Most people think of prison as a cost. But in the United States, incarceration has also become a stream of revenue. Carceral capitalism is the system in which punishment is used to generate profit, and every dataset tells the same story: someone is getting paid when someone else is locked up.

Let’s start with the basic scale. The U.S. holds over 1.9 million people in prisons and jails. Texas alone houses more than 120,000 in state-run facilities. Every person confined represents a source of income for a public agency or private vendor. Every phone call, medical co-pay, and commissary item is part of a spreadsheet somewhere. These are not just incidental expenses. They are inputs in a larger revenue model.

Take prison telecom contracts. A 15-minute call in Texas costs up to $3.60, depending on the provider. Across the country, the prison phone industry pulls in over $1.4 billion per year. These calls are not luxury services. They are often the only way families stay connected. But for the vendor, that need becomes a pricing opportunity.

Or look at commissary data. In 2022, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reported over $100 million in annual sales. Incarcerated people earn as little as $0.00 per hour. Most rely on outside support. Family members send money that is quickly captured by marked-up prices on ramen, deodorant, or a stamped envelope. The margins are not transparent. The data is not public. But the output is clear: indigent families are subsidizing the agency.

Even medical access has a price tag. Texas charges $13.55 for each medical visit, taken out of an incarcerated person’s commissary balance. The state says this discourages unnecessary use. But health issues in prisons are often urgent, and untreated conditions increase long-term costs. It’s a data feedback loop: short-term revenue from co-pays produces higher downstream costs in emergency transport, litigation, or chronic care.

Then there are contracts. Food vendors. Health providers. Private prison operators. Every service is a contract line item. State budgets list millions earmarked for correctional operations, but little detail about unit cost, service quality, or outcomes. Metrics like recidivism or rehabilitation are not built into these systems. Financial performance is.

As a data scientist, it’s hard to ignore what the numbers show. In most industries, efficiency means reducing waste and improving service. But in the carceral system, efficiency often means cost-cutting on people who cannot leave. Fewer staff. Cheaper food. Slower medical response. Then you build the model and say the budget was balanced.

We track parole grants, grievance filings, and facility capacity. But what would it look like to track profit per person? What if every financial record had to be matched to a human impact? If we applied standard cost-benefit models to incarceration, the balance sheet would shift. A reduction in prison population would not be seen as lost revenue but as a public gain. Lower recidivism. More productive labor. Stronger families.

But that isn’t how the system is built. Every dataset I’ve worked with — whether from a public records request or scraped from state reports — leads back to the same logic: incarceration is not just a policy. It’s an economic strategy.

The question is: who benefits when someone is kept inside? The answer is not abstract. It’s a matter of record. You can see it in quarterly reports and balance sheets.

If we want a different outcome, we need to follow the money and measure what matters. The carceral economy is not inevitable. It’s engineered. And anything engineered can be dismantled — with data, with policy, and with purpose.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jails in Indian Country and Correctional Populations in the United States
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Report and Order on Inmate Calling Services
Prison Policy Initiative, Following the Money of Mass Incarceration
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Texas State Budget and Fiscal Reports
Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Commissary and Trust Fund Reports
Texas Department of Criminal Justice, FY22 Statistical Report
University of California Press, Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang
Urban Institute, The Prison Pay Gap: Low Wages for Incarcerated Workers