After Donald Trump won the United States presidential election, stock prices increased for CoreCivic and the Geo Group, two of the largest private prison companies. As unpredictable as the Trump administration is turning out to be, this market response indicates that the new administration’s ideology will involve a commitment to an expanded domestic security apparatus based on finding free market solutions to social problems. In many ways Trump’s win ushered in a new political age, but it is important to keep in mind that these aspects of Trump’s ideology are not radically different from the present reality. Since the 1970s America’s prison population has exploded from 300,000 to more than 2 million, while private prisons have existed, and have been growing, since the 1980s. A Trump government seems set to simply continue this development. Read more...