Critics argue that all of the problems that made privately run prisons a poor investment are still present: the facilities are sometimes understaffed and unsafe — three inmates have died at a GEO-run detention center in California since March — and the companies are about as transparent as a cinder block, aided by the knowledge that few Americans will shed any tears if a bunch of prisoners claim they’re being mistreated.

A giant rises from Upper Darby

You won’t find the late George Wackenhut on any Philadelphia-area murals that celebrate famous local sons. But if the $5 billion private-prison industry had its own Mount Rushmore, Wackenhut’s thin-lipped face would've been carved into it long ago.

Palm Beach Post George Wackenhut, 1997.

Wackenhut grew up in Upper Darby and had an unforgettable brush with history after graduating from West Chester University. As a member of the Army Corps of Engineers, he witnessed hundreds of Japanese fighter planes launch a surprise attack on American battleships in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

He briefly joined the FBI at the height of its J. Edgar Hoover heyday in the early 1950s and went on to create a private security firm, the Wackenhut Corp., in 1954, according to a detailed account of his rise from the collaborative online news outlet MuckRock.

A separate arm called Wackenhut Corrections was formed in 1984 to tap into the growing world of private-prison services; it landed its first federal contract three years later to manage a processing center for federal immigration detainees. In the decade that followed, the company became publicly traded as demand for housing and transporting inmates soared. (It was renamed the GEO Group in 2003, a year before Wackenhut died at 85.)

Thanks in part to a nationwide embrace of tough-on-crime policies as part of the war on drugs, the overall number of federal inmates in the United States mushroomed from 25,000 in 1980 to a peak of 219,000 in 2012, according to the Inspector General’s Office. GEO, CoreCivic (formerly known as CCA), and companies like them were supposed to help the overwhelmed Bureau of Prisons safely manage a percentage of this ever-growing prison population — and for less money than it would have cost to simply enlarge the bureau.

The U.S. prison population has quadrupled since 1980 Total prison population Overcrowding and a push by Congress to privatize certain parts of government led the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to contract with private-prison companies to house inmates. Federal private prison population Private prison companies sell themselves as a lower-cost, more-efficient option to government-run facilities. Average annual cost per inmate, 2011-2014 But a recent Department of Justice study found private prisons more dangerous and poorly run than their federally run counterparts: Inmate assaults on staff 2.5 times higher Security lockdowns 9 times higher Contraband cellphones 8 times higher Federally run facilities were worse in some metrics: Inmate-on-inmate sexual misconduct Slightly higher Failed drug tests Slightly higher Source: U.S. Department of Justice Staff graphic

GEO, based in Boca Raton, Fla., now has 64 prisons across the U.S. that can house 74,000 inmates, and seven other prisons overseas that can hold an additional 7,800. The company also has 60 day reporting centers scattered around the country that serve about 166,000 former inmates. Its revenue swelled to an all-time high of $2.1 billion in 2016. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is its biggest client; deportation efforts rose sharply under the Obama administration and have surged even more with Trump in the White House.

In her memo last August, Yates wrote that private prisons “do not save substantially on costs.” The IG’s office found that $639 million was spent on private prisons in 2014 — a hefty sum, yet less than 10 percent of the Bureau of Prisons’ $6.9 billion budget that year. Exactly how those prisons spent those federal dollars was unclear; the IG’s office noted that private companies don’t break down their expenses in monthly invoices that are submitted to the Bureau of Prisons.

“The private-prison industry is a little bit of a black box,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a former prosecutor who now works as a senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Criminal Justice at New York University School of Law. “There’s little transparency.”

OpenTheGovernment, a coalition for government transparency that includes the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Society of News Editors, recently began encouraging Senate leaders to support legislation to apply the Freedom of Information Act to federally funded private prisons.

