CoreCivic, Inc.

We are a diversified government solutions company with the scale and experience needed to solve tough government challenges in flexible, cost-effective ways. Through three segments, CoreCivic Safety, CoreCivic Community, and CoreCivic Properties, we provide a broad range of solutions to government partners that serve the public good through corrections and detention management, a network of residential reentry centers to help address America's recidivism crisis, and government real estate solutions. We have been a flexible and dependable partner for government for over 40 years. Our employees are driven by a deep sense of service, high standards of professionalism and a responsibility to help government better the public good.

As of December 31, 2025, through our CoreCivic Safety segment, we operated 44 correctional and detention facilities, 40 of which we owned or controlled via a long-term lease, with a total design capacity of approximately 68,000 beds. Through our CoreCivic Community segment, we operated 20 residential reentry centers, which we owned or controlled via a long-term lease, with a total design capacity of approximately 4,000 beds. In addition, through our CoreCivic Properties segment, we owned five properties, with a total design capacity of approximately 8,000 beds. We are the nation's largest owner of partnership correctional, detention, and residential reentry facilities and one of the largest operators of such facilities in the United States. Our size and experience provide us with significant credibility with our current and prospective customers, and enable us to generate economies of scale in purchasing power for food services, health care and other supplies and services we offer to our government partners.

See "Part I, Item 1. Business – Overview" for a description of how we are organized.

Our Business

The solutions we provide to our federal customers continue to be a significant component of our business. We provide an essential governmental service, and believe our ability to provide flexible solutions and fulfill emergent needs of our federal customers would be very difficult and costly to replicate in the public sector.

Upon his inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Trump issued nine executive actions intended to secure the borders of the United States and remove illegal immigrants, prioritizing those with criminal histories. These initial orders included the declaration of a national emergency at the United States southern border. Also included in these executive actions was the issuance of an executive order titled "Protecting the American People Against Invasion" which calls on the federal government to faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States, including the removal of aliens, particularly those who threaten the safety of the American people. This executive order calls on the Secretary of Homeland Security to “take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources or establish contracts to construct, operate, control, or use facilities to detain removable aliens” and “take all appropriate actions to ensure the detention of aliens apprehended for violations of immigration law pending the outcome of their removal proceedings or their removal from the country, to the extent permitted by law.” Effectively, this executive order requires an increase in interior enforcement by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and directs the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, to detain those arrested by ICE, pending their removal or adjudication.

In addition, on January 20, 2025, President Trump reversed an executive order issued on January 26, 2021 by then-President Biden that had directed the Attorney General to not renew United States Department of Justice, or DOJ, contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities. Two agencies of the DOJ, the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons, or BOP, and the United States Marshals Service, or USMS, utilize our services. The BOP houses inmates who have been convicted, and the USMS is generally responsible for detainees who are awaiting trial. This executive order only applied to agencies that are part of the DOJ, which includes the BOP and USMS. ICE facilities were not covered by this executive order, as ICE is an agency of the DHS, not the DOJ. It is possible future administrations could issue executive orders restricting the use of private correctional and detention facilities by the federal government.

Further, on January 29, 2025, President Trump signed into law the Laken Riley Act, which had been passed by Congress with bipartisan support. The Laken Riley Act requires ICE to detain certain non-United States nationals who have been charged, arrested, or convicted of crimes including burglary, theft, assault of a law enforcement officer, as well as killing or injuring another person. We believe the Laken Riley Act has contributed to the increased demand for detention beds by ICE, as further described in this Annual Report.

On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA. OBBBA appropriates a total of $75 billion in mandatory funding to ICE for immigration enforcement activities and to increase detention capacity. Specifically, OBBBA appropriates $45 billion for single adult alien detention capacity and family residential center capacity. This funding is a significant increase in funding historically provided to ICE for border security and immigration detention. The funding will remain available through September 30, 2029, and is in addition to base annual appropriations during that time period. The additional funding is also being used by DHS to hire nearly 10,000 new ICE officers to implement the immigration enforcement initiatives.

