After two years and charging a rate of dollar a page, private prison giant CCA responds to request for grievance logs from a New Mexico private prison with 78 pages of big black boxes.

For decades, the he-said, she-said has worked in the favor of the private prison operator. They said that they’d be cheaper. They said that they would be more efficient. They said that recidivism would go down. And yet, despite little evidence that any of that is true, their stocks go up.

This summer, MuckRock announced that it was beginning a longterm FOIA investigation into the shadowy space between the private prison industry and its government “partners,” who bankroll almost the entirety of this growing enterprise. After months of digging, the surface has barely been scratched.