Follow the Money · Private Prisons

Where Georgia’s private-prison money goes

Georgia pays two publicly traded corporations more than $1 billion to run prisons for profit. Both carry long records of understaffing, violence, and death — and a business model that pays off when more people are locked up, longer.

$1.11BGDC payments, FY2018–2025 (Open Georgia)

The concentration

78%

Nearly four out of every five private-prison dollars — about $861 million — go to a single company, CoreCivic, now the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice civil-rights investigation. The rest goes to The GEO Group. There is no third option and no public operator competing on price: Georgia has handed two Wall-Street companies a billion-dollar franchise to incarcerate its residents. Source: Open Georgia vendor payments FY2018–2025 (CoreCivic + CCA ≈ $870M of $1.11B total).

Eight years of it

The money over time

$136M

FY18

$140M

FY19

$141M

FY20

$130M

FY21

$130M

FY22

$133M

FY23

$148M

FY24

$150M

FY25

GDC payments to private-prison operators per fiscal year (Open Georgia) — a steady, recession-proof ~$140M/year to keep the beds full.

Where it goes

Follow each dollar

Channel 1

CoreCivic — the franchise

$861Mto CoreCivic, FY18–25 (NYSE: CXW)

CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) is the largest US private-prison operator. The DOJ opened a 2024 civil-rights investigation into its Trousdale Turner facility citing stabbings, assaults, murders, deaths, and sexual misconduct; Tennessee fined the company more than $29.5 million for understaffing, and it has faced roughly 700 lawsuits since 2020. Georgia keeps paying.

Sources: DOJ press release on the Trousdale investigation; Tennessee Lookout / Fortune on the fines; SEC filings; Open Georgia.

Channel 2

The GEO Group

$239Mto GEO Group, FY18–25 (NYSE: GEO)

The GEO Group runs private prisons and ICE detention. Its record includes deaths in ICE custody, $1-a-day forced-labor litigation in multiple states, and persistent understaffing and inadequate-care allegations. It was a real-estate investment trust until 2021, when it converted to a taxable corporation — a tax maneuver, not a change in how it runs a prison.

Sources: AFSC Investigate; multi-state forced-labor litigation dockets; SEC filings; Open Georgia.

Channel 3

The incentive built into the contract

The throughline is structural. A private operator’s revenue depends on keeping beds full — every empty bed is lost margin. That is a financial interest in more people incarcerated, for longer: the exact opposite of what a parole board, a sentencing reform, or an oversight system is supposed to want. Georgia has put that incentive on its own payroll.

Sources: GPS analysis; standard private-corrections contract structure (per-diem / occupancy).

See the facilities →How we verify →

Zoom out

The same system, across our data

Every number below comes from GPS’s own databases — click through to the underlying data.

8,234 people held in Georgia’s four private prisons — Coffee, Wheeler, Jenkins, and Riverbend — as of July 2026 GDC monthly population report See the facilities → 99 deaths at those four facilities since 2020, tracked in the GPS Mortality Database GPS Mortality Database (live count) See the deaths → ≈$58 per person per day is what the FY2027 appropriation works out to — the “savings” private operators sell are bought with understaffing FY 2027 Appropriations Act (HB 974) ÷ GDC population report See the budget →

What the state won’t show

The numbers we can’t see — and why

Per-facility staffing and incident data the operators report to the state — not public per facility.
Whether contract penalties are actually assessed when conditions fail, or quietly waived.
Any occupancy guarantee or minimum-payment floor in the Georgia contracts.

We publish the verified figures and label the gaps. How we verify →

A billion dollars is buying the incentive to keep Georgians locked up. The legislators who renew these contracts work for you, not for CoreCivic.

Find your legislator Back to Follow the Money