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. Yet many states and the federal government continue to rely on private companies to manage their prisons. As a step toward ending mass incarceration, AFSC works to document the conditions of private prisons and to stop the privatization of prisons, jails, and detention centers.
Resources
Pushing back on privatization
Related issues
To build a more just, peaceful society, we must promote healing—instead of punishment—in the U.S. criminal legal system. We advocate for human-centered alternatives to policing and incarceration, better reintegration after prison, an end to prison privatization, more humane conditions of confinement, and ultimately, the abolition of prisons, jails, and detention centers.
AFSC works for a world where migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people have the power to determine where they live and the opportunity to thrive in society. We work to address both the economic and political drivers of migration in multiple countries as well as to support migrants and refugees, whether they are in transit or settled in new communities.
