Thirty-one states and the federal government incarcerated 116,000 people in private prisons in 2019, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.

States are passing laws abolishing private prisons and businesses are cutting ties with the facilities. And private prison companies are planning for a future in which their core service is illegal.

CoreCivic and GEO Group have been shifting away from prisons toward other government contracts, like office space and immigration detention.

The vast majority of prisoners are held in publicly run prisons. But the private sector affects their incarceration in different ways.

The private prison system raises a lot of questions. One that many people wonder about is how can a private company legally incarcerate people? Isn’t that the government’s job? The answer is yes, but the government does contract out quite a bit of their work.