Expand chart
Data: Bureau of Justice Statistics; Cartogram: Chris Canipe/Axios

Since the first private prison opened in 1984 in Tennessee, for-profit incarceration has ballooned into a $5 billion industry. In 2017, 121,420 people — about 8% of the U.S. prison population — were housed in private facilities, but the share is much higher in some states.

Why it matters: Private prisons tend to hire fewer guards than state and federal prisons and often are more dangerous.

  • A spokesperson for private prison firm GEO Group told Axios the company's services comply with federal standards as well as third-party accreditors’ guidelines.
  • Still, private institutions had 28% more inmate-on-inmate assaults than their public counterparts, according to a 2016 Justice Department report.

By the numbers:

  • The 2017 prison population is slightly (4%) smaller than it was in 2015.
  • The states with the highest share of inmates in private prisons were Montana (38.1%) and Hawaii (28.5%).
  • Texas and Florida together housed 24,404 inmates in private prisons.
  • A population of zero in the above chart indicates no prisoners were held in private prisons at the end of the year in 2017. But those states could still have such facilities, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The bottom line: The private prison industry has boomed under the Trump administration. In November 2016, President Obama pushed an executive order to end the Justice Department's reliance on private facilities, but President Trump rescinded the order once he took office.

  • Since then, the stocks of the two biggest private prison companies have surged: CoreCivic is up 56% to $22.78 and GEO Group is up 46% to $23.02.

Go deeper: This story was originally published in 2017 and has been updated with recent data.

Go deeper

Mike Allen, author of AM
21 mins ago - Politics & Policy

Virus-era voting

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

With rare, if not unprecedented, agreement, President Trump, Joe Biden, intelligence officials and Big Tech CEOs are all warning of threats to accurate and trusted vote counts before, on and after election day. 

American elections face a triple threat in 2020: 

  • Foreign governmentsespecially Russia, China and Iran — are actively spreading misinformation via social platforms.

Trump slams Fox News reporter who confirmed parts of Atlantic story

President Trump lashed out at Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin, who confirmed parts of a story in The Atlantic that revealed, based on anonymous sources, that the president in 2018 called American service members buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France "losers."

What they're saying: "All refuted by many witnesses. Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting. Never even called us for comment. @FoxNews is gone!" Trump tweeted late Friday night.

Updated 2 hours ago - Politics & Policy

Coronavirus dashboard

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

  1. Global: Total confirmed cases as of 2 p.m. ET: 26,696,160 — Total deaths: 876,149 — Total recoveries: 17,776,552Map.
  2. U.S.: Total confirmed cases as of 2 p.m. ET: 6,222,782 — Total deaths: 188,096 — Total recoveries: 2,283,454 — Total tests: 81,293,103Map.
  3. World: Pope to take first trip since coronavirus lockdown — Pandemic is erasing a decade of global progress in child mortality rates.
  4. Sports: 77 of 130 major college football teams to play this season.
  5. World: India surpasses 4 million coronavirus cases.