system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: the United States' for-profit prison system, and how it may relate to incarceration rates.
gpt
States want to make their operations easier, so they outsource the building and running of prisons to private companies, which may or may not be cheaper than having the state do it themselves. However, these companies will require a minimum occupancy, like 85% of cells in their facility (they are paid per inmate housed, so they don't get much money with an empty house), or they may impose breach-of-contract fines or cancel and leave the state with a ton of inmates and no guards to incarcerate them. 

The incentives are obvious. States must bring in lots of inmates and retain them for as long as possible to keep their minimums. This means more prison time for a wider variety of offenses, as the number of long-sentence inmates (murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc.) will not sustain the high quota they must reach. Small drug possession cases, which should call for diversion to therapy, gets shifted to increasingly long prison sentences. Mandatory minimums for petty offenses are becoming common.  This isn't good for the American people.