Prisons

Close to 7 percent of state and federal inmates in the U.S. are in private facilities, the highest number of prisoners in private prisons in the world. Australia, on the other hand, has the highest proportion of prisoners in private prisons with 28 percent of them in contract managed facilities.62

Elsewhere, Britain now has 10 prisons run by private companies, 8 of them built under the PFI. These buildings are leased back to the prison service for a period of 25 years after being designed and constructed by commercial groups.⁶³ The results have been generally positive: Construction times have dropped by more than 40 percent; costs by 20 percent. The cost savings are equivalent to building 20 new secondary schools or three new general hospitals.⁶⁴