How many states use private prisons?
More than half of states used private prisons in 2023, but they housed less than 10% of all inmates nationwide.
As of 2023, 28 states used privately run prisons — along with or instead of local jails and state-run facilities — to hold 7.1% of prisoners. Prison facility data is specific to sentenced prisoners and does not include federal detention centers where immigrants are held.
In January 2021, former President Joe Biden signed an executive order ending the use of privately operated prisons citing the importance of prisoner rehabilitation and redemption and the need to alleviate federal reliance on profit-based correctional systems, and noting that private prisons underperform in inmate resources and inmate and staff safety. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) ended the use of private prisons on November 30, 2022.
Although President Trump has since overturned Biden’s executive order, there are zero inmates in private federal institutions as of March 5, 2026.
Twenty-eight states used private prison facilities in 2023.
Privately-run facility usage by state
What is a private prison?
Correctional institutions include jails and prisons under local, state, or federal jurisdiction. Most of these are administered by government departments of corrections. When a government agency signs a contract with a third party to run a prison, that’s a private or “for-profit” prison.
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Which states have the most inmates in private prisons?
In 2023, the most recent year of federal data, Montana had the biggest share of its prisoners in for-profit prisons. It housed nearly half of its prisoners (48.7%) in private facilities.
It’s also an outlier: percentages for the next-closest states were nearly 20 points behind. New Mexico housed 29.2% of its prison population in private facilities, followed by Arizona (28.5%), Tennessee (27.2%), and Wyoming (24.8%).
In the other 23 states with private prisons, the percentage of inmates under private custody ranged from 0.1% to 22.2%.
In 2023, nearly half of Montana’s prisoner population was in private prisons.
Percent of prisoner population in private prisons
Illinois banned private prisons in 1990 but still housed 1.2% of prisoners in private facilities as recently as 2023. The Bureau of Justice Statistics notes that Illinois data includes inmates who are part of a third-party work-release program, where people remain in custody as they transition back to life outside the correctional system.
Which states do not use private prisons?
As of 2023, twenty-two states did not use private prison facilities: Arkansas, California, Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Not using private facilities does not imply a formal ban; only some states have legislation outlawing them on the books. In some cases, bans were passed even though the state didn’t actually have any private facilities. In Minnesota, for example, its formal ban passed in 2023, even though the only private prison in its history closed in 2010.
Where are prisoners if they’re not in private prisons?
Most are in state-run prisons. In 2023, an average of 87.2% of prisoners were in a state-run facility. Seven states used state-run prisons only: California, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, New York and Rhode Island.
Those not in state prisons are in local jails. The average share of prisoners in local jails was 5.9%.
Louisiana was the only state to house more inmates in local jails (52.7%) than in state-run prisons (47.3%).
Forty-eight states have more inmates in state-run prisons than local jails or private prisons.
Percent of prisoner populations by facility, 2023
There is little federal data on how many private prisons there are in each state. The most recent federal report on the number of private prison facilities is from a Bureau of Justice Statistics report from 2019.
Where does this data come from?
Where does this data come from?
Bureau of Justice Statistics:
The Bureau of Justice Statistics was founded in 1979 as an agency within the Department of Justice. Its primary mission is to “collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.”
Data in this article comes from the Bureau’s annual report on prisoner statistics, which shares data about the private prison population as well as counts and demographic characteristics of the prison population under the jurisdiction of state and federal correctional authorities. While the agency was founded in 1979, this statistical report series began in 1926.
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