Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR)'s contract dollars, traced to the source.
Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR) · Department of Justice
Federal Prison Industries — operating as UNICOR — is the wholly government-owned corporation within the Justice Department that employs incarcerated workers in federal prison factories to make goods and services sold to other federal agencies. Unlike most bureaus, its contract dollars are what it buys to run those factories: roughly $0.20B in FY2025 obligations, down from $0.45B in FY2020, spread diffusely across raw materials and operating services — textiles and fabric, pre-cut kits, sales-and-marketing support, and accounting-standards implementation. No single award dominates; the top of the ledger is small and fragmented.
Contract obligations (latest complete FY)
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Contract obligations (in progress)
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Signal tier
Live
USAspending contract feed
What this monitor reads — and what it doesn't
This is the contract-signal tier: the live USAspending award feed for the Federal Prison Industries / Unicor awarding sub-agency. It shows where UNICOR's procurement dollars go — obligations over time and the largest awards — not total budget authority, which also includes payroll, grants, and transfers. UNICOR is a self-funding government corporation off annual appropriations — its revenue comes from product sales, not appropriations — so this contract feed is its input-procurement slice, not its total operating scale. The appropriation-level view lives on the Department of Justice monitor.