Twenty-seven states and the federal government incarcerated 90,873 people in private prisons in 2022, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.
Private Prison Contracts and Minimum Occupancy Clauses
By Stephanie Leacock The private prison industry has become incredibly lucrative, with the two largest for-profit prison companies bringing in a combined $3.3 billion in annual revenue as of 2015.[1] The federal government and state governments increasingly depend on private prisons to house inmates in the United States, with approximately seven percent of state prisoners…
Freedom to Write Index 2025
For the first time ever, the Freedom to Write Index documented more than 400 writers in prison in 2025, including in the United States.
Black prisoners are assigned harsher living conditions in Ontario jails—thanks to AI ⋆ The Breach
Ontario jails are using a program that claims it can predict prisoners’ behaviour, disproportionately putting Black prisoners in higher-security facilities
Eight Federal Prairieland Defendants Sentenced Today to Prison Terms Ranging From 30-100 Years for Common Protest Activity - Support the Prairieland Defendants
Family Members, Faith and Community Leaders, Rally in Support of Defendants, Vow to Continue Fight for Freedom, Justice for Loved Ones
Arizona Exploiting Prisoner Labor for Profit | Prison Legal News
A new constitutional amendment proposed to Congress in June 2023 would remove the exception for prisoners to the U.S. ban on slavery. The effort follows a report from Arizona in December 2022, which found that private firms in the state used over two dozen undocumented migrant workers they could never legally hire but for the fact they were incarcerated by the state Department of Correction, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR).
2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014) | Bureau of Justice Statistics
Examines the recidivism patterns of former prisoners during a 9-year follow-up period.
Welcome To One Of The Most Humane Prisons In The World
"Treat people like dirt, and they will be dirt. Treat them like human beings, and they will act like human beings."
8 convicted in Texas immigration center shooting and protest are sentenced to decades in prison
Eight people accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifa have been sentenced to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center during a protest.
More Than 500 U.S. Citizens Have Been Detained, Including Handcuffed or Held at Gunpoint, in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown — ProPublica
The government doesn’t track how often immigration officers detain U.S. citizens. So ProPublica did. We’ve found more than 500 Americans who were held against their will during this Trump administration.
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a 1975 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France. Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists. He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison is used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.
Guantanamo Bay: “Ugly chapter of unrelenting human rights violations” – UN experts
GENEVA (10 January 2022) - On the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, UN experts* condemned the facility as a site of “unparalleled notoriety” and said its continued operation was a stain on the US Government’s commitment to the rule of law.
Criminal Justice Fact Sheet
A compilation of facts and figures surrounding policing, the criminal justice system, incarceration, and more.
Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp | American Civil Liberties Union
The ACLU works in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
Torture Techniques from CIA Black Sites Were Used at Alligator Alcatraz
Amnesty International, interviewing migrant detainees, identifies use of the confinement box. There can be no denying it is a torture prison
State Capacity of Secret Surveillance
The state capacity-civil society tradeoff model tends to treat the “state” and “civil society” as separate entities who move to constrain one another. However, this modeling technique leaves out the nuances of individual action within a collective setting by treating each as a relative black box. This article explores this balance in the context of the surveillance state that has arisen in the 20th and 21st century. As state capacity in surveillance increases it better allows the state to respond to threats to citizens from citizens. However, the increased capacity also lessens the ability of societal pressure to check authoritarian advances even in a nation with a thriving civil society presence.
State Capacity of Secret Surveillance
The state capacity-civil society tradeoff model tends to treat the “state” and “civil society” as separate entities who move to constrain one another. However, this modeling technique leaves out the nuances of individual action within a collective setting by treating each as a relative black box. This article explores this balance in the context of the surveillance state that has arisen in the 20th and 21st century. As state capacity in surveillance increases it better allows the state to respond to threats to citizens from citizens. However, the increased capacity also lessens the ability of societal pressure to check authoritarian advances even in a nation with a thriving civil society presence.