In 2018, 8.41% of prisoners in the United States were housed in private prisons. On January 25, 2021, President
Joe Biden issued
Executive Order 14006 to stop the
United States Department of Justice from renewing further contracts with private prisons, although most facilities are run by the states so the order will only apply to about 14,000 inmates housed in federal prisons. This was later rescinded by President
Donald Trump on January 20, 2025.
Early history One of the earliest examples of prison privatization in the US was in Louisiana in 1844, where a company produced clothing in a factory with inmate labor. During
Reconstruction (1865–1876) in the south after the Civil War, plantations and businessmen sought to continue exploiting Blacks after the United States ratified the
13th Amendment, which abolished all forms of slavery "except as punishment for a crime". This exception allowed continued enslavement of Black people through
convict leases. At this time, racially targeted laws were enacted to incarcerate greater rates of Black people. Southern prisoners laid railroad tracks, worked on plantations, mined coal and performed other labor while enduring terrible conditions including torture as a form of punishment. Some argue that it was designed as a new form of slavery with worse conditions. Overcrowding and rising costs became increasingly problematic for local, state, and federal governments. Private business interests saw an opportunity to expand beyond simple contracting of services into the management and operation of entire prisons. The following year, CCA gained further public attention when it offered to take over the entire state prison system of Tennessee for $200 million. The bid was ultimately defeated due to strong opposition from public employees and the skepticism of the state legislature. Sixty-six additional private prisons were opened in the US between 1984 and 1990 housing approximately 7000 inmates.
2010s Statistics from the
U.S. Department of Justice show that, as of 2019, there were 116,000 state and federal prisoners housed in privately owned prisons in the U.S., constituting 8.1% of the overall U.S. prison population. Broken down to prison type, 15.7% of the federal prison population in the United States is housed in private prisons and 7.1% of the U.S. state prison population is housed in private prisons. As of 2017, after a period of steady growth, the number of inmates held in private prisons in the United States has declined modestly and continues to represent a small share of the nation's total prison population. Companies operating such facilities include the
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the
GEO Group, Inc. (formerly known as Wackenhut Securities),
Management and Training Corporation (MTC), and
Community Education Centers. In the past two decades CCA has seen its profits increase by more than 500 percent. The prison industry as a whole took in over $5 billion in revenue in 2011. Sociologist John L. Campbell and activist and journalist
Chris Hedges respectively assert that prisons in the United States have become a "lucrative" and "hugely profitable" business. In June 2013, students at
Columbia University discovered that the institution owned $8 million worth of CCA stock. Less than a year later, students formed a group called Columbia Prison Divest, and delivered a letter to the president of the University demanding total divestment from CCA and full disclosure of future investments. By June 2015, the board of trustees at Columbia University voted to divest from the private prison industry. CoreCivic (previously CCA) has a capacity of more than 80,000 beds in 65 correctional facilities. The GEO Group operates 57 facilities with a capacity of 49,000 offender beds. The company owns or runs more than 100 properties that operate more than 73,000 beds in sites across the world. Most privately run facilities are located in the southern and western portions of the United States and include both state and federal offenders. For example,
Pecos, Texas is the site of the largest private prison in the world, the
Reeves County Detention Complex, operated by the GEO Group. It has a capacity of 3,763 prisoners in its three sub-complexes, Private prison firms, reacting to reductions in prison populations, are increasingly looking away from mere incarceration and are seeking to maintain profitability by expanding into new markets previously served by non-profit behavioral health and treatment-oriented agencies, including prison medical care, forensic mental hospitals, civil commitment centers, halfway houses and home arrest. A 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice asserts that privately operated federal facilities are less safe, less secure and more punitive than other federal prisons. Shortly thereafter, the DoJ announced it will stop using private prisons. Nevertheless, a month later the
Department of Homeland Security renewed a controversial contract with the CCA to continue operating the
South Texas Family Residential Center, an immigrant detention facility in Dilley, Texas. Stock prices for CCA and GEO Group surged following Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 elections. On February 23, the DOJ under Attorney General
Jeff Sessions overturned the ban on using private prisons. According to Sessions, "the (Obama administration) memorandum changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the bureau's ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system. Therefore, I direct the bureau to return to its previous approach." Additionally, both CCA and GEO Group have been expanding into the immigrant detention market. Although the combined revenues of CCA and GEO Group were about $4 billion in 2017 from private prison contracts, their number one customer was
ICE.
