No matter how private companies profit from prisons—detaining immigrants, needlessly expanding capacity, cutting quality—privatizing incarceration puts the pursuit of profits ahead of the needs of taxpayers, prisoners, and prison employees.
As the U.S. continues to imprison more people than any country in the world, momentum is growing for change in the criminal justice system. Learn more about the problem of mass incarceration and join our work to end it.
Over 80,000 people are being held in long-term solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, and even more are held in isolation in immigrant detention centers and juvenile facilities. Long-term isolation has no rehabilitative benefit and is considered a form of torture under international law.
