These are the main findings of the report and you can read the entire report at the link that I'm going to provide at the end of this post I recommend that you read the entire report if you have the time. Now I'm going to talk about my opinion, simply put the private prison corporations should not even exist because states and federal government should be running these prisons. In my opinion prisons should not have a profit motive because if prisons are profit driven then they will be problem as the report showed. The report talked about what happened in the state of Colorado "In 2012 the state began a utilization study to analyze which facilities made the most sense to close, but did not want to shut down any facilities until the formal analysis was complete. In response to these preliminary discussions, CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) threatened to close one of its private facilities. Behind closed doors and without any public hearings, CCA and the governor's office and the Joint Budget Committee negotiated a deal. In exchange for keeping the facility open, the state agreed to a bed guarantee, which required Colorado to keep at least 3,300 prisoners in the three CCA facilities, at an annual rate of $20,000 per inmate for the 2013 fiscal year." (pg.7) My question is why would the state want to negotiate with CCA? Let them close their prison the crime rate in Colorado is dropping so why would they care if CCA closed one of their facilities. This is another example of the government working for private corporations and protecting their profits over the interests of the taxpayers of the state of Colorado. There are many more examples in the report which you can read for yourselves. 
The report also quotes a CCA annual report from 2010 and it says that "Historically, we have been successful in substantially filling our inventory of available beds and the beds that we have constructed. Filling these available beds would provide substantial growth in revenues, cash flow, and earnings per share." (pg. 4) First of all I don't like how CCA dehumanizes the inmates calling them "inventory" and CCA admits that in order to make more money they will strong arm states to agreeing to these occupancy guarantees between 80% and 100% occupancy rates and the states will pay a penalty for the beds that are not filled. This is more proof that privatizing the prisons will not save the states money but will cost the states or taxpayers more money in the long term.
There is more and more people going to prison every single year in this country and there is a number of reasons why in my opinion one the private prisons have been lobbying state and federal governments in order to put more and more people in prisons. Fox example CCA themselves spent $1,070,000 in 2011 and $980,000 in 2012 to lobby congress in order to get tougher immigration laws in order to make more money for themselves obviously.(http://grassrootsleadership.org/blog/2013/02/meet-private-prison-industry-s-lobbyists-who-could-shape-immigration-reform)
The prison-industrial complex it's been called and it started with Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs" and it's been getting worse and worse in the United States, there are around 2.5 million people currently locked up in the United States and our policies are not getting better they are getting worse.
So what do we progressives do about this problem? My opinion we need to end the "War on Drugs" we need to legalize marijuana, we need to eliminate minimum sentencing and let judges decide sentencing on a case by case basis. I think that we need to eliminate or heavily reduce the private prisons in the United States, the government should the ones who are running the prisons not private corporations who are trying to make a profit. After we put in these reforms things should get better...I hope
Link to report: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/sites/default/files/Criminal-Lockup%20Quota-Report.pdf
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