CoreCivic execs: Biden administration will still need private prisons

During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden committed to ending the federal government’s use of private prisons. Given that commitment, many investors jumped ship after vote counts led to Biden being declared the next president.

CoreCivic’s stock price (Ticker: CXW) fall about 20 percent from Tuesday afternoon through Friday. But executives at the Brentwood-based private prison company say that a Biden administration will still need to use private prisons. As a practical matter, CoreCivic leaders said on a conference call last week they don’t think the idea of ending the federal government’s use of private prisons is very realistic. They say the government simply doesn’t have enough of its own facilities to house people held by agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons.