Welcome to the official web site of the Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations (APCTO). APCTO is the non-profit association which represents the interests of organizations that provide an increasingly broad array of correctional and treatment services throughout the United States and in a growing number of other nations (e.g., Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, and South Africa). APCTO members include academics, non-profit as well as for-profit corporations, employees of private correctional service providers, government officials, students, and individuals who are interested in the innovative, cost-effective contributions the private sector now provides to government and for the benefit of more than 150,000 juveniles and adults who are under the supervision of our juvenile justice or adult correctional systems.

The founding members of APCTO include the major correctional firms that design, construct, finance, and manage correctional secure facilities for both juveniles and adults. Importantly, however, the membership and mission of APCTO reaches well beyond these significant types of involvement by the private sector. Member firms also specialize in such areas as architecture, banking, community-based correctional programs, medical services, mental health services, non-residential programs for both juveniles and adults, pharmaceutical services, substance abuse treatment programs, and telecommunications services.

The commitment of all APCTO members is to assure that correctional services provided by the private sector meet or exceed all applicable constitutional, legal, and professional standards, to facilitate the development of meaningful partnerships between government agencies and APCTO's corporate members, and to sponsor public policy research aimed at enhancing the caliber of correctional services provided by either the private or the public sector.

If you are committed to the goals that gave rise to the creation of APCTO, we invite you to become a corporate or an individual member. Importantly, however, our intent is that APCTO be recognized as the most authoritative and timely source of objective information about the diverse contributions the private sector is making in the field of corrections. Thus, we encourage non-members as well as members to bookmark this site, to return to it often, and to share their ideas about how the design and content of the site could become more useful.