No, most prisons in the United States are not privately owned. As of 2023, about 7% of state and federal prisoners, roughly 88,600 people out of more than 1.2 million, were held in privately operated facilities.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisoners in 2023 – Statistical Tables The other 93% sit in prisons built, owned, and staffed by federal, state, or local government. The one place where private operators actually dominate is immigration detention, which runs on a different legal track and has grown sharply since 2025.
How Many Prisoners Are Actually in Private Facilities
Bureau of Justice Statistics data for 2023 counted 88,618 people in privately operated prisons, or 7.1% of all state and federal prisoners.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisoners in 2023 – Statistical Tables That was down about 3% from the prior year, when the figure was closer to 91,300.
Facility counts tell the same story. A federal census of adult correctional facilities found 1,079 public confinement facilities and 82 private ones.2Bureau of Justice Statistics. Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, 2019 – Statistical Tables Add community-based facilities like halfway houses and the private total rises to 411, but government-operated facilities still outnumber private ones by a wide margin.3Bureau of Justice Statistics. Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, 2019 – Statistical Tables
Private prisons draw outsized attention partly because the two companies that dominate the industry, CoreCivic and The GEO Group, are publicly traded and post large revenue numbers. CoreCivic alone reported $2.0 billion in total revenue for 2024. Revenue and population share are different measurements, though. Most people who move through the criminal justice system never set foot inside a privately operated prison.
Which States Use Private Prisons
The national 7% figure hides big differences between states. Twenty-seven states housed at least some prisoners in private facilities in 2023; the rest used none at all.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisoners in 2023 – Statistical Tables Among the states that do use them, the share ranges from under 1% to nearly half.
One state is a dramatic outlier, housing almost 49% of its prisoners in for-profit facilities. The next-closest states fall nearly 20 percentage points behind, in the 25% to 29% range.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisoners in 2023 – Statistical Tables States that lean on private prisons often cite cost predictability and the ability to add capacity without building new government facilities. On the other end, roughly half of all states hold zero prisoners in private facilities, and a handful have passed laws restricting or phasing out contracts with for-profit operators.
Geography matters, in other words. In most of the country, private prisons either don’t exist or hold a small slice of the population. In a few states, they are a core piece of the corrections system.
What Changed at the Federal Level
Federal policy on private prisons has swung back and forth, and the current picture only makes sense with the timeline.
In January 2021, Executive Order 14006 directed the Department of Justice to stop renewing contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities.4Federal Register. Reforming Our Incarceration System To Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities The Federal Bureau of Prisons followed through, and its last private prison contract ended in late 2022.
That policy did not last. On January 20, 2025, the incoming administration rescinded Executive Order 14006 as part of a broader reversal of earlier executive actions.5The White House. Initial Rescissions Of Harmful Executive Orders And Actions The rescission reopened the door for new DOJ contracts with private operators. Combined with expanded immigration enforcement and new detention funding, private prison companies have been actively adding capacity since early 2025.
Even before the rescission, the 2023 BJS data showed about 13,400 federal prisoners in privately operated facilities, or 8.5% of the federal prison population.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisoners in 2023 – Statistical Tables Some were held through intergovernmental agreements that sat outside the scope of the original executive order. The Bureau of Prisons also continues to contract with private operators for residential reentry centers, commonly called halfway houses.6Federal Bureau of Prisons. Residential Reentry Management Centers
Immigration Detention Is the Real Exception
The ownership question flips when you leave the criminal system. Criminal prisons are overwhelmingly public. Immigration detention is overwhelmingly private. Estimates have placed the share of immigration detainees in privately run facilities at 79% or higher, and more recent reporting suggests the figure has climbed above 90%.
By late 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was detaining roughly 68,000 people on any given day, up from about 40,000 at the start of the year. The agency has signaled it wants capacity for more than 100,000. Private companies are central to that growth, with one major operator alone expecting to provide 32,000 beds for ICE, more than double what it had supplied before.
The money works differently here than in the criminal system. ICE pays private operators a daily rate per detainee, averaging about $152 per day as of late 2025. Some contracts include guaranteed minimum payments, so the government pays for a set number of beds whether or not they are occupied.
Immigration detention facilities are administrative rather than punitive. People held in them are awaiting civil proceedings, not serving criminal sentences. The facilities often look and function like traditional prisons, with locked cells, restricted movement, and perimeter security, but the legal framework governing conditions is not the same as in the criminal system.
Private Companies Inside Public Prisons
Ownership statistics only capture part of the private footprint in corrections. Even in the 93% of prisons that are government-run, private companies are a significant presence through service contracts. Healthcare, food service, phone systems, and commissary operations are frequently outsourced to for-profit vendors.
Healthcare is the most consequential example. The correctional healthcare industry was estimated at over $9 billion as of 2022, with a handful of large companies contracting to provide medical and mental health services inside public jails and prisons nationwide. Several major providers have gone through bankruptcy proceedings while continuing to hold their contracts.
Commissary sales, where incarcerated people buy food, hygiene products, and other basics, generate an estimated $1.6 billion a year nationally. Phone and video-call services are another large private market inside public facilities, with families often paying rates well above what the same services cost outside. None of these contracts show up in the “private prison” statistics, but together they represent a substantial private financial interest running through the public corrections system.