When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today more than a hundred thousand of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in twenty-nine states and federal corrections. Private prisons are criticized for making money off mass incarceration—to the tune of $5 billion in annual revenue. Based on Lauren-Brooke Eisen’s work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks, Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America.

From divestment campaigns to boardrooms to private immigration-detention centers across the Southwest, Eisen examines private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America’s largest private prison corporations. Private prisons have become ground zero in the anti-mass-incarceration movement. Universities have divested from these companies, political candidates hesitate to accept their campaign donations, and the Department of Justice tried to phase out its contracts with them. On the other side, impoverished rural towns often try to lure the for-profit prison industry to build facilities and create new jobs. Neither an endorsement or a demonization, Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. If private prisons are here to stay, how can we fix them? This book is a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens to understand our changing carceral landscape.

"An admirably researched look at an ominous aspect of criminal justice." - Kirkus Reviews

"A deeply researched, scrupulously fair book about private prisons, which house 126,000 people in America, or 7% of state inmates and almost 18% of federal prisoners." - The Economist

"Eisen's book is essential in telling us not just where the industry has been but where it is going in the years ahead." - The Marshall Project

"There is simply no other book available that addresses the private prison industry like this one. Eisen's authoritative work is an important addition to the national discourse on private prisons." - New York Journal of Books

"[Inside Private Prisons] is a balanced, fair, and comprehensive analysis. It does not tell readers what to think but instead gives us the information we need to make up our own minds. This makes it all the more valuable." - The Christian Century

"An important book. Highly Recommended." - Choice

"Eisen does a masterful job at presenting a thorough examination of private prisons. She utilizes a historical lens in the first few chapters to provide readers a better understanding of the privatization of prisons and other government services. Her methodology broadens to include prison visits and interviews with inmates, prison officials, and inmate families. This allows her to successfully address a range of issues interconnected to private prisons such as the prison industrial complex, prisoners as commodities, private prisons in the American Heartland, the prison divestment movement, politics of private prisons, and the future of private prisons." - Criminal Justice