About 7% of prisoners in the United States are held in privately operated facilities. More precisely, 7.1% of state and federal prisoners were in private custody at the end of 2023, roughly 87,000 people out of 1.23 million total.1USAFacts. How Many States Use Private Prisons That share has drifted down from 8% the year before and from a 2012 peak, though the picture is changing fast because of federal policy reversals and a historic expansion of immigration detention, which is a separate system with much higher privatization.
What the 7% Figure Actually Covers
The 7.1% number comes from the federal count of sentenced state and federal prisoners. Twenty-eight states held some portion of their prison population in private facilities as of 2023.1USAFacts. How Many States Use Private Prisons The year before, that worked out to 90,873 people in private custody out of roughly 1.2 million total prisoners.2The Sentencing Project. Private Prisons in the United States
Two companies dominate this market. CoreCivic and The GEO Group together operate the vast majority of private prison and detention beds in the country, which concentrates enormous negotiating leverage with federal and state agencies in just two corporations.
How Much the Percentage Varies by State
The national average hides enormous differences. Montana is the clear outlier, holding 48.7% of its prison population in private facilities — nearly half. The next tier is far behind: New Mexico at 29.2%, Arizona at 28.5%, Tennessee at 27.2%, and Wyoming at 24.8%.1USAFacts. How Many States Use Private Prisons Alaska and Hawaii also lean heavily on private facilities to house sentenced prisoners.2The Sentencing Project. Private Prisons in the United States
Private prisons cluster in the South and West. Heavy reliance usually traces back to decisions made decades ago, when states wanted to add capacity quickly without funding new construction themselves. Private operators built, staffed, and ran the facilities in exchange for a per-diem payment per inmate. Those arrangements can be hard to unwind, which is part of why the geographic pattern has been slow to change.
States With No Private Prisons
Twenty-two states held no prisoners in private facilities as of 2023. The group includes California, New York, and Michigan along with smaller states like Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.1USAFacts. How Many States Use Private Prisons Not using private facilities isn’t the same as banning them. Some states never adopted the model; others let contracts lapse.
A smaller number of states have passed formal bans. California enacted one in 2019, Washington in 2021, and Minnesota in 2023, with California and Washington extending restrictions to federally contracted facilities within their borders. Illinois banned private prisons back in 1990, though it still reported a small share of prisoners in private custody in 2023 because of third-party work-release programs that fall outside the ban.1USAFacts. How Many States Use Private Prisons
Federal Prisons: From Zero and Back Again
The federal piece of the answer has whipsawed in recent years. At its peak, the Bureau of Prisons contracted with 15 private facilities holding roughly 29,000 inmates, more than 13% of the federal prison population at the time.3Federal Bureau of Prisons. BOP Ends Use of Privately Owned Prisons
In January 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14006, directing the Attorney General not to renew Department of Justice contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities.4The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 14006 The BOP closed its last private prison contract in November 2022 with the shutdown of the McRae Correctional Facility in Georgia.3Federal Bureau of Prisons. BOP Ends Use of Privately Owned Prisons For a time, zero federal inmates sat in privately managed BOP facilities.
On his first day in office in January 2025, President Trump rescinded EO 14006.5The White House. Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions That reopened the door for the Department of Justice to contract with private operators again. How quickly BOP actually re-engages private facilities will depend on budgets, population trends, and political choices still unfolding. Worth noting: the U.S. Marshals Service, which holds people awaiting trial or sentencing near federal courthouses, kept using private facilities throughout the Biden years because EO 14006 covered only the Bureau of Prisons.
Immigration Detention Is a Different Number
If you’re asking about private prisons and thinking of immigration detention, the 7% figure doesn’t apply. Immigration detention is overwhelmingly privatized. As of 2021, roughly 79% of people held in ICE custody on any given day were in privately operated facilities.6American Civil Liberties Union. Unchecked Growth: Private Prison Corporations and Immigration Detention CoreCivic and GEO Group together hold over 90% of all privately detained immigrants.
The system has also expanded sharply. More than 75,000 people were being detained by ICE as of early 2026, up from about 40,000 when Trump took office in January 2025. Federal immigration officials have requested $38.3 billion to boost detention capacity to 92,600 beds as part of a broader $45 billion expansion.7AP News. Immigration Officials Plan to Spend $38.3 Billion to Boost Detention In 2025, The GEO Group received $2.1 billion in ICE contract obligations and CoreCivic received $653.5 million, with combined ICE obligations to the two companies exceeding $2.7 billion.8OpenSecrets. Some Major Trump Donors Are Now Reaping Billions in ICE Contracts
Immigration detention is civil, not criminal. EO 14006 never covered ICE, which is why the immigration side stayed fully privatized through the Biden years and has grown under the current administration. The practical takeaway: a single national percentage doesn’t capture what’s happening. Criminal incarceration is about 7% private. Immigration detention is closer to 80%. And the direction of travel is different in each system.