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The entire concept of "for-profit incarceration/detention" should not exist. Such a system only incentivizes cruelty.
In practice, it doesn't seem to make much difference:

> Propensity score matching and regression analyses of the National Inmate Survey are used to examine individuals’ experiences and perceptions of environmental quality in public versus private prisons across key domains of prison life, with an emphasis on needs, behaviors, victimization, and attitudes. No differences are identified for women. Males in private prisons are more likely than men in public prisons to perceive there to be inadequate staffing and are less likely to report maintaining ties with people outside of prison. Men in private prisons are also less likely to report crowding to be an issue.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361439680_Private_V....

We should zoom out in perspective. The question is not “is the experience in for-profit prisons better for incarcerated people”.

It is “for-profit prisons create a system with a financial incentive to increase the number of incarcerated people”.

Tax funded prisons also have unions that vote for expanding prisons. The distinction doesn’t make much of a difference.
For-profit is the delivery system, which should save taxpayer money. Systems where the institutions are directly administered by taxpayer funds and their attendant public employee unions also have political/financial incentives.
Because the state prisons are trying to cut costs and/or profit the same way the private ones are. They just tend to invest in waste and expansion rather than pay $$ to owners/investors.

The whole thing is rotten. Changing the ownership of the mess doesn't make it not rotten.

What we really need is a prison voucher program. The prisoners get to go to whatever prison they want to, and then the prison they go to gets paid. Incentives aligned!
I'm not really sold on the idea of private prisons in general, but if we're going to have them it should at least be the prisoner's choice. Unaccountable private prisons that are also a government enforced monopoly is just the worst of both worlds.
I know this is a joke, but if we just run with it, the prisons would start running targeted ads to previously incarcerated and “at-risk” people so that they choose them when the time comes. And when the voucher revenue growth is below some target for two consecutive quarters, they could maybe pay for more crimes…?
I would like to see a menu please.
It could incentivize good outcomes if we chose to pay more for some measurable amount of rehabilitation.

The nice thing about outsourcing to for profit entities is that you don't have to come up with the ideas, you can just pay for the end result.

Unfortunately, they're just being paid to babysit so that's all they do.

> "for-profit incarceration/detention"

Those had a different name in WW2, in another part of the world. It seems US took the concept, like many other from there, and inovated it.

Does it? The alternative is non-profit incarceration/detention, in which the incentive is to not put people in prison, leading to more crime, lower trust and more victims.
The US incarcerates more people per capita than anywhere else in the world except a couple of tiny countries and possibly North Korea (numbers for North Korea, for obvious reasons, are vague, but it probably does incarcerate more per capita than the US). For a developed world country, it has fairly high crime rates (in particular it has by far the highest rate of intentional homicide in the developed world). Like, do you think that there's a magic level of incarceration at which point it would suddenly start working, if only you could get there?
> non-profit incarceration/detention, in which the incentive is to not put people in prison

How do you figure? Is the "I'll save you money by being soft on crime" election platform popular in your country?

Nice false dilemma you have here.
We could end the absurd war on drugs that conservatives are intent on waging and follow evidence-based solutions instead. About 20% of prisoners in the US are there for drug crimes. At the federal level it's 42.6%.
Deportations should be efficient and swiftly follow after apprehension. Delay only funnels public funds to companies such as these.
What false positive rate are you willing to accept?
Did you reply to the wrong comment?
No. What false positive rate for deportations are you willing to accept?
A pretty high rate, because it's pretty easy for an actual US citizen who gets accidentally deported to simply re-enter the country.
What does that look like? Dropped in a foreign country without money or documents. Likely in the custody of a government who doesn't care.

How do you re-enter the country?

Yeah, it is not as if the people deported have family, children, pets, belongings, responsabilities... /s
Same experience as any citizen who is apprehended and jailed for crimes. True equality.
He doesn't care. I don't understand how that account is still not banned, given their post history.
Yes, but where’s the cruelty that this administration so strongly desires? These people need to be punished for what they’ve done regardless of if they’ve done it. Additionally, efficiency means lower revenue and that simply can’t happen.
Something about “cruel and unusual punishment” has never sat well with me.
Always interesting to answer the question of who benefits from certain policies.
Apparently it is the luxuriating inmates: “an average rate of $307,000 per bed.”
And, as is tradition, are deprived of approximately all the value they produce!
Wowzer. Can somebody please start AirBnBars? I have an extra room, and some steel bars.
YoY Net Income from CoreCivic's own financials (2025-2022): 116.50, 68.87, 67.59, 122.32
I'm so brain rotted I read that as a new Prison-1.4B model release
Ah yes, slavery
You mean to say that we AREN'T rehabilitating these people? /s
Oligarchy! Sad!
It's intentionally misleading to use revenue in this headline.

People will read that headline and come away with the impression that private prisons are making billions. They're expenses are most likely scaling with their revenue.

If your concern is that private prisons exist or that detention is climbing, the dollar figure is secondary to other, better measures. Instead, revenue is (mis)used to give yhe impression that people are getting rich off of this and, while that may be true, the relevant number is the increase in income, not revenue.

In short, NPR isn't above clickbait that's biased towards their audiences.

No. Revenue is a generally accepted business metric. It is normal to discuss revenue without being also compelled to discuss profits at the same time. You don't have to like the common way of discussing business, but that doesn't change this.

> give yhe impression that people are getting rich off of this

CoreCivic is a public company, so we can see that the C-suite each earns over $1m annually in cash compensation. the Chief Development officer earns more cash compensation than the person holding the same title at Hilton, a company worth over 20x more.

Then, we can look at the insider roster to see that the CEO currently holds over $10 million in stock, the heads of HR and corrections each hold over $5 million, etc.

People should get the impression that people are getting rich off this because people are getting rich off this.

This "well actually" feels like it's in the same vein as tobacco companies funding cancer research. 30 seconds with Google shows that CoreCivic's Q1 earnings for 2026 are ~%50 higher than earnings reported for Q1 from last year. So yeah, they're getting rich off this.
My point isn't that they aren't making money. My point is that they aren't making 1.4 billion dollars on it.

It's not quite as impressive to say they've increased their profits 60m which gives a much different impression.

Independent reporting on the treatment of detained immigrants might reasonably lead one to believe that expenses are not scaling linearly with increased revenue.
Which would be a great thing to write about.
It's a useful figure in that it shows how fast an industry, which shouldn't exist, grows:

"Swindle said that CoreCivic's total revenue went up by just over 27% this spring compared to the same quarter last year, for a total of $684.9 million."

>> They're expenses are most likely scaling with their revenue

A unique phenomenon that only exists in this industry and is clearly the reason you feel opposed to people performing the same sort of analysis they would on other businesses...

Also, nobody would assume a company with 1.4B in rev is "making billions" as that would be impossible based on their revenue being less than 2 billion.

> A unique phenomenon that only exists in this industry and is clearly the reason you feel opposed to people performing the same sort of analysis they would on other businesses...

I'm generally opposed to this metric as used in this headline.

I'm not sure what positions you're assuming I hold but there is some misunderstanding because I don't really understand your comment.

> Also, nobody would assume a company with 1.4B in rev is "making billions" as that would be impossible based on their revenue being less than 2 billion.

Unless they assume they operate for more than 1 year.