Are For-profit Detention Centers Morally Just?

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Threats to the dignity and sanctity of life are a constant source of concern for the Catholic Church. Within the United States, one less well-known but growing threat is for-profit prisons and detention centers, where people quickly devolve into little more than units of profit.

Private prisons make billions by simply keeping people in one place. As long as the place is full, the companies make a huge profit, regardless of how the people are treated. Providing for the safety or serenity of the occupants is not a priority because the companies are rarely penalized in any substantial manner for denying the inhabitants basic sanitation, safe food, medical care of any kind, or even a trained staff to ensure their safety.

Over the years, Utah’s elected officials have conscientiously chosen not to foster the private prison system. Unfortunately, our friends in Wyoming are inching ever closer to hosting one of these facilities to hold immigrants currently living in Utah and facing removal proceedings in immigration court in West Valley City.

Why drag immigrants from Utah to Wyoming if they must return to attend court proceedings in West Valley City? Because for-profit detention centers, like their cousins, for-profit prisons, make hundreds of millions of dollars by holding people in pens, and have lobbied for years to ensure a steady supply of human bodies for their industry. Currently, 73 percent of the immigration detention in the U.S. is operated by for-profit companies. Since 2016, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has paid those companies more than $3 billion for the stated purpose of ensuring that the immigrants show up at removal proceedings.  

But here’s the catch – according to U.S. Department of Justice data, 75 percent of immigrants show up for removal proceedings without being detained in a for-profit prison. The rate was even higher not so long ago when the U.S. immigration offices used a program that assigned case managers to immigrants who then remained in their communities throughout their legal proceedings.  Migrants with case managers showed up 100 percent of the time to their hearings, at far less of a cost to taxpayers than for-profit detention costs (in both monetary and moral terms).    

The problems with treating people as commodities in for-profit prisons are well documented and include high rates of violence, sexual assault and inhumane conditions, including in immigrant detention centers where many of the inhabitants have done nothing more egregious than cross the border without proper documentation. Just last June, a Department of Homeland Security inspection of three private detention facilities found “egregious violations of detention standards.” Violations included nooses in the cells of detainees, significant food safety and sanitation issues, and overly restrictive use of solitary confinement.   

Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne Bishop Steven Biegler has spoken out against the for-profit detention center proposed for Evanston, Wyo. In his letter of opposition, he asked questions all Catholics must consider for ourselves: “Is this a just and morally responsible way to treat our brothers and sisters fleeing violence and poverty? Is this how we ought to love our neighbors, the immigrants who have been productive members of our communities for many years and who are now living in fear of being rounded up?”

If we truly believe that every person is created in the image and likeness of God, we must answer no to these questions. We must also stand in opposition to the use of private prisons for any reason, and to the proposed facility in Evanston, which will be used to detain our neighbors in a manner that erodes respect for human life.

Multiple opportunities to give witness to the value of every human life, even those in detention, abound. Catholics from Utah are encouraged to follow the Utah Coalition to Keep Families Together (keepfamiliestogetherut.org) for upcoming actions, including letter-writing campaigns and appearances at meetings and events in Evanston.

Jean Hill is director of the Diocese of Salt Lake City Office of Life, Justice and Peace. She can be reached at jean.hill@dioslc.org.