No federal agency publishes a current count of private prison facilities in the United States, but the population numbers are clearer: as of 2022, twenty-seven states and the federal government held 90,873 people in privately run prisons, about 8% of everyone in state and federal custody. The last federal facility-level count came from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2019, and widely cited figures of roughly 158 facilities trace back to that aging snapshot. Since then the landscape has shifted. The federal Bureau of Prisons reports zero inmates in private facilities as of early 2026, and several states have moved to ban private prisons outright.1Federal Bureau of Prisons. Population Statistics
Why the Facility Count Is Hard to Pin Down
Part of the problem is definitional. Some counts include only full-service prisons where a private company manages the entire operation. Others fold in halfway houses, re-entry centers, and specialized facilities for substance abuse treatment or geriatric care. Immigration detention centers, which are overwhelmingly privately run, sometimes get added to the total and sometimes don’t. Any single figure for “private prisons in the US” should be read with that inconsistency in mind.
What is more concrete is state participation. As of 2023, twenty-eight states used privately run prisons to hold at least some of their sentenced prisoners. Twenty-two states did not use private facilities at all, though in several of those states the absence reflects expired contracts rather than a formal legislative ban.
How Many People Are Held in Private Prisons
The 2022 total of 90,873 people in private state and federal prisons works out to roughly 8% of the combined state and federal prison population. That share has been drifting downward as some states move inmates back to government-run facilities.
State-level reliance varies enormously. Montana housed about 48.7% of its prison population in private facilities as of 2023, by far the highest share in the country. Several other states held between 20% and 39% of their prisoners in for-profit facilities. At the other end, twenty-two states housed no sentenced prisoners in private prisons at all.
The federal picture has moved the fastest. In 2022, about 13,834 people in federal custody were held in private facilities. By March 2026, that number had fallen to zero. The decline followed a January 2021 executive order directing the Department of Justice to stop renewing contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities.2Federal Register. Reforming Our Incarceration System To Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities On January 20, 2025, that order was revoked as part of a broader rescission of prior executive actions.3The White House. Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions The revocation restored the legal authority to contract with private operators, but the Bureau of Prisons has not resumed those placements as of early 2026.1Federal Bureau of Prisons. Population Statistics
Where Private Prisons Are Concentrated
Private prisons cluster heavily in the South and West. Texas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Oklahoma have long relied on private operators to absorb prison population growth that outpaced public facility construction. Western states including Montana, New Mexico, and Arizona also house significant shares of their inmates privately. These regions had the land, the political appetite, and the population growth that made private prison expansion attractive beginning in the 1980s.
States with higher incarceration rates, tougher sentencing laws, and faster-growing populations were the likeliest to turn to private operators when building new public prisons was too slow or expensive. The facilities themselves range from maximum-security lockups to minimum-security residential centers, and some states contract with private companies specifically for specialized needs such as substance abuse treatment, mental health care, or housing for aging prisoners.
States That Have Banned Private Prisons
A growing number of states have moved to end private prison use, though the mechanisms vary. Illinois banned private prisons in 1990, among the earliest states to do so. Minnesota passed a formal ban in 2023. California and New York have enacted legislation restricting or phasing out private prison contracts.
Not every state without private prisons has actually banned them. Of the twenty-two states that did not use private facilities as of 2023, many simply chose not to contract with private operators without passing a formal prohibition. The distinction matters. A state that lacks a ban could resume using private prisons if political winds shift or prison populations spike. States with legislation on the books have a more durable commitment, though even statutory bans can be repealed.
Who Runs the Private Prisons
Two corporations dominate the industry. CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, and The GEO Group collectively manage more than half of all private prison contracts in the country. Both are publicly traded and have historically been structured as Real Estate Investment Trusts, a corporate form that offers tax advantages by treating their facilities as real estate portfolios.
GEO Group is the larger of the two, projecting roughly $2.6 billion in annual revenue for 2025.4The GEO Group. GEO Group Reports Third Quarter 2025 Results Both companies also operate immigration detention centers, electronic monitoring programs, and reentry services. Two smaller operators, LaSalle Corrections and Management and Training Corporation, hold contracts in multiple states and round out the major players.
Government contracts with these companies typically involve a per-diem rate: the agency pays a set dollar amount for each inmate housed per day. Rates vary with the facility’s security level, location, and included services. Contracts tend to run for long terms, sometimes spanning multiple decades, so the company can recover its construction or acquisition costs. That lock-in can leave governments bound to contracts that no longer make financial sense as incarceration rates decline, particularly when the contracts also include occupancy guarantees requiring payment for a minimum number of filled beds whether or not the inmates are there.
Immigration Detention Is a Separate, Larger Private Footprint
Counts of “private prisons” sometimes get conflated with immigration detention, and the two are not the same. Private prisons hold about 8% of sentenced state and federal prisoners. In Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody the ratio flips: over 90% of people detained by ICE are held in privately run facilities, and more than 200 facilities across the country are used for immigration detention. CoreCivic, GEO Group, LaSalle Corrections, and Management and Training Corporation all operate in this space as well. Federal policy changes affecting Department of Justice contracts for criminal detention did not reach immigration detention facilities run under Department of Homeland Security contracts, which is why the private share of ICE custody has stayed high regardless of which administration holds the White House.