Private Prison Company Stocks Rebound With Trump Win

By Jimmy Jenkins
Published: Friday, November 11, 2016 - 2:17pm
Updated: Friday, November 11, 2016 - 2:24pm
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The impending presidency of Donald Trump will have an impact on many sectors, but one industry is already seeing a huge rebound in stock prices.

Trump ran his campaign arguing that private business could do a much better job of handling many services currently provided by the government. At an MSNBC town hall in March, Trump said that line of thinking could be applied to the criminal justice system as well. “I think that we could do a lot of privatization and with private prisons, it seems to work a lot better,” Trump said.

Several major private prison companies operate in Arizona including Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, which runs the Red Rock Detention Center in Eloy, and GEO Group, which runs facilities in Florence, Phoenix and Golden Valley. Both of those companies saw their stock prices jump after Trump’s surprise Election Day victory.

It was a big turnaround for the companies, whose stock prices plummeted in August after the Department of Justice instructed the Bureau of Prisons to reduce the use of privately operated prisons.

Trump’s hardline immigration policies could also have an impact. Forty six Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities are run by private contractors throughout the country.

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