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In 2015, I wrote “Are Private Prisons Really the Problem?” Ten years later, I find myself forced to repost it, often, because the conversation on the matter appears has not changed one bit. When I wrote my short essay, the discourse on the privatisation of prisons by entities like the Geo corporation had only just begun, and prison abolitionists like Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Mariame Kaba were finally being heard.
But none of these abolitionists and the many individuals and groups (like Mothers United Against Violence and Incarceration) working on abolition were focused on private prisons as the unique and overwhelming problem. I quoted Gilmore, who pointed out that private prisons are a small fraction of the problem and asked, “What kind of future will prison divestment campaigns produce if they pay no attention to the money that flows through and is extracted from the public prisons and jails, where 95 percent of inmates are held? “
Private prisons still hold only about 8% of the entire prison population and The Sentencing Project points out that “the population in private prisons has decreased significantly” since 2012.
These facts and figures are not hidden in obscurity, and we abolitionists have been highlighting them for years (with heightened amounts of weariness, as one friend notes). And yet, mainstream and even leftist media outlets like Democracy Now constantly stress that private prisons are the main drivers of incarceration. Certainly, it’s important to note that these are where Palestinian students like Mahmoud Khalil are incarcerated (and that they are transported there by private air carriers). The slow creep of corporatisation in every part of our lives is significant and has deleterious effects on civil society. Private prison corporations are less likely to be held to regulations concerning safety and hygiene, among other matters.
But, as I pointed out, the problem is not the privatisation but the prison system itself. It’s not as if a state-run prison system is a bastion of blissful unfreedom for prisoners, and, besides, our goal ought to be the end of prisons. To return to Gilmore: “rather than more humane punishment, the point is how do we become more humane.”
So why are so many obsessed with the idea of private prisons? Why, in 2025, do so many keep harping on the idea that these are the epitome of evil when they are such a small percentage and even dwindling in number?
One reason is that there’s a vaguely lefty-progressive-liberal cohort of people who want to imagine themselves as being anti-prison, not as actual abolitionists. For them, the idea of a world without prisons is incomprehensible and even frightening, but decades of abolitionist writing—and the truly horrifying and worsening conditions of most modern prisons—have made them aware that something needs to change. Calling out private prisons as somehow exceptionally bad allows them to stake a claim in prison discourse without being wedded to anything too radical. A great many such people may genuinely believe that calling out private prisons will solve what they see as problems, like overcrowding and inhumane conditions, because they have not yet come around to the belief that the very existence of prisons is the problem. Many others persist in calling out private prisons because it allows them to voice a relatively safe position that makes them seem more radical than they are. If that seems like a cynical read, well, yes, but I don’t think it’s untrue. I’ve been on this planet and in various parts of the broad left long enough to know that, yes, actually, a lot of people want to be seen as saying or thinking the right thing because, to be blunt, it seems like the cool thing to do. They are much less committed to shifting their ideology or bringing about real change.
There is a second and somewhat ironic reason why the cry against private prisons is so popular, and that is the profit motive, but for writers. Propose an essay on why prisons should be abolished and you will be met with silence from bored editors everywhere. But suggest a fiery jeremiad against, oh, say, Geo and other private prison corporations and you will make enough to, well, at least afford an entrée at a cheapish restaurant. What we have today is a publishing problem: writing about the need for abolition in a world that is bent on pushing more people into prison gets you nowhere, but inflating the idea that the private prison system is infinitely bigger than it really is will get you money and clicks. In the parlance of the publishing world: Private prisons are sexy, abolition is not.
For a brief moment in time, it seemed like prison abolition would become an integral part of our everyday discouse, but the conversation has now mostly shifted to whether prisons should be more or less cruel, whether or not prisoners should be allowed access to libraries or not (they should). As Angela Davis—who actually spent time in prison—says in the film Criminal Queers, it matters that you should not be drinking water with bugs in it while incarcerated, but the bigger issue is the extent, scope, and cruelty of the entire prison industrial complex (I am slightly paraphrasing here.)
Is it encouraging that more people understand the problems with the the prison system? Yes, absolutely. But the focus on private prisons is misleading and takes attention away from larger, systemic problems; it persuades people that kindler, gentler prisons are the solution. The problem is not that private prisons exist, but that prisons exist at all.
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