Impact According to a 2021 study, private prison inmates serve longer time in prison than comparable inmates in public prisons. According to
Elizabeth S. Anderson, private prisons generate profits by "maximizing the number of beds filled per day" and "primarily by cutting salaries, staff numbers, and staff training." As a result of the latter, according to a 2016 report by the
OIG on privatized federal prisons, privatized facilities see prisoner-on-prisoner assault rates that are 32 percent higher, prisoner-on-staff assault rates 260 percent higher, and rates of prisoner-on-staff sexual assault 500 percent higher when compared to state-run facilities. She says while the state-run facilities are "horrific" for both staff and prisoners, "the profit motive in privatized punishment merely adds to the unconscionable harms and injustices of the American system of mass incarceration."
Increase in the prison population From 1925 to 1980 the prison population stayed consistent with the general population. The private prison population began to increase at an disproportional rate in 1983 (the year that private prisons began operation in the United States). From 1925 to 1980 the prison population had a gradual increase from 150,000 to 250,000. However, from 1983 to 2016 the prison population has increased from 250,000 to 1,500,000. The exact causes for this overwhelming increase cannot be assigned to individual policies as even similar types of criminal sentencing policies were associated with wildly different rates of incarceration in different communities due to powerful external factors such as income disparity, racial makeup, and even the party affiliation of the lawmakers. Correlated with the rise of incarceration rates in the United States was the abolition of loose sentencing guidelines for crimes. from 1990 to 2009 there was a 1664 percent increase in the American private prison population, from approximately 7000 to 129,000 inmates. However, the vast majority of prisoners, over 90 percent, remain in publicly-run prisons.
Cost–benefit analysis To properly compare the benefits of private versus public prisons, the prisons must share common factors such as similar levels of security, number of staff, and population in the prisons. Studies, some partially industry-funded, often conclude that states can save money by using for-profit prisons. However, academic or state-funded studies have found that private prisons tend to keep more low-cost inmates and send high-cost back to state-run prisons. This is counterproductive to the cost benefit analysis of the Private Prisons and contradicts the original selling point of the CCA and other private prisons; "to mitigate the cost of running prisons". In practice these companies have not been shown to definitively reduce costs and have created several unintended outcomes. The supposed benefit of outsourcing correctional services takes root in the liberal economic idea that having multiple companies compete to provide a service would naturally make the companies innovate and find ways to increase their efficiency to win more contracts than the others. Few companies ever got involved in the business. In the United States CoreCivic, GEO Group Incorporated, and Management and Training Corporation house all the privately held federal inmates and most state inmates across the United States. (United States, Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General,1 ) Naturally, this means there is little competition within the industry. When comparing the quality of the services that private prisons provide versus their public counterparts a 2016 report from the Office of the Inspector General found that private facilities underperformed their public counterparts in several key safety areas. 14 private prisons were surveyed in this study and compared to 14 federally operated facilities of the same security level in this study. Privately run facilities were found to have higher rates of inmate on inmate and inmate on staff assaults per capita. Twice as many weapons and eight times as many contraband phones were confiscated per capita at private facilities versus their public counterparts. This is indicative of a greater trend across the United States. Private prisons tend to house prisoners that carry lower risk levels and require fewer services than their public counterparts making direct comparisons of savings unreliable. According to a 2020 study of private prisons in Mississippi, "private prison inmates serve 90 additional days... The delayed release erodes half of the cost savings offered by private contracting and is linked to the greater likelihood of conduct violations in private prisons."
Costs Proponents of privately run prisons contend that cost-savings and efficiency of operation place private prisons at an advantage over public prisons and support the argument for privatization, but some research casts doubt on the validity of these arguments, as evidence has shown that private prisons are neither demonstrably more cost-effective, nor more efficient than public prisons. An evaluation of 24 different studies on cost-effectiveness revealed that, at best, results of the question are inconclusive and, at worst, there is no difference in cost-effectiveness. A study by the U.S.
Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the cost-savings promised by private prisons "have simply not materialized". Some research has concluded that for-profit prisons cost more than public prisons. Furthermore, cost estimates from privatization advocates may be misleading, because private facilities often refuse to accept inmates that cost the most to house. A 2001 study concluded that a pattern of sending less expensive inmates to privately run facilities artificially inflated cost savings. A 2005 study found that Arizona's public facilities were seven times more likely to house violent offenders and three times more likely to house those convicted of more serious offenses. A 2011 report by the
American Civil Liberties Union point out that private prisons are more costly, more violent and less accountable than public prisons, and are actually a major contributor to
increased mass incarceration. This is most apparent in
Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world and houses the majority of its inmates in for-profit facilities. Marie Gottschalk, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that the prison industry "engages in a lot of cherry-picking and cost-shifting to maintain the illusion that the private sector does it better for less." In fact, she notes that studies generally show that private facilities are more dangerous for both correctional officers and inmates than their public counterparts as a result of cost-cutting measures, such as spending less on training for correctional officers (and paying them lower wages) and providing only the most basic medical care for inmates. A 2014 study by a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley shows that minorities make up a greater percentage of inmates at private prisons than in their public counterparts, largely because minorities are cheaper to incarcerate. According to the study, for-profit prison operators, in particular CCA and GEO Group, accumulate these low-cost inmates "through explicit and implicit exemptions written into contracts between these private prison management companies and state departments of correction". Recidivism rates, how many prisoners are re-arrested after release, are not usually considered to measure performance. A study in 2005 found that out of half of the federal prisoners released that year, 49.3% were arrested again later on. Pennsylvania became one of the first states to offer a financial incentive to corrections facilities that were privately operated and could lower their recidivism rates in 2013. In order for these facilities to gain a 1% bonus, they had to lower rates to 10% below the baseline. Together, all 40 of these facilities in the state had an average of 16.4% reduction in their recidivism rates. An example of private prisons' inadequate staff training leading to jail violence was reported by two
Bloomberg News journalists, Margaret Newkirk and William Selway in Mississippi regarding the now-closed
Walnut Grove Correctional Facility (WGCF). According to the journalists, the ratio of staff to prisoners in this prison was only 1 to 120. In a bloody riot in this prison, six inmates were rushed to the hospital, including one with permanent brain damage. During the riot, the staff of the prison did not respond but waited until the melee ended, because prisoners outnumbered staff by a ratio of 60–1. The lack of well-trained staff does not only lead to violence but also corruption. According to a former WGCF prisoner, the corrections officers were also responsible for smuggling operations within the prison. To make more money, some provided prisoners with contraband, including drugs, cellphones and weapons. Law enforcement investigations led to the exposure of a far wider web of corruption.
Bureaucratic corruption scandals At the Walnut Grove C.F., intense corruption was involved in the construction and operation of, and subcontracting for medical, commissary and other services. After exposure of the rape of a female transitional center prisoner by the mayor, who also served as a warden, a bribery scheme was uncovered. It had paid millions to the corrupt
Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner
Chris Epps and his conduits. Ten additional officials and consultants, including three former state legislators (two Republicans and one Democrat), were indicted in the
Department of Justice's
Operation Mississippi Hustle prosecution. Prior to the Mississippi investigations and prosecutions, a similar investigation began in 2003, dubbed
Operation Polar Pen, exposed a wide-ranging bribery scheme of what legislative members themselves called the "Corrupt Bastards Club" (CBC). It initially involved for-profit corrections, then extended to include fisheries management and oil industry taxation. At least fifteen targets of the investigation, including ten sitting or former elected officials, the governor's chief of staff, and four lobbyists were considered for possible prosecution, and a dozen were indicted. Investigation of a Democratic state senator found nothing amiss, but ten indictments were issued that included six Republican state legislators, two halfway house lobbyists, two very wealthy contractors and the U.S. Senator,
Ted Stevens. The seven felony convictions against Stevens were overturned, as were verdicts involving three other legislators and the governor's Chief of Staff, one directly due to the
Supreme Court's overturning part of the existing "
Honest Services Fraud" in the case of Representative
Bruce Weyhrauch. Weyhrauch pleaded guilty to a state misdemeanor. Others also had their verdicts overturned, in part because the prosecution failed to completely disclose exculpatory evidence to their defense, but three of those also pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Though they were implicated, the Department of Justice also declined to prosecute a former state senator and the U.S. Congressman,
Don Young, who spent over a million dollars on his defense, though he was never indicted.
