Washington, November 18 (RHC)-- The private prison corporation CoreCivic, formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America, announced that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons will extend a two-year contract with the company, despite an announcement in August that the department was beginning a process “of reducing -- and ultimately ending -- our use of privately operated prisons.” 

The announcement comes just days after stocks in CivicCore and GEO Group, another major private prison company, jumped with the election of Donald Trump.  Trump, who was endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing the majority of U.S. Border Patrol agents, has pledged to be “tough on crime” and recently doubled down on his pledge to out-deport the Obama administration by ordering the removal of up to three million migrants. 

As of December 2015, the U.S. government paid three private prison corporations almost $639 million U$D annually to manage 14 prisons incarcerating around 22,660 people, mainly low-security immigrants serving short sentences. 

A major investigation by Mother Jones magazine into a CoreCivic prison in Louisiana found deplorable conditions, including high rates of violence, poor staff training, and major gaps in government oversight.  The Department of Justice issued its own report in August identifying similarly dangerous conditions in all the private prisons contracted by the Bureau. The report found that government officials failed to verify if inmates were receiving basic medical care, with one facility going eight months without a full-time doctor, in violation of the human rights of the inmates.