The US prison system has many issues, but the attention given to private prisons is extremely myopic and scapegoaty given that they account for less than 10% of the US prison population.
Monetary inflation is the increase in the money supply. Price inflation is one of the potential symptoms of monetary inflation. Too often people look at just one symptom to gauge the occurrence of the cause. Currently we are experiencing both, but people seem to want to ignore the inflation of the money supply, and scratch our heads over every other variable that affects prices.