Judicial corruption scandal In the
kids for cash scandal, Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp, a private prison company which runs juvenile facilities, was found guilty of paying two judges,
Mark Ciavarella and
Michael Conahan, $2.8 million to send 2,000 children to their prisons for such alleged crimes as trespassing in vacant buildings and stealing DVDs from
Wal-Mart. Sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, Ciavarella will spend his time in Kentucky at Federal Correctional Institution Ashland. The two judges were not the only ones at fault though, seeing as the First National Community Bank never reported the suspicious activity, causing the scandal to go on even longer. In the end, FNCB was fined $1.5 million for failing to report the suspicious activities including transactions that went on over a total of 5 years.
Lobbying “From 1999-2010, the Sentencing Project found that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) spent on average, $1.4 million per year on lobbying at the federal level and employed a yearly average of seventy lobbyists at the state level.” The influence of the for-profit prison industry on the government has been described as the
prison–industrial complex.
CoreCivic (previously CCA),
MTC and
The GEO Group have been members of the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a
Washington, D.C.–based public policy organization that develops model legislation that advances free-market principles such as
privatization. Under their Criminal Justice Task Force, ALEC has developed model bills which State legislators can then consult when proposing "
tough on crime" initiatives including "
Truth in Sentencing" and
"Three Strikes" laws. By funding and participating in ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Forces, critics argue, private prison companies influence legislation for tougher, longer sentences. Writing in
Governing magazine in 2003, Alan Greenblatt states: According to Cooper, Heldman, Ackerman, and Farrar-Meyers (2016), ALEC has been known to push for the expansion of the private prison industry by promoting greater use of private prisons, goods, and services; promoting greater use of prison labor; and increasing the size of prison populations. ALEC has had a hand in not only broadening the definition of existing crimes, but also in the creation of new crimes. ALEC is known for developing policies that may threaten civil liberties by increasing the probabilities of incarceration and lengthy sentences (Cooper et al., 2016). According to a 2010 report by
NPR, ALEC arranged meetings between the
Corrections Corporation of America and Arizona's state legislators such as
Russell Pearce at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. to write
Arizona SB 1070, which would keep CCA's immigrant detention centers stuffed with detainees. CCA and GEO have both engaged in state initiatives to increase sentences for offenders and to
create new crimes, including, CCA helping to finance
Proposition 6 in California in 2008 and GEO lobbying for
Jessica's Law in Kansas in 2006. In 2012, The CCA sent a letter to 48 states offering to buy public prisons in exchange for a promise to keep the prisons at 90% occupancy for 20 years. States that sign such contracts with prison companies must reimburse them for beds that go unused; in 2011, Arizona agreed to pay
Management & Training Corporation $3 million for empty beds when a 97 percent quota wasn't met. In 2012 it was reported that the DEA had met up with the CCA to incorporate laws that would increase the CCA's prison population and in turn increased the CCA's prison population. CCA, now
CoreCivic, closed their facility in Estancia, New Mexico as the lack of prisoners made them unable to turn a profit, which left 200 employees without jobs.
OpenSecrets reported that private prison corporations donated a record breaking 1.6 million in federally disclosed contributions in the
2018 midterm elections.
Opposition Many organizations have called for a moratorium on construction of private prisons, or for their outright abolition. The
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and
United Methodist Church have also joined the call, as well as a group of Southern Catholic Bishops. As of 2013, there has been a modest pushback against the private prison industry, with protests forcing GEO Group to withdraw its $6 million offer for naming rights of
FAU Stadium, and Kentucky allowing its contract with the CCA to expire, ending three decades of allowing for-profit companies to operate prisons in that state. In 2014, Idaho will be taking over the operation of the
Idaho Correctional Center from the CCA, which has been the subject of a plethora of lawsuits alleging rampant violence, understaffing, gang activity and contract fraud. Idaho governor
Butch Otter said "In recognition of what's happened, what's happening, it's necessary. It's the right thing to do. It's disappointing because I am a champion of privatization." In the final quarter of 2013, Scopia Capital Management, DSM North America, and Amica Mutual Insurance divested around $60 million from CCA and GEO Group. In a
Color of Change press release, DSM North America President Hugh Welsh said:
Attempts to limit privatization and increase oversight Some U.S. states have imposed bans, population limits, and strict operational guidelines on private prisons: •
Banning privatization of state and local facilities –
Illinois in 1990 (Private Correctional Facility Moratorium Act), and
New York in 2000, enacted laws that ban the privatization of prisons, correctional facilities and any services related to their operation.