Given the recent legislative and executive actions mentioned above, we believe the short-term growth opportunities of our business are particularly attractive as federal government agencies consider their emergent needs. ICE has begun to utilize additional bed capacity in our portfolio at facilities with existing contracts, we have signed new contracts to activate five previously idled facilities, and we have been in discussion with ICE to activate additional idle facilities. The number of people we care for under contracts with ICE has increased by approximately 5,900 individuals, or 58.2%, from the beginning of the year through December 31, 2025. As of December 31, 2025, we had five idle correctional facilities containing approximately 7,000 beds that are operated with a core staffing complement to remain currently available and that are being actively marketed as solutions to the correctional or detention needs of potential customers.

During the first quarter of 2025, we entered into contract modifications at our 2,016-bed Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio, our 1,072-bed Nevada Southern Detention Center in Pahrump, Nevada, and our 1,600-bed Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, Oklahoma to collectively add capacity for up to 784 ICE detainees. We subsequently entered into two additional modifications in the second half of 2025 to collectively add additional capacity at the Cimarron facility for up to nearly 300 ICE detainees.

On March 5, 2025, we announced that we had agreed under an amendment to an intergovernmental service agreement, or IGSA, to resume operations and care for up to 2,400 individuals at the 2,400-bed Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas, or the Dilley Facility. The amended IGSA expires in March 2030 and may be further extended through bilateral modification. We began receiving residents at this facility during April 2025. Activation of the Dilley Facility was completed in September 2025. Previously, after nearly ten years of operation, we received notification from ICE on June 10, 2024 of its intent to terminate funding of the IGSA for services at the Dilley Facility effective August 9, 2024. We did not operate the Dilley Facility from August 9, 2024 until the resumption of operations at the facility on March 5, 2025.

Effective March 7, 2025, we entered into a letter agreement with ICE to begin activation efforts at our 1,033-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center in Leavenworth, Kansas. The letter agreement authorized initial funding up to $5.0 million with maximum funding up to $22.6 million for a six-month period while we worked to negotiate and execute a longer-term contract. On September 29, 2025, we announced that we entered into a new contract with ICE effective September 7, 2025. The City of Leavenworth has filed a lawsuit alleging that a Special Use Permit, or SUP, is required to activate the facility, which has resulted in a delay in the intake process. In December 2025, we filed an application for the SUP. However, we cannot provide assurance that the application will be approved and therefore cannot predict if or when we will be able to accept detainee populations. The new agreement, which expires September 6, 2027, provides for a fixed monthly payment plus an incremental per diem payment based on detainee populations, both of which commence once the temporary injunction currently prohibiting the intake of detainees is no longer enforceable. See Note 14 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements contained in this Annual Report for further discussion of the pending litigation.

On April 1, 2025, we entered into a letter agreement with ICE to begin activation efforts at our 2,560-bed California City Immigration Processing Center, or the California City Facility, formerly known as the California City Correctional Center. The letter agreement authorized initial funding up to $10.0 million with maximum funding up to $31.2 million for a six-month period while we worked to negotiate and execute a long-term contract. We began receiving ICE detainees at our California City Facility during August 2025, under terms of the letter agreement. On September 29, 2025, we announced that we entered into a new two-year contract with ICE effective September 1, 2025. As of December 31, 2025, we cared for 1,436 individuals at the facility. We currently expect to reach stabilized occupancy at the facility in the first quarter of 2026. A non-governmental organization and a detainee have filed a lawsuit alleging that a business license must be obtained to operate the facility and seeks injunctive relief that would include operational interruption at the facility. The Company can provide no assurance that it will obtain a favorable ruling in this matter or predict when this matter will be resolved. See Note 14 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements contained in this Annual Report for further discussion of the pending litigation.

