Incentivizing Immigrant Incarceration: A Replication Study of “Expanding Carceral Markets: Detention Facilities, ICE Contracts, and the Financial Interests of Punitive Immigration Policy” in the Texas Legislature
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Access changed 8/24/22
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This thesis replicates the work of Loren Collingwood, Jason L. Morín, and Stephen Omar El-Khatib in their 2018 study “Expanding Carceral Markets: Detention Facilities, ICE Contracts, and the Financial Interests of Punitive Immigration Policy” in the Texas Legislature. To contextualize the original study and this replication, I offer a review of relevant history and scholarship on the American carceral state and immigration policy. I test two hypotheses – carceral representation and carceral lobbying – to examine how the prison industrial complex influences legislator behavior in regards to punitive immigration policy. I find null results for both original hypotheses, but discover an interesting correlation between private prison lobbying behavior and ICE facility representation. I discuss the implications of these findings and offer legislator case studies in discussion of how private prisons make lobbying decisions.