U.S. private prisons require minimum quota of prisoners

The crime rate has been reduced by one third in Colorado over the past 10 years, which has caused the closure of five prisons since 2009 in this U.S state, but at the same time private prisons are full.

The reason is that they have a minimum quota of occupation agreed with the State Government, which in order to guarantee it, the prisons were forced earlier this year to move 3,330 inmates from public facilities, which had empty beds, to the private ones.

According to a report from the In Public Interest (ITPI), a civil organization based in Washington, from the 62 contracts for private prisons analyzed throughout the U.S., 65% have some kind of minimum guarantee of number of prisoners or penalization for empty beds.

The usual minimum base is 90%, although in some places  may reach 100%.

The privatization of prisons has not ceased to grow since the 80s, when the first operator was born, but is in the last decade that has increased notoriously .