, you know, tells a really powerful story about what is going on here and, and who all is involved. struck me too that there’s a third major actor, which is the government. and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what the GEO group’s relationship with the US, the federal government looks like.  

Jheri’ Richards Yeah. So there’s  A couple big ways that GeoGroup is involved with the federal government. One that I keep talking about is their contracts. So they’re directly on the payroll of the federal government. the government will sign, for instance, like a hundred million dollar contract for 10 years with GeoGroup for them to continue to, manage their company. And then there’s also an exertion of political influence that the GEO Group has on the federal government through lobbying efforts, through PACs and super PACs that they’ve either created themselves or also funding.And then GEO Group also is a part of this revolving door system where government actors,  Mostly people in the administrative agencies will  start as administrative agents, for instance, as You know, part of ICE or, D. O. J. Other agencies and then we’ll come and work for Geo group and vice versa. So somebody working for Geo group will leave and then go fill a position, in one of these agencies. And so there’s kind of this constant revolving door movement between, you know, Geo group and the government and back and forth, that keeps the interest of Geo Group on the minds of the government and the interest of the government on the minds of Geo Group. 

Gauri Sood So this revolving door sort of mechanism you mentioned, I can imagine that’s one tactic that’s continuously used to keep the relationship between the two strong. But are there any other tactics that geography uses to sort of strengthen this governmental relationship?  

Jheri’ RichardsI think the main tactic they use is through their financing models, whether that be campaigns, lobbying efforts,  as was mentioned before, because GeoGroup needs mass incarceration to continue in order to continue to be profitable, they have focused their efforts on government intervention with,  anti-criminal justice reform, or anti-immigration reform movements. so they fund camp, campaigns for both political parties in different states, across the federal government. they have also created shell companies to serve as  PACs, to subvert campaign finance laws. Since they’re federal government contractors, they should not be able to do the kind of financing that they’ve been successful in making happen, but by using corporate law, they’ve been able to create these subsidiaries and shell companies that allow them to circumvent some of the more traditional campaign finance laws. And that has been, I think, their main tactic in doing so.  

Haley Florsheim Could you explain some more about what a shell company is and exactly how they’re using those?  

Jheri’ Richards [00:24:12] So a shell company is, I think the easiest way to think about it, like a fake company that a corporation has created to, not necessarily directly engage in the primary business, but to do something else for the company. So there’s a limited liability corporation set up that will just exist in the ether, but it’s connected to geo group in some way. And the shell companies that they have created are connected to geo group by geo group will funnel money from their main bottom line into the shell company or they’ll publicly trade that shell company as well to have a means of accessing more capital. And then that capital is able to be used for things that the main body of GeoGroup wouldn’t be able to do themselves. And in this instance, that’s to fund campaigns for, representatives, other government actors who will help do GeoGroup’s bidding in Congress or, in the presidency, which has been one of the main Government actors that they have been funding in the last eight years. and that’s been their main focus for their campaign financing efforts.

Gauri Sood Question rephrased and pasted from time clip [00:29:28]

Jheri’ Richards That’s a great question. We saw the impacts in the 2016 election, and I think those will help us understand what will happen. In 2025. So the Obama administration in  in his second term,  created an initiative where they were no longer going to contract the federal government was no longer going to contract with private prisons, which obviously is a problem for geo group. so they ended up funneling a lot of money into Donald Trump’s campaign. He won in 2016, and the Department of Justice under him  took that ban away. They signed a new contract for 10 years with GeoGroup for 110 million, and that is still in effect and would be coming to a close potentially in this upcoming year, because Joe Biden in 2021 had said, we’re going back to the ban on Contracts with  private prisons, so there’s kind of this back and forth between the administrations, for government contracts with GeoGroup. so now we’re entering into a second Trump administration, and we’re seeing that that is having impacts on the stock price of GeoGroup. in 2016 when Trump won, GeoGroup stock rose 21 percent overnight.  Now, since November  2024, we’ve seen a 100 percent increase on the stock price of GeoGroup, which I think is really jarring heading into 2025. in the last five years, we’ve seen a continuous steady rise of GeoGroup stock,  and I think the signaling of the stock price shows us what to expect in terms of the government’s engagement with GeoGroup In the next four years and potentially beyond that 

Gauri Sood  Obviously, there is a new administration. So how is that likely to impact geo group 

Haley Florsheim  even in light of that context, it seems like there may be some ways to challenge the power of corporate prisons. Could you talk about what has unfolded in the past few years with the debanking movement? I know this is something you, focus on in the article as well. 

