Prisons and jails in the United States are owned mostly by governments. At the end of 2023, federal and state authorities held roughly 1.25 million people in prison, and about 92 percent of them were in facilities owned by a government and staffed by government employees.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisoners in 2023 – Statistical Tables The other 8 percent sat in facilities owned or operated by for-profit corporations. So the short answer to who owns prisons is three governments and two companies: the federal Bureau of Prisons, the fifty state corrections departments, county and city governments, and (for the private slice) chiefly CoreCivic and The GEO Group.
Ownership is not a trivia question. It decides who pays for construction and upkeep, who is on the hook when someone is hurt inside, and who profits from the contract.
Federal Prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons owns and runs the federal system. The BOP was created under 18 U.S.C. § 4041 and sits under the Attorney General inside the Department of Justice.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 4041 – Bureau of Prisons; Director and Employees The federal government holds title to more than 120 institutions, ranging from minimum-security camps to maximum-security penitentiaries, housing roughly 153,500 inmates as of 2025.3Federal Bureau of Prisons. Population Statistics
Congress funds the system through annual appropriations. The BOP’s fiscal year 2026 budget is about $8.4 billion, covering staff, maintenance, and inmate healthcare. The General Services Administration helps acquire and manage the real estate, since federal prison buildings are permanent government assets like courthouses or office buildings.4General Services Administration. Real Estate The most recent federal cost-of-incarceration figure is about $120.80 per day per inmate, or roughly $44,090 per year.5Federal Register. Annual Determination of Average Cost of Incarceration Fee (COIF)
State Prisons
States own the biggest share of prison infrastructure in the country. State prisons held nearly 1.1 million people at the end of 2023, dwarfing the federal system.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisoners in 2023 – Statistical Tables Each state’s department of corrections (or equivalent agency) holds legal title to the land and buildings, and each system runs independently of the federal government under the police power the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states.6Library of Congress. Constitution Annotated – State Police Power and Tenth Amendment Jurisprudence
Legislatures pay for construction in two main ways. The simplest is a direct appropriation from the general fund. The second is bond financing: general obligation bonds backed by the state’s taxing power, or revenue bonds backed by future appropriations. Some states have used certificates of participation, in which the state leases land it already owns to a financing authority that builds the prison and subleases it back. The legal structure differs; the practical result is the same, with the state owning the building and the public paying for it.
Because the state holds the deed, the state carries legal liability for what happens inside. The governor or a state board appoints the agency head, and the legislature oversees it through the budget and public-records laws. Staffing, healthcare, and programming decisions stay inside the state government.
Local Jails and Municipal Detention Centers
Counties and cities own jails. Jails do a different job than prisons: they hold people awaiting trial, serving short sentences (usually under a year), or waiting to be transferred elsewhere. Title to a county jail sits with the county commission or board of supervisors, and daily operations are run by an elected sheriff or a municipal corrections department.
The money comes mostly from local property and sales taxes. Per-bed costs run into the hundreds of dollars per day in many urban jurisdictions, which makes jails one of the largest line items in county budgets. The county also carries the insurance costs and legal exposure that come with a high-liability facility.
Some jurisdictions share ownership. Multiple counties can pool resources through a regional jail authority, a separate legal entity that holds title to the facility while the participating counties split operating expenses.7Bureau of Justice Statistics. Correctional Institutions Many local jails also rent beds to the U.S. Marshals Service, which pays for housing, care, and security of federal detainees in non-federal facilities under 18 U.S.C. § 4013.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 4013 – Support of United States Prisoners in Non-Federal Institutions That revenue helps offset the local operating budget.
Private Prison Companies
The for-profit slice of the industry is dominated by two companies. As of the end of 2024, CoreCivic operated 42 correctional and detention facilities, owning or controlling 38 of them outright. The GEO Group operates 95 facilities worldwide with about 75,000 beds, including 51 secure U.S. facilities.9The GEO Group. Locations
Two business models are in play. In the first, the company owns the land and the building and contracts with a government agency to house inmates at a negotiated daily rate. In the second, the government owns the building and the company only provides staffing and management. Either way, the government pays a per diem fee for each person housed, and many contracts include occupancy guarantees requiring payment for a minimum number of beds whether they are filled or not.
Both companies formerly operated as Real Estate Investment Trusts, a structure that let them avoid corporate income tax on earnings distributed to shareholders. Both abandoned REIT status around 2021 and returned to standard corporate structures, driven by lender divestment pressure and a desire for more flexible capital management. Their facilities still appear on corporate balance sheets as real estate owned by shareholders.
Who Owns Immigration Detention
Private ownership looks very different on the immigration side. As of mid-2023, roughly 90 percent of people held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody were in facilities owned or operated by private corporations: the inverse of the criminal prison system’s 8 percent.
The dollar figures track that imbalance. GEO Group earned over $1 billion from ICE contracts in 2022, about 44 percent of company revenue. CoreCivic earned roughly $552 million the same year, about 30 percent of its revenue. ICE contracts are now the largest and most profitable line of business for both companies.
Immigration detention is civil custody, not criminal, and runs under a different legal framework. But the same corporations hold the deeds and the staffing contracts, and the same per diem model applies.
Federal Policy on Private Prisons Has Flipped Twice
Who contracts with the private companies has moved with federal policy. At its peak, the BOP had contracts with 15 private facilities housing about 29,000 inmates. Executive Order 14006, signed in 2021, directed the Department of Justice to stop renewing those contracts. The BOP let them lapse, and the last private federal prison contract ended on November 30, 2022, when the McRae Correctional Facility in Georgia closed.10Federal Bureau of Prisons. BOP Ends Use of Privately Owned Prisons
That order was rescinded on January 20, 2025, reopening the legal path for new DOJ private prison contracts. As of early 2026, the BOP still reports zero inmates in privately managed facilities.3Federal Bureau of Prisons. Population Statistics ICE immigration detention was never covered by the original order and has continued to rely heavily on private operators throughout.
Several states have enacted their own restrictions. California prohibited new private prison contracts in 2019, and Washington followed in 2021. Illinois, Colorado, and New Jersey have passed similar measures. State bans apply only within state borders and do not reach federal or immigration detention conducted under separate legal authority.
Why Ownership Changes Your Legal Rights
Who holds the deed decides who you can sue if something goes wrong inside, and the answer is not the same across the three types of owners.
In a federal BOP facility, the Federal Tort Claims Act is the primary route for injuries caused by staff negligence. The FTCA requires exhausting the internal grievance process first and filing within two years. It does not cover injuries from prison work assignments, and it does not reach independent contractors who are not direct federal employees.
In state-run facilities, state employees generally have some form of sovereign immunity, and correctional officers have qualified immunity: they cannot be personally sued for actions taken on the job unless they violated clearly established constitutional rights.
Private prison employees have no such shield. In Richardson v. McKnight (1997), the Supreme Court held that guards employed by private prison companies are not entitled to qualified immunity from civil rights lawsuits under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.11Legal Information Institute. Richardson v McKnight The Court’s reasoning was that competitive and contractual pressures on private companies substitute for the immunity that government employees receive. The practical consequence is that an inmate injured by a private guard has a more direct path to a lawsuit than one injured by a government guard, even though the corporate parent itself can be harder to pin down than most private defendants.