On August 14, 2025, we announced that we had been awarded a new contract through an IGSA with ICE to resume operations at our previously idled 600-bed West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason, Tennessee. The West Tennessee facility had been idle since September 2021. The IGSA expires in August 2030 and may be further extended through bilateral modification. We began receiving ICE detainees at the West Tennessee facility during September 2025 and we expect the facility to be fully activated by the end of the first quarter of 2026.

On October 1, 2025, we announced that we had been awarded a new contract through an IGSA between the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and ICE to resume operations at our previously idled 2,160-bed Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Oklahoma. The Diamondback facility had been idle since 2010. The new contract commenced on September 30, 2025, now expires in September 2029, and may be further extended through bilateral modification. We began receiving detainees in December 2025, with stabilized occupancy estimated to be reached in the second quarter of 2026.

While we believe the legislative and executive actions mentioned above will create long-term needs from our federal partners, we also believe the long-term growth opportunities of our business remain attractive as state and county government agencies consider the efficiency and offender programming opportunities we provide as flexible solutions to satisfy their needs. We have been in discussions with several state and county government agencies that have experienced challenges in staffing their public-sector facilities and are seeking solutions from the private sector. Further, several of our existing government partners, as well as prospective government partners, have been experiencing growth in offender populations and overcrowded conditions. Governments are continuing to assess their need for correctional space, and several are considering alternative correctional capacity for their aged or inefficient infrastructure, or are seeking cost savings by utilizing the private sector, which could result in increased future demand for the solutions we provide.

Governments continue to experience many significant spending demands, and competing budget priorities often impede our customers' ability to construct new prison beds of their own or update their older facilities, which we believe could result in further demand for private sector prison capacity solutions in the long-term. We believe the outsourcing of corrections and detention management services to private operators allows governments to manage increasing inmate populations while simultaneously controlling costs. We believe our customers discover that partnering with private operators to provide residential services to their offenders introduces competition to their correctional system, resulting in improvements to the quality and cost of services throughout their correctional system. Further, the use of facilities owned and managed by private operators allows governments to expand correctional capacity without incurring large capital commitments and allows them to avoid long-term pension obligations for their employees.

We also believe that having beds immediately available to our partners provides us with a distinct competitive advantage when bidding on new contracts. We believe the most significant opportunities for growth are in providing our government partners with available beds within facilities we currently own or that we will develop. Over the long-term, we would like to see meaningful utilization of our available capacity and better visibility from our customers into their potential future needs before we develop new correctional or detention capacity on a speculative basis. We will, however, respond to customer demand and may develop, expand, or acquire correctional and detention facilities when we believe potential long-term returns justify the capital deployment. We also believe that owning the facilities in which we provide management services enables us to more rapidly replace business lost compared with managed-only facilities, since we can offer the same beds to new and existing customers and, with customer consent, may have more flexibility in moving our existing populations to facilities with available capacity. Our management contracts generally provide our customers with the right to terminate our management contracts at any time without cause.

We are actively engaged in marketing our available capacity as solutions to meet the needs of potential customers. Historically, we have been successful in obtaining new contracts when we have an inventory of available beds to provide flexible and immediate solutions to our government customers. As available capacity within existing operating facilities is utilized, we believe increasing demand will result in the utilization of idle bed capacity. Available bed capacity can also be used for emergent needs. As a private enterprise, we believe we have the ability to respond more quickly to changing market conditions, and can offer various types of incentives to attract and retain correctional staff that are more difficult for government agencies to provide. For example, on August 1, 2024, we entered into a management contract with the state of Montana to care for an unspecified number of inmates at facilities we operate. The contract is scheduled to expire on July 31, 2026, and may be extended by mutual agreement for a total term of up to seven years. As of December 31, 2025, we cared for 361 inmates from the state of Montana at our Saguaro facility under this management contract, along with another similar contract with the state of Montana that was entered into during the fourth quarter of 2023. We also care for residents from the state of Hawaii and the state of Idaho at our Saguaro facility. On January 16, 2025, we announced that we were awarded a new management contract with the state of Montana to care for additional inmates outside the state of Montana. As of December 31, 2025, we cared for 239 inmates from the state of Montana at our Tallahatchie facility in Mississippi under this new contract. We also care for residents from Wyoming, Vermont, the U.S. Virgin Islands, USMS, and Tallahatchie and Hinds counties at the Tallahatchie facility. This latest contract with Montana expands the geographic range of our facilities that can serve the state of Montana, where we also manage the fully occupied company-owned Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, Montana for the state of Montana pursuant to a separate management contract.

