The article was based on a survey of Florida State legislators in 1998-1999. The survey examined legislative attitudes from the perspectives of efficiency and effectiveness, personal characteristics and political concerns of the individual legislators, and issues relating to coercive force, liability, and accountability. The article addresses the prospect of an increase in the privatization of prison operations at the State and local levels in the United States. The article assumes that Florida legislators’ attitudes reflect fairly well the attitudes of their counterparts in other States and predicts that: (1) a universal reversal of the prison privatization trend is unlikely; (2) in isolated cases, poor performance and/or abuse will result in a few private prisons at either State or local levels being returned to public agencies for direct operations; and (3) the momentum clearly appears to be on the side of the private companies, and projections of 20 percent to 35 percent growth annually in the revenues of the private prison industry may not be unreasonable. Tables, notes, references