Louisiana enacted a moratorium on private prisons in 2001. In September 2019, the California legislature passed a bill that would prohibit private prison companies from operating in the state; however, ICE later extended a contract to continue the use of private prisons into the future due to it being exempt from state laws as it is a federal agency pursuant to the
Supremacy Clause and due to the fact that Congress has not banned the use of private prisons. •
Banning speculative private prison construction – For-profit prison companies have built new prisons before they were awarded privatization contracts in order to lure state contract approval. In 2001, Wisconsin's joint budget committee recommended language to ban all future speculative prison construction in the state. Such anticipatory building dates back to at least 1997, when
Corrections Corporation of America built a 2,000-bed facility in
California at a cost of $80–100 million with no contract from the
California Department of Corrections; a CCA official was quoted as saying, "
If we build it, they will come". •
Banning exportation and importation of prisoners – To ensure that the state retains control over the quality and security of correctional facilities,
North Dakota passed a bill in 2001 that banned the export of Class A and AA felons outside the state. Similarly,
Oregon allowed an existing exportation law to sunset in 2001, effectively banning the export of prisoners. Several states have considered banning the importation of prisoners to private facilities. •
Requiring standards comparable to state prisons –
New Mexico enacted legislation that transfers supervision of private prisons to the state Secretary of Corrections, ensuring that private prisons meet the same standards as public facilities. In 2001,
Nebraska legislation that requires private prisons to meet public prison standards was overwhelmingly approved by the legislature, but
pocket-vetoed by the governor.
Oklahoma passed a law in 2005 that requires private prisons to have emergency plans in place and mandates state notification of any safety incidents. The
Federal Bureau of Prisons announced its intent to end for-profit prison contracts. •
Terminating federal contracts. On August 18, 2016, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates announced that the
Justice Department intended to end its
Bureau of Prisons contracts with for-profit prison operators, because it concluded "...the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services..." than the
Federal Bureau of Prisons. In response, Issa Arnita, the spokesperson for the third largest U.S. for-profit prison operator
Management and Training Corporation, said it was "disappointed" to learn about the DOJ's decision. "If the DOJ's decision to end the use of contract prisons were based solely on declining inmate populations, there may be some justification, but to base this decision on cost, safety and security, and programming is wrong." In a memorandum, Yates continued, for-profit "...prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities. They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department's
Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security. The rehabilitative services that the Bureau provides, such as educational programs and job training, have proved difficult to replicate and outsource and these services are essential to reducing recidivism and improving public safety. Also, the recidivism rates of the private prisons, "Within three years of release, about two-thirds (67.8 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested. Within five years of release, about three-quarters (76.6 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested. Of those prisoners who were rearrested, more than half (56.7 percent) were arrested by the end of the first year." These private prison recidivism rates, compared to the public prison's recidivism rates, are virtually identical and in return have minuscule benefits . At the time, the Justice Department held 193,000 inmates, about 22,000 of whom were in 14 private prisons. Criminal justice reform had caused the prison population to drop by about 25,000 inmates over the previous few years. Separately the
Department of Homeland Security intends to continue to hold some suspected illegal aliens in private prisons.
Media coverage in the United States Documentary •
Kids for cash scandal was featured in
Capitalism: A Love Story, the 2009 documentary by
Michael Moore. • A full-length documentary covering the kids for cash scandal entitled
Kids for Cash was released in February 2014. •
13th is an Oscar-nominated 2016 documentary that examines the role of private prison contracts in the
mass incarceration of blacks and Latinos, primarily, in the United States. The name refers to the
Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery, yet allows for involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime.
Drama • Kids for Cash scandal has also led to several portrayals in fictional works. Both the
Law & Order: SVU episode "
Crush" and an episode of
The Good Wife featured corrupt judges sending children to private detention centers. An episode of
Cold Case titled "Jurisprudence" is loosely based on this event. •
Season 3 of
Orange Is the New Black portrays the transformation of the prison from federally owned to a privately owned prison for-profit. • An episode of
Elementary focuses on private prisons competing with each other in
New Jersey to win a bid for another prison. • An episode of
Boston Legal sees a 15-year-old former inmate suing a private prison over an alleged rape by one of its corrections officers. ==See also==