Jheri’ Richards So, yes, there have been some strides forward in ending private prisons, and in ending publicly traded private prisons, and one of those bright spots is the debanking movement. So, in 2019, through some really awesome grassroots activism, we saw, banks decide to no longer extend loans to geogroups. And other players in the system. So the biggest banks that had about 2. 4 billion dollars in credit that was going to GeoGroup officially committed to cut ties with the private prison industry writ large. and these lines of credit were GeoGroup was continuing to access capital as most corporations do. They have a mix of debt and equity, the money that they’re bringing in from. Their other activities. So this really created a big gap in the finances for geo group and is a real hit to them being able to continue forward. The flip side of that is this also means that they rely on their public trading even more because they need to access more and more capital. So not only do they need to remain on the stock market, they also are going to be overly reliant on federal contracts. which, in light of our last question and conversation, with the Trump administration in place now, this is something that we will need to continue to watch to see what those contracts will look like and how that could potentially set us back with a major move forward from the debanking movement in 2019. 

Gauri Sood Amazing. And for all of our listeners interested and wanting to learn more, what other steps can people take? 

Jheri’ Richards Thank you. I think as a everyday person, the thing that I found to be the most A feasible and attainable action that somebody can take now is if you are invested in any stocks Specifically in index funds where you might not know the composition of your investment I would take a moment to review the investment portfolio that you might have developed through a retirement plan or a pension plan as I mentioned earlier and see Where if in any places you’re invested in private prisons You there’s a really great website called prisonfreefunds.org, which shows, which index funds are, include GeoGroup and include other private prisons. I think that’s a really great place to start to see where, your money is going.  The other thing is with those retirement plans, Vanguard and BlackRock are the two largest private Investors in Geo group, which means that since they’re managing a lot of people’s retirement plans, a lot more people than they might initially think are invested in these private prisons. So, That’s my call to action on the personal front. I think also just continuing to remain aware of this problem. I’m a law student who’s thinking about mass incarceration and criminal justice a lot. That’s one of my interests, and I didn’t even know about public trading of private prisons. I think I only scratched the surface of my understanding. And so this is something that I really think attention needs to be called to. And I’m hoping that through the article and through this podcast and other people speaking out about this, that people can become aware of this really big problem. that I think if we’ve seen from the cutting ties with the federal government, or rather the federal government cutting ties with private prisons, with the debanking movement, and other interventions from different actors, that it is possible to bankrupt these companies, frankly, and keep them from continuing to be such major players in our prison system. And so that’s what I’m hoping that people will take from our discussion today is a new understanding about something that they might not have been exposed to before, and being able to be thoughtful and really critically think about the ways in which they might be participating in something that they probably don’t know they’re participating in and don’t want to participate in either. 

Gauri Sood That’s all we have time for today. Jerry, thank you so much for joining us on blog pool. We are so happy to talk with you any day.  

Jheri’ Richards Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed speaking to you all today.  

Haley Florsheim I also just wanted to say thanks for a wonderful conversation. I, for one, shared your surprise in learning about private prisons traded on the stock exchange, and it was just so helpful to hear about what that means for really all of us. 

Gauri Sood And thank you, Haley, for being a great co host.  

Haley Florsheim Of course. Thanks, Gauri. if you’re interested in reading Drie’s full article or learning more about the flaws in our legal system, check out The Flaw Magazine at theflaw. org. 

Gauri Sood And if you enjoyed this episode, first, please make sure to check out the show notes. There’s going to be some awesome links and references there for you to check out. And make sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcast.  You can also check out flawschool.org for more content. Thank you all so much for listening. We look forward to talking at you in the future. Class is dismissed. 

Jheri’ Richards

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