The private prison industry may end up being one of the winners under the incoming Trump administration, though it’s not clear how or when the new administration will act.

Stocks of for-profit prison operators tumbled after the U.S. Department of Justice announced in August that it would no longer house federal inmates in private lockups. But they rebounded after the Electoral College upset in November by Donald Trump, who campaigned on pledges to crack down on crime and step up deportations of undocumented immigrants — many of whom are held in detention centers run by for-profit operators.

It could be a shot in the arm for an industry that has been looking for new markets as inmate populations shrink and critics have successfully pushed back against corporate-run prisons in several states.

“The initial signs on changes in immigration enforcement and other policy issues indicate a substantial shift from the Obama administration to the incoming president-elect’s administration, and I think that tracks with the increase in stock for private prison companies,” said Nicole D. Porter, the advocacy director for The Sentencing Project.

[For more of this story, written by Matt Smith, go to http://jjie.org/2017/01/02/pri...f-more-deportations/]