We also offer our customers an attractive portfolio of correctional, detention, and reentry facilities that can be leased for various needs as an alternative to providing "turn-key" correctional, detention, and residential reentry bed space and services to our government partners. Over the last six years, we have entered into lease agreements with the states of Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Kentucky for our 1,670-bed Allen Gamble Correctional Center, our 596-bed Northwest New Mexico Correctional Center, and our 656-bed Southeast Correctional Complex, respectively. We retain responsibility for facility maintenance throughout the terms of the leases, which have expiration dates ranging from October 2027 to June 2030. The leases of these three correctional facilities demonstrate our ability to react quickly to our partners' needs with innovative, flexible and cost-effective solutions. We previously operated these three correctional facilities for various government partners. We intend to respond to additional opportunities to lease prison facilities to government agencies in need of correctional capacity.

Through our CoreCivic Safety and CoreCivic Community segments, we are compensated for providing bed capacity and correctional, detention, and residential reentry services at a per diem rate based upon actual or minimum guaranteed occupancy levels. Federal, state, and local governments are constantly under budgetary constraints putting pressure on governments to control correctional budgets, including per diem rates our customers pay to us as well as pressure on appropriations for building new prison capacity. We believe our cost of corrections and detention solutions is competitive, particularly when compared to alternative corrections and detention capacity. We regularly engage and collaborate with our customers to provide them with competitive rates and value for the services we provide. During the fourth quarter of 2025, for example, in response to a request from DHS to provide the agency with budgetary savings, we proposed to reduce the term of four management contracts by one year, which the agency accepted. The government may nonetheless elect to extend such contracts beyond their new terms.

We also remain steadfast in our efforts to contain costs. Approximately 62% of our operating expenses consist of salaries and benefits. The turnover rate for correctional officers for our company, and for the corrections industry in general, remains high, and staffing challenges were exacerbated by labor shortages and wage pressures in the marketplace as further described under the heading "Results of Operations." We are making investments in systems and processes intended to help manage our workforce more efficiently and effectively, especially with respect to overtime and costs of turnover. We are also focused on workers' compensation and medical benefits costs for our employees due to continued rising healthcare costs throughout the country. Effectively managing these staffing costs requires a long-term strategy to control such costs, and we continue to dedicate resources to enhance our benefits and provide specialized training and career development opportunities to our staff in order to attract and retain quality personnel. Finally, we are evaluating potential cost savings opportunities in areas such as inmate medical expenses, utilities, and maintenance, among others. Through ongoing company-wide initiatives, we continue to focus on efforts to manage costs and improve operating efficiencies.

Through the combination of our operational initiatives to (i) provide valuable and critically needed services that could increase our revenues and increase the utilization of our available beds, (ii) deliver new bed capacity through new facility construction and expansion opportunities, (iii) expand our real estate-only solutions, (iv) grow the utilization of our community corrections facilities, (v) develop or acquire new business offerings that expand the range of solutions we provide to government partners and diversify our cash flows, and (vi) contain our operating expenses, we believe we will be able to maintain our competitive advantage and continue to diversify the range of services we provide to our customers at an attractive price, thereby producing value for our stockholders. As further explained under the heading "Liquidity and Capital Resources," we have been allocating a substantial portion of our free cash flow to returning capital to our shareholders through share repurchases, further enhancing stockholder value.