A SENTENCE IS NOT A BUSINESS MODEL.

VAULT · 06 JUSTICE AGAINST THE EPSTEINERS

Published by Langhorne P. Breedlove

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2026 · 2:14 AM ET

Tags: Private Prisons · Rehabilitation · Corrections · Reentry · Public Accountability

Dear fellow American proletariat: There are few stranger arrangements in public life than paying a private company to confine a human being, then congratulating ourselves when its quarterly results improve. A lawful sentence may deprive someone of liberty; it does not relieve government of responsibility for safety, medical care, dignity or what happens when that person returns home.

American Proletariat proposes ending government contracts for privately operated prisons and creating an accountable, rehabilitation-centered corrections system. That is not a proposal to open every prison door, erase judicial sentences or ignore victims. It is a proposal to put legal custody and public accountability together, and to judge correctional systems by safety, lawful treatment, reduced repeat offending and successful reentry—not the number of occupied beds.

ROOTS & HISTORY

Privately operated incarceration expanded in the United States during the late twentieth century as jurisdictions sought capacity amid rising prison populations. Federal, state, local and immigration detention systems developed different contracting arrangements. A private facility housing convicted state prisoners is not legally interchangeable with a federal pretrial detention center or an immigration detention facility. Any national reform must identify which government holds legal authority over which people and contracts. (Sources 01, 02)

In January 2021, an executive order instructed the U.S. attorney general not to renew Department of Justice contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that its last secure privately managed prison contract ended November 30, 2022. That was a significant federal change—not the abolition of private prisons in the United States. States retained their own arrangements, and immigration custody under the Department of Homeland Security was outside the executive order's DOJ-specific scope. (Sources 01, 03)

WHAT THE NUMBERS ACTUALLY SAY

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 88,618 prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction were held in privately operated prison facilities in 2023, about 7.1 percent of the total prison jurisdiction population. State systems accounted for the principal secure-private-prison population, while the federal Bureau of Prisons reported no prisoners in secure privately operated prisons that year. This is a 2023 prison statistic, not an up-to-the-minute census of all detention or every privately managed halfway house. (Source 02)

In the broader correctional system, BJS reported roughly 1.83 million adults physically held in state and federal prisons and local jails at year-end 2023. That custody measure covers institutions beyond private prisons and should not be used as though each person were held under a private contract. Jail populations include people awaiting trial as well as those serving sentences. (Source 04)

Public versus private ownership alone does not determine whether people are safe or rehabilitated. Staffing, medical care, use-of-force controls, violence prevention, mental-health treatment, independent oversight and meaningful education matter in both sectors. Eliminating a contract can change incentives and accountability, but must not be misrepresented as an automatic reduction in incarceration or crime.

WHY REHABILITATION BELONGS IN THE SAME ARGUMENT

BJS followed prisoners released in 34 states in 2012 and found that 71 percent were arrested at least once within five years. In the subset of 21 states with the relevant data, 46 percent returned to prison during those five years for a probation or parole violation or a new sentence. Those are different measures across different samples: an arrest is not a conviction, and a return to prison may reflect supervision violations rather than a newly proven crime. (Source 05)

An analysis of 57 studies of correctional education and recidivism, and 21 studies of employment outcomes, published in 2018 found that participants in the strongest study designs were 28 percent less likely to recidivate than comparable nonparticipants. The same synthesis did not find an overall post-release employment advantage. Education appears valuable for reducing repeat justice-system involvement, but no one should claim a prison classroom by itself supplies a job, a stable home or healthcare. (Source 06)

Congress restored eligibility for federal Pell Grants to otherwise eligible incarcerated students enrolled in approved prison education programs for payment periods beginning July 1, 2023. Such programs must satisfy federal approval and oversight requirements; not every prison course automatically qualifies. Public policy can build on this existing framework without pretending that postsecondary education in prison is a brand-new invention. (Source 07)

THE PROPOSED MANDATE

ONE · PHASE OUT PRIVATE PRISON OPERATIONS

AP would seek legislation to prohibit new or renewed federal contracts for privately operated incarceration and establish transition standards for affected contracts. State systems would require state legislation, enforceable funding conditions where legally authorized, or separate negotiations. Immigration detention, federal pretrial custody, prisons, jails, halfway houses and community supervision need distinct legal treatment. A reform that quietly excludes an entire custody system must say so.

TWO · KEEP THE PEOPLE SAFE DURING TRANSITION

Every transition needs a facility-by-facility plan: independent safety inspections, adequate public capacity, staff recruitment and training, custody and medical record transfer, continuity of medication, communication with families and counsel, protection against unnecessary distant transfers, and oversight of force and segregation. Terminating a contract without a safe replacement is not justice; it is a procurement crisis imposed on incarcerated people and workers.

THREE · BUILD REHABILITATION INTO ORDINARY OPERATIONS

Fund literacy, secondary education, approved postsecondary programs, job training, substance-use treatment, mental-health care, disability accommodation and evidence-based behavioral services. Participation should be accessible and appropriately voluntary, with protections against exploitation and arbitrary exclusion. Treatment and educational programming must not become a substitute for constitutionally required medical care or safe basic conditions.

FOUR · MAKE REENTRY BEGIN BEFORE RELEASE

Provide lawful identity documents, benefit reactivation assistance, housing coordination, medication continuity, family reunification support when safe, work-readiness and referrals to vetted employers and public workforce centers. Employers should see usable credentials and transparent rules regarding occupational licensing. A successful transition cannot depend upon finding a bus route, a pharmacy and a job before the first night outside.

