Private prisons are prisons owned and operated by a third party that is contracted by a government organization. Often the contracts between the two include wording that requires a certain percentage of the facility to be filled at all times (quotas), or else the privately owned prison can sue the government for losses. Quotas must be filled and people must be arrested and locked away in order to complete the task.
What that means is that cops will go out of their way to find someone committing a crime. Not all crimes
are equal though, stealing an apple because one is hungry is not the same as committing an armed robbery. That doesn’t matter, because the money they bring in is equal. These prisoners are treated as a type of commodity. They are seen as cash flow and not as a human being doing their time. The slightest infraction leads to more time served, which means more money.
What is needed is for the knowledge of these prisons to spread around. Discussions need to be had on how to go about changing the practice of treating humans like property to get rich off of.