USA: the private-prison industry has one big client that no one talks about

The largest jail system in the United States has no buildings of its own. Instead, it’s a shadowy complex of agreements that tucks detainees in wherever there’s available space. It has swelled substantially over the past two decades, and it is likely to grow further.

This jail isn’t run by a county or state. It’s operated by the federal government’s oldest law enforcement agency. The US Marshals Service (USMS) rents beds in hundreds of incarceration facilities for tens of thousands of federal detainees every day. Many of them end up in jails and prisons run by private companies whose facilities have a track record of poor conditions and abuses.

In fact, the service locks up nearly as many inmates in private detention as the Federal Bureau of Prisons: more than 18,000 in total. This number—along with the revenue of private-prison operators—is very likely to increase under attorney general Jeff Sessions and president Donald Trump as they continue to upend reforms of the Obama years.

What makes it all the worse: When the public does get a rare look inside this largely hidden system, it becomes clear that the marshals service’s oversight of these private facilities has been woefully lacking.

Who are the marshals?¶

In the public imagination, federal marshals are tough dudes who escort dangerous inmates on airplanes (think “Con Air”), or chase fugitives (think “Justified” and Tommy Lee Jones hunting Harrison Ford). But that public image sells short the many roles of the marshals service, a critical element of the US criminal justice system that prides itself on being established in 1789, before any other federal law-enforcement agency.

In addition to transporting federal inmates and arresting fugitives, the agency, which employs more than 3,700 deputy marshals and investigators, provides security for federal courts, manages asset forfeiture for the Department of Justice, and handles the federal witness-protection program. It touts itself as the most “versatile” federal law-enforcement agency, sometimes serving unusual functions, such as security for education secretary Betsy DeVos.

The service’s overall mission makes it responsible for an average of 51,000 detainees daily. If you’re charged with a federal offense, the USMS becomes the agency responsible for you as you await trial. Almost half of these defendants, according to data obtained by Quartz, are booked for immigration or drug offenses. After trial, if you receive a short sentence, you usually serve out your time in the service’s detention as well. If it’s a more serious conviction, you are transferred to a federal prison.

The sprawling USMS detention apparatus serves as a sort of federal “jail,” an organization with coast-to-coast reach that is largely removed from public view. “It’s a hidden part of the criminal-justice system,” said Bethany Carson, a researcher at the Texas-based anti-privatization group Grassroots Leadership. Since the detention is more short term, “nobody tends to pay attention.”

A swelling inmate population¶

Over the past two-plus decades, marshals detention has more than doubled, from just under 100,000 bookings annually in the mid-1990s to just under 200,000 in 2016. The peak was 2010, with more than 221,000 people booked.

Part of this rise can be explained by the overall mass-incarceration boom in the United States. Yet the fastest-growing population within USMS detention, by far, is immigration offenders, whose numbers have climbed tenfold over this period.

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