Because of this scheme, the companies running private prisons are permitted to operate under a looser set of rules than government-run facilities – which led directly to unnecessary prisoner fatalities.
Advertisement
“For all these reasons, I am eager to enlist your help in beginning the process of reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons”, Yates told BOP’s acting director in the memo.
According to Yates, the Bureau of Prisons will not renew existing contracts to the private operators as they expire, or reduce them in scope as allowed by law as the inmate population declines. They will be closed and scaled down gradually, as Justice Department officials decide not to renew private prison contracts as they come due, Yates said.
The U.S. Justice Department is ordering the phase out of privately operated federal prisons after concluding they provide less safety and security than public prisons, while resulting in little cost savings. He said the federal prisons that are affected by the decision “make up 7% of our business”.
BOP now uses private prisons “primarily to confine low security, criminal alien, adult males”, according to the inspector general’s office. For example, the federal Bureau of Prisons is amending an upcoming contract from covering as many as 10,800 prison beds to no more than 3,600 prison beds.
Most inmates are housed in state prisons or local jails that aren’t covered by the Justice Department’s directive. Civil liberties groups have sued private prison companies over their treatment of migrant children. From 1980 to 2013, the federal prison population increased by 800 percent, according to the DOJ.
Yates said in her memo that the use of at least three private prisons would be phased out over the next year and that the private prison population would be reduced to less than 14,200 by May 2017.
Yates said it was “really hard to determine whether private prisons are less expensive” and whether their closure would cause costs to go up, though she said officials did not anticipate having to hire additional Bureau of Prisons staff.
The move to end private prison contracts builds on President Barack Obama’s efforts to reform the USA criminal justice system, which he has said incarcerates too many people, particularly minorities.
Advertisement
Corrections Corporation of America, a leading company that owns private prisons, saw its stock plummet more than 20% by late Thursday morning, directly after the announcement.
