Despite their infamy, private prisons house less than a twelfth of the country’s prisoners. What is more common is public prisons deciding to outsource services—healthcare, food, communication—to private companies. That’s to say, private companies still have a direct impact on the lives of incarcerated people throughout the U.S., but their role is slightly more complicated.

In 2017, 8.2 percent of U.S. prisoners—121,420 people—were held in private prisons, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. This works out to about 15 percent of federal prisoners and 7 percent of state prisoners at the time. At least 27 states incarcerated people in private facilities, and eight of those states used private facilities to house at least 15 percent of their prison populations (not all states reported data). Montana topped that list with 38 percent of prisoners in private facilities.

Still, across the country the Sentencing Project found that between 2000 and 2016, “the number of people housed in private prisons increased five times faster than the total prison population,” while the “proportion of people detained in private immigration facilities increased by 442 percent.”

Although private facilities are the exception, not the rule, when it comes to prisons, the opposite is true for immigration detention facilities. According to the Detention Watch Network, more than 70 percent of immigration detainees are held in facilities operated by private companies.

Some researchers are turning their attention toward restructuring private prison contracts, rather than banning private involvement in the prison sector.

“The reality is that private prisons are a tool, and like all tools, you can use them well or use them poorly,” Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at Reason Foundation, said

One alternative is performance-based contracts, which are in place in prison systems in Australia and New Zealand and link payment to measurable good outcomes.

But these models aren’t silver bullets either, Eisen said. An ombudsman report raised concerns over confinement conditions at one of the performance-based facilities Eisen visited in New Zealand, even though that facility had met its goal of reducing recidivism.

Read the full article about going beyond abolishing private prisons by Mia Armstrong at The Marshall Project.