FIVE · INDEPENDENTLY INVESTIGATE ABUSE

Create accessible grievance mechanisms, protect whistleblowers, preserve evidence, require prompt independent review of serious injury, deaths and sexual abuse, and publish privacy-protected performance data. Oversight must cover publicly operated institutions too. Merely exchanging a corporate contractor for a government seal does not end misconduct.

THE LEGAL PATH

Federal Congress can revise federal contracting statutes, appropriations, corrections standards and reentry programs within constitutional limits. State lawmakers control many state incarceration contracts and correctional rules. Courts retain authority over criminal judgments and constitutional remedies; correctional agencies cannot disregard sentences at an administrator's whim. New mandates should distinguish procurement restrictions, custody standards, parole eligibility, sentencing changes and civil-rights enforcement rather than treat them as one mechanism.

A law must also address existing contract obligations, workforce transitions, public facility accreditation and inspection, state and Tribal consultation, language access, medical and disability rights, and independent evaluation. If grants to states carry conditions, those conditions must be unambiguous and within lawful federal spending authority.

THE ONE-YEAR & TEN-YEAR LEDGER

A national total cannot be inferred from the number of private-prison beds. Replacing privately operated capacity may require public construction or renovation, salaries, pensions, healthcare contracts, transport, litigation and oversight. Some jurisdictions may be able to reduce population safely through lawful sentencing and diversion reforms; others may require substantial immediate capacity. Private contract payments are existing expenditures, not savings simply because the contractor changes.

Consider an illustrative transition-and-program pilot covering 10,000 people. Assume $12,000 per person annually for education, treatment, reentry and related services: $120 million in recurring annual services. Add an illustrative $30 million per year for independent monitoring and evaluation and $150 million in one-time transitional facilities, records and workforce spending. This produces $300 million in first-year gross new program and transition outlays and $1.65 billion over ten years if recurring costs remain flat. These are arithmetic planning assumptions, not observed per-person costs, a national enrollment forecast, a construction estimate or a Congressional Budget Office score.

A larger 50,000-person program at the same $12,000 annual per-person service assumption would cost $600 million annually for services alone, before transition and monitoring. A serious ten-year ledger must model year-by-year facility transitions, capital needs, labor, healthcare, treatment capacity, education, release cohorts, public contract replacements, potential reductions in incarceration, tax effects, and uncertainty bands. Savings from lower recidivism must not be booked automatically: the evidence must show that particular services causally lower actual correctional or victimization costs and that expenditures can truly be avoided.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Closing privately operated facilities can trigger crowding elsewhere, costly transfers, staffing shortages and contractual penalties. Public facilities can be violent or poorly managed. Programs can boast high enrollment while providing little usable instruction. Reentry services can fail when housing and employers are unavailable. The transition may also affect prison employees and nearby communities dependent on existing operations.

Critics may argue that contracts provide needed flexibility or capacity, and that a public-only model could raise costs without improving outcomes. Supporters may argue that the government's duty to confine people should not be delegated to profit-seeking firms and that private contracting can weaken accountability. Both positions require examination of comparable populations, staffing standards, conditions, cost definitions and independent safety outcomes, not simply a contest between slogans.

Violence survivors and victims must not vanish from the analysis. Rehabilitation should coexist with lawful accountability, victim-support services, safety protections and public reporting. A lower reoffending rate is valuable for those formerly incarcerated, their families and the communities to which they return.

MEASURE THE RESULTS

Report institutional violence, deaths, self-harm, use of force, staff vacancies, medical wait times, educational completion, treatment continuity, verified reentry employment and housing, cost per person, complaints resolved and contracts transitioned safely. For reoffending, separately report rearrest, reconviction and return-to-custody results with defined cohorts, follow-up periods, supervision practices and comparison groups. Publish independent audits and meaningful corrections when claims prove wrong.

THE POINT

The goal is not to pretend that every incarcerated person presents the same risk or needs the same intervention. It is to insist that when government deprives someone of liberty, responsibility remains with the public, and the confinement system should be judged by legality, humanity, safety and what happens after release.

If we want fewer people returning to prison, we should measure whether prison actually prepares them to return to society. A sentence should have an end. A profitable business plan built around another person's confinement should not be the measure of its success.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

01 · Federal Bureau of Prisons — “BOP Ends Use of Privately Owned Prisons,” December 1, 2022.

https://www.bop.gov/news/20221201_ends_use_of_privately_owned_prisons.jsp

02 · Bureau of Justice Statistics — “Prisoners in 2023 — Statistical Tables,” private-prison custody, published 2025.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/p23st.pdf

03 · Executive Order 14006 — Reforming Our Incarceration System to Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities, January 26, 2021.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/02/01/2021-02210/reforming-our-incarceration-system-to-eliminate-the-use-of-privately-operated-criminal-detention

04 · Bureau of Justice Statistics — “Correctional Populations in the United States, 2023 — Statistical Tables,” published 2025.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cpus23st.pdf

05 · Bureau of Justice Statistics — “Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 34 States in 2012: A 5-Year Follow-Up Period,” July 2021.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/recidivism-prisoners-released-34-states-2012-5-year-follow-period-2012-2017

06 · Bozick, Steele, Davis & Turner — “Does providing inmates with education improve postrelease outcomes? A meta-analysis,” Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2018.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-018-9334-6

07 · U.S. Department of Education — “Prison Education Programs Questions and Answers,” Pell eligibility and oversight guidance.

https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/higher-education-laws-and-policy/prison-education-programs-questions-and-answers

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WE ARE ONE.  ·  E PLURIBUS UNUM.