How can private prisons be a Billion-dollar business? It’s simple supply and demand. The prisoners are the supply and filing the prison is the demand. When the supply and the demand hits, the market clearing price they can start making money. In the private prisons contract with the government if the prisons are not filled to a certain amount the US government is fined for not filling those prisons. This adds an incentive for the government to deny parole and cut rehabilitation for prisoners. This is all to save money for the government and in the beginning, it did save money. Then after a few years’ private prisons ran into the same problems of the public prisons. The only difference was that the problems made them more profitable.
