This category includes the main companies that own and/or operate jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers outside of the U.S. It is the only section of Investigate that covers the prison industry internationally, and it does not include the other forms of privatization—the outsourcing of food and maintenance services, for example—that we track in our research on the U.S. prison industry.
Few countries outside of the U.S. have private prisons. Our research on corporate involvement in the private prison industry internationally includes publicly traded companies that dominate the industry in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and South Africa. Some prisons in these and other countries are managed by local, privately owned companies.
For our 2021 report on private prison operators outside of the U.S., see here.