Over the last few years, several governments around the globe have been promoting the transfer of public utility services to external actors, whether linked to business circles, related to the construction, management and operation of penal establishments. Different governance structures have been adopted according to the institutional restrictions of each country or region, ranging from complete privatization to the simple delegation of peripheral activities to the functioning of prisons. In Brazil, for example, there have been experiences since 1999 related to outsourcing the operation of penal units. However, according to the bibliographical review carried out, there are no comparative works between the different provision modalities in Brazil, residing precisely in this point the main contribution of this work, which aims to investigate the differences in performance observed between public prisons and those with outsourced operation. More than comparing, this thesis also aims to understand the reasons for the differences in performance observed between public and outsourced prisons. More than comparing, this thesis also aims to understand the reasons for the differences found between the different management modalities. Thus, based on several analytical instruments (agency theories, inventive theories, incomplete contracts theory and New Institutional Economics) theoretical propositions are established, tested through qualitative and quantitative methods in the states of Bahia and Paraná. Additionally, the observations obtained in Brazil are contrasted with the US and French experiences. The main results indicate that private forms in Brazil have better performance indicators in terms of security and order, costs and services offered to inmates, mainly due to: lower levels of administrative controls, differences in incentive structures, ability to circumvent institutional restrictions and the presence of civil servants inside the units with outsourced operations, fundamental to the reduction in the levels of information asymmetry. Regardless of the choice between the public or private modality, this work demonstrated that the observed performance indicators are strongly conditioned to the design of governance structures capable of establishing optimal levels of delegation of authority, as well as providing adequate incentive factors, from the point of view of collective well-being.