Is John Ferguson the saviour of Americas prison system or its destroyer?
JOHN FERGUSON has done time in prison. He well remembers the days he spent guarding inmates and mopping floors at a women’s jail in New Mexico. Four years ago, he swapped his office for the prison floor to take part in a television series that sent corporate executives to work on the front-lines of their companies. The experience was educational: “Your feet got tired because you’re walking around on concrete all the time,” he says, with his slight Tennessee twang. “I learned that it’s a business that could be very mundane but you can’t ever relax—you’ve got some folks that are spending every working hour trying to figure out how to do mischief”. As head of America’s largest private prison operator, the Nashville-based Corrections Corp of America (CCA), Mr Ferguson is responsible for 63,000 inmates in 19 states and Washington, DC—and his potential market is growing all the time. Inmate numbers in America rose by 25% between 1996 and 2004. America now has 726 prison inmates for every 100
