[rychco]

The prison-industrial complex in the United States encourages this. While less than 10% of prisoners are in “for-profit” prisons, there’s a large industry of private companies beyond this that profit off federal prisons; in addition to providing cheap prison labor or goods made by prison laborers (AKA modern slavery)

[FireBeyond]

Many of those private prisons also have clauses with their contracts that the city/county/whatever is required to pay per bed, regardless of occupancy. "If we're paying for it, might as well use it".