Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2026 has been released by Prison Policy Initiative and while nothing about it surprises me, there is a really key section that I’d love for the public to understand a little better. I see a lot of railing against private prisons specifically, as if the root of the problem with the carceral state is private prisons and that private wealth generation from the carceral state happens through private prisons. As if eliminating private prisons would somehow heal the carceral system.

Private prisons hold only 9% of incarcerated people. By and large, the carceral system is run by the state and and only 1% of incarcerated people labor for private companies. Instead, the slave labor force of incarcerated people largely exists to offset the expense of running carceral facilities.

I think this is important to understand because advocacy against mass incarceration MUST go beyond specifically criticizing private prisons. In North Carolina, where I live, there are no private prisons, and yet hyperincarceration of poor, racialized, and disabled people continues to exist.

Simply put, the way to heal the carceral state is to abolish it. There is no unracist, unableist, unviolent, unexploitative, unharmful way to run a racist, ableist, violent, exploitative force of grave individual and community harm.

Click to read about other myths about the carceral state: