During the 2024 presidential race, GEO Group, the nation’s largest private prison company, was the first corporation to max out donations to Donald Trump’s SuperPAC with $500,000, ultimately contributing over a million dollars to his campaign. This alliance highlights how private prison companies stand to profit from political promises of mass incarceration and a crackdown on immigrants and marginalized groups. Trump’s pledge to carry out “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” exemplifies this dynamic, fueling investor confidence given that 90 percent of immigrant detainees are housed in for-profit facilities. These same profit motives also shape the experiences of women, who face not only neglect in prison but also intensified control over their bodies and reproductive freedom following the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The use of private prisons as a coercive tool against immigrants in the United States reveals parallel systems of exploitation that similarly harm incarcerated women, exposing how profit-driven incarceration reinforces gendered and racialized forms of control.
The modern private prison industry emerged from the rapid expansion of the American prison system during the 1980s, which was fueled by the war on drugs, harsher sentencing regimes, and the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences. This surge in incarceration overwhelmed the capacity of public facilities, leading to the rise of for-profit prisons in many states and the federal system. Today, the United States holds the world’s largest private prison population. As of 2016, 128,063 people—about 8.5 percent of the total state and federal prison population—were held in private prisons, representing a 47 percent increase since 2000. Driven by immigration enforcement policies, immigration detention expanded even more dramatically from 2002 to 2017, with the number of people in privately-run facilities growing by 442 percent.
Private prison contracts often incentivize maintaining high occupancy by including “bed guarantees,” which require states to supply enough prisoners to keep a specified percentage of the prisons’ beds filled—typically between 80 and 100 percent—or pay penalties for empty ones. After Trump’s election, GEO Group’s CEO estimated the company could earn up to $400 million annually by filling empty beds to meet the “future needs” of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Following the start of Trump’s second term in 2025, ICE raids intensified nationwide, and in August, immigration detention hit a modern high of more than 60,000 people in custody. This surge in detainees has led to overcrowding and neglect. While public prisons and facilities are subject to greater government oversight and regulatory monitoring to ensure a higher level of accountability and transparency in their operations, privately operated ICE facilities are largely shielded from state inspections or oversight, allowing abusive conditions to go unchecked. Detainees have been confined in cramped rooms, served poor-quality food in tiny portions, deprived of essential medications, and subjected to prolonged solitary confinement or suicide watch after voicing complaints about mistreatment.
Private prisons systematically prioritize profit over the welfare and rehabilitation of those in their custody. Cost-cutting measures are central to this model, including understaffing facilities, paying low wages to correctional officers, and offering minimal training. These clauses are blatant efforts to prioritize profits over rehabilitation, discouraging investment in reentry, education, or support programs. While these failures are most visible in the treatment of immigrant detainees, the consequences extend far beyond immigrant enforcement. This profit-driven system has devastating effects on another often overlooked group—incarcerated women, who have their own set of unique health, reproductive, and caregiving needs.
Women in prisons across the United States face systemic neglect and gender-based abuse that reflect deep flaws in the broader carceral system. In recent decades, women’s incarceration has risen roughly twice as fast as that of men, yet because men still comprise around 93 percent of the prison population, policy, funding, and program design continue to overwhelmingly revolve around male needs. This leaves women without the resources or support structures necessary to address the underlying factors contributing to their incarceration. The pathways that bring women into prison also notably differ from those of men, making gender-responsive care essential. Women are far more likely to carry histories of sexual abuse, childhood victimization, and untreated trauma into prison, which often manifest as mental health and substance use disorders in adulthood. National data shows that approximately 73 percent of incarcerated women report a mental health problem, and about 60 percent used drugs in the month before the offense that led to their imprisonment. Among those who report mental health struggles, 75 percent also meet criteria for substance abuse or dependence. Compared to men, women are more than twice as likely to be sentenced due to drug offenses.
These statistics highlight that incarceration is rarely a response to isolated criminal acts; instead, it is often the result of compounded, untreated social and psychological vulnerabilities. Without targeted programming that acknowledges these intersecting needs, women are funneled into cycles of punishment rather than supported toward recovery. Essential health services unique to women, from menstrual supplies to pregnancy and menopause care, are inconsistently provided in prisons. When programming is offered, it rarely accounts for the intersection of trauma, addiction, mental health, and caregiving responsibilities. These threats are amplified by restrictions on reproductive freedom following the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating federal protection for abortion rights. Approximately two in five women of reproductive age now live in states where they could be prosecuted for having an abortion, putting incarcerated women at even greater risk of forced pregnancies and severely limiting their access to essential reproductive care. These conditions illustrate how political agendas extend control over vulnerable populations, using incarceration not only as punishment but also as a means to regulate women’s bodies and autonomy.
Moreover, when gender identity intersects with other social vulnerabilities, these disadvantages can compound, creating even more challenges. For instance, more than half of incarcerated women are mothers of minor children. The erosion of family ties under incarceration—driven by rising communication costs and increasingly restricted visitation—further destabilizes their lives and communities. Even though women make up only approximately 3 percent of private prison populations and 8 percent of the overall prison population, the failure to meet their critical needs disproportionately amplifies their vulnerability, entrenching the same cycles of disadvantage that brought them into contact with the criminal justice system in the first place.
For migrant women and female asylum seekers, the status quo makes these vulnerabilities even more pronounced. In detention centers, neglect and abuse intersect with issues of maternal health, reproductive autonomy, and mental health. Here, women and girls make up a growing share of the total detained population—14.5 percent in 2016, marking a 60 percent increase from 2009. Pregnant women in prisons have been denied urgent medical care, leading to miscarriages and long-term complications as a result of delayed or inadequate treatment. Additionally, detention centers often refuse to provide appropriate reproductive health services, limit access to abortion, and force women to purchase basic medications out of pocket. Beyond impacts on physical health, detention exacerbates trauma for many female asylum seekers who fled domestic violence, sexual abuse, and gender discrimination in their home country. Once detained, they face additional harm, often separated from their children and stripped of any support networks they may have established in the US. While gender-responsive interventions have the potential to reduce recidivism and improve outcomes, they require investment in areas like staff training, healthcare, and reentry planning. These are precisely the areas where private prisons often cut corners because their profits rely on filled beds, not on successful rehabilitation.
Ultimately, the rise of the private prison industry and its tie to political power—as revealed by its influence on immigration detention practices and the neglect of women’s needs—exposes the profound dangers of profit-driven incarceration. Privatization and political agendas amplify harm for women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups, turning incarceration into an instrument of control and exploitation rather than a means of justice. Meaningful reform requires decoupling profit from incarceration, strengthening oversight, and investing in gender- and trauma-responsive programs that prioritize rehabilitation and human dignity. Without these changes, prisons will continue to perpetuate cycles of abuse and inequality, serving corporate and political interests over the needs of those they confine and the communities they purport to protect.