The companies are well-skilled at the art of evading scrutiny. In May, the Inquirer and Daily News requested copies of internal safety audits for CI-Moshannon Valley, a GEO-run prison in Philipsburg, Centre County, that houses undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of other crimes. The company is required to submit such audits to the Bureau of Prisons every year, but a GEO spokesman insisted the audits couldn't be shared because they might contain information their competitors could exploit.

The newspapers also asked to tour Moshannon Valley, which has been the subject of multiple federal civil rights lawsuits in Pennsylvania. After some hemming and hawing, prison officials agreed to arrange a one-hour tour for a reporter in August — and then denied the request at the last minute without offering an explanation.

All the secrecy makes it hard to answer a simple question: Why are privately run prisons more dangerous?

GEO Group’s Pennsylvania Reach In Pennsylvania, the GEO Group houses federal and county inmates as well as runs youth-services and reentry centers, 22 facilities in all. Map legend ‍ Correctional Facilities

Correctional Facilities ‍ Residential Reentry

Residential Reentry ‍ Non-Residential Reentry

Non-Residential Reentry ‍ Youth Services

Youth Services ‍ Youth Non-Residential Source: The GEO Group Staff graphic

A ‘bed of snakes’

Guards and inmates occupy opposite ends of the criminal justice spectrum, but they share similar concerns about the perils that exist in privately run prisons.

Consider the George W. Hill Correctional Facility. Litigation over inmate deaths cut into GEO's profits and drove the company to abandon its contract torun the sprawling prison in 2009. New Jersey-based Community Education Centers then took over, but its run ended in April, when GEO purchased the company for $360 million. "As far as I've been aware, the transition has been verysmooth," said Robert DiOrio, the solicitor for the Delaware County Board of Prison Inspectors.

“With GEO, we’re constantly understaffed. There are times when I can’t find a working radio or a pair of handcuffs.” A veteran corrections officer who has worked at George W. Hill for nearly a decade

But according to a veteran corrections officer who has worked at George W. Hill for nearly a decade, the changeover has left him and his peers unnerved, worried that the bad old days are here again. "CEC was OK. They didn't want to pay overtime, so they flooded us with hires," said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to keep his job. "With GEO, we're constantly understaffed. There are times when I can't find a working radio or a pair of handcuffs."

The corrections officer said the prison relies on forcing guards to frequently work 16-hour shifts to make up for the lack of manpower. On some occasions, he said, only one unarmed guard will be tasked with monitoring two cell blocks, which total more than 100 inmates. A palpable sense of fear sinks in during those moments. What's to keep prisoners from attacking once they realize the guards are exhausted, outnumbered, and don't have functional radios?

“It’s coming. The inmates are smart, and they can see we’re understaffed,” the corrections officer said. The prison employs about 245 guards, well below the 350 it should have on staff, he said. In a statement, the company said it was committed to high standards but didn't refute the guard’s claim about the staffing levels.

The veteran guard said GEO’s improvements to George W. Hill had been limited to hanging a collection of photos of the company’s top executives on a wall, with CEO George Zoley, who was paid close to $5 million in 2016, situated at the top.

Staffers hope the company invests more resources on inmate care to avoid deaths like Thomas Bryant’s, or that of Cassandra Morgan, a 38-year-old Aston woman who died after she was held for six weeks at George Hill on a shoplifting charge in 2006. Morgan suffered from schizophrenia and hypothyroidism. “She needed medication to live, but they didn’t try to find that out or get her medical records,” said attorney James Mundy, who worked on a federal lawsuit Morgan’s family filed against GEO. (The company reached settlement agreements with Bryant’s and Morgan’s families.)

But problems persist. Another inmate hanged himself in his cell this Father’s Day weekend, the guard said. GEO did not respond to a question about the suicide.

“The GEO Group is a bed of snakes,” said Berl Goff, who worked as a shift supervisor at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Mississippi, which GEO inherited after it purchased Cornell Corrections in 2010 for $685 million. “The lack of appropriate medical care and the indifference of the medical staff is a huge problem.”