At least in the US, pretty much everything that is state-run, including state-run companies (like Fannie and Freddie) are notorious for being massive money pits

At least in the US, pretty much everything that is state-run, including state-run companies (like Fannie and Freddie) are notorious for being massive money pits that do not generate profits. Additionally, what you're proposing is incredibly optimistic from the perspective of how much economic utility prisoners actually have. The median state's average cost of housing a prisoner is about $65,000 a year, with wealthy coastal states like CA, WA, NYC costing over $100,000 per prisoner per year. [1] It's a sad economic reality, but many of the people in these prisons aren't even economically capable of producing output that has a market value even meeting the costs it takes it house them, let alone exceeding it, with the exceptions being largely concentrated in the minimum security prisons where white collar criminals and executives are housed (think Martin Shkreli, Bernie Madoff, etc), though you obviously can't ask people like that to perform the same kind of economically productive work that enticed them to get themselves sent to prison in the first place, if that were even possible (would you invest any of your money in a hedge fund that had a CEO working from prison for fraud?). [1] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-prisons/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-pr...