Lesson Plan: For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business

Subjects:

Economics, Civics/Government

Lesson Duration:

Two 45-minute class periods

Essential Questions:

• What role can or should profit have in running prisons?
• How do incentives influence choices for for-profit prisons?

Lesson Objectives:

Students will:

• Review the economic principles of Profit and Market Failures.
• Explain ways in which a business might raise profits.
• Examine ways in which incentives might influence choices made by for-profit prisons.
• Create a one-pager to synthesize and present information from an article.

Materials:

• Retro Report video “For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business” (Transcript)
• Student Activity handout (may be copied and edited; you may want to personalize the directions for the one-pager activity, see #7)
• Roles of the Government in the Economy: Market Failures (Public Goods and Externalities) and the Criminal Justice System | City University of New York
• Optional Resource: Detained: How the United States created the largest immigration detention system in the world | The Marshall Project
• Articles:
  • Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands | The Associated Press
  • As temperatures soar, judge tells Louisiana to help protect prisoners working in fields | The Associated Press
  • California’s incarcerated firefighters are about to get a hefty raise | Los Angeles Times
• 1-Pager Templates
• Standard 8 ½ x 11 sheets of unlined paper

Procedure:

1. Distribute the Student Activity handout and have students warm up by reviewing the economic principles of Profit and Market Failures:
2. Define “Profit.”
   1. Profit = Revenue – Costs.
3. Define “Market Failures” and explain one or two potential causes.
   1. A Market Failure happens when the free market does not allocate resources efficiently on its own. This means that the goods or services being produced and consumed don’t lead to the best outcomes for society as a whole.
   2. Possible causes include:
   3. Externalities (unintended side effects, like pollution)
   4. Public goods (things everyone benefits from but no one wants to pay for individually, like national defense)
   5. Information asymmetry (when one side of a transaction knows much more than the other)
   6. Monopoly power (when one company dominates the market and limits competition)
4. Explain how a business might raise profits.
5. Instruct students to answer the questions provided on the next part of the handout as they watch the Retro Report short doc “For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business” (Transcript).
6. Allow time for students to access the transcript of the film and review or address any questions that arise, as needed.
7. Next, have students read the following article about Market Failures and apply their knowledge from the film to answer the questions.
8. Roles of the Government in the Economy: Market Failures (Public Goods and Externalities) and the Criminal Justice System | City University of New York
9. Inform students that their task is to design a one-pager to synthesize and present the information from one of the following articles:
10. As temperatures soar, judge tells Louisiana to help protect prisoners working in fields (July 2024) | AP
11. California prisoner firefighter program draws harsh criticism amid L.A. wildfires (January 2025) | NBC News
12. Prisoners in the U.S. are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands (January 2024) | AP
    1. This article is a long one and will require more time (or fast reading or good skimming ability). Alternatively, it may be read aloud with the class following along, or may be assigned in sections, jigsaw style.
13. Go over the directions for one-pagers (see #7 to personalize).
14. One-pagers allow students to connect words and images to “respond imaginatively while being brief and concise.” The process helps students tie concepts together and collapse information into the most important points.
15. For more information, see A Simple Trick for Success with One-Pagers | Cult of Pedagogy
16. Students should:
    1. use unlined white paper and colored pens, pencils or markers for drawing. Cutouts from magazines or personalized computer images may also be used
    2. give the one-pager a title to reflect the content
    3. aim to fill the whole page
    4. include quotations, ideas, images, analysis, key names and dates, connections to other disciplines and connections to students’ lives.
    5. For this assignment, students should include the concepts of profit, market failure, incentives and migrants.
17. For increased scaffolding, consider:
    1. providing what the one-pagers should include at minimum (for example: three quotes, two graphic representations, a border decoration, a personal response)
    2. showing students some examples of one-pagers
    3. providing one-pager templates for students to choose from
    4. telling students which elements should go in which area of their templates
    5. providing sentence frames for their responses
18. Give students time to work on their one-pagers in class.
19. As time allows, ask students to compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in the video vs. the article.
20. Have students brainstorm ways they could use their one-pagers.
    1. For example: help others understand problems and solutions, persuasion, display their posters.

Alternate/Extension Activity:

• For teachers using this lesson in a Civics/Government class, have students connect the issue of private prisons and government policy to the Constitution.
  • Have students read the text of the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and explain how the 13th Amendment may be utilized by prisons.
  • Ask students: “Do you know which goods or services that you use, if any, involve prisoner labor?”
• Teachers can use the table below to add to the student activity, or substitute this portion for the “Market Failure” section.

Read the text of the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Then, answer the questions that follow.

13th Amendment
Section 1:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2:
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Source: U.S. Constitution – 13th Amendment | Library of Congress

1. Explain how the 13th Amendment may be utilized by prisons.
2. Do you know which goods or services that you use, if any, involve prisoner labor?

About the Author:

Becky Stoltzfus teaches AP United States History, Economics and History of the Americas I and II at Kokomo High School in Kokomo, Ind. She is a James Madison Fellow and an American Revolution Institute Master Teacher.

Standards

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies

• D2.Eco.1.9-12. Analyze how incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups.
• D2 Eco.2-9-12.  Determining Costs and Benefits: use marginal costs and marginal benefits to construct an argument for or against an approach or solution to an economic issue.
• D2 Eco.3.9-12. Analyze how incentives influence what is produced and distributed in a market system.
• D2.His.2.9-12. Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.
• D2.His.9.9-12. Analyze the relationship between historical sources and the secondary interpretations made from them.
• D2.His.12.9-12. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources.

Common Core Literacy Standards

• CCSS. ELE-Literacy.RH. 11-12 Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.
• CCSS.ELE-Literacy.RH 9-10.9 Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.