The memo, issued by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, said private prisons compare poorly to publicly operated ones and don’t save substantially on costs.
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The announcement comes just a week after the Department of Justice’s inspector general released a damning report revealing that prisons run by the federal Bureau of Prisons fared better than privately run facilities.
Due to the overcrowding of state-run prisons in the 1990s, the US federal government began to rely on private, for-profit prisons to accommodate the overflow, which reached a population peak in 2013.
The Justice Department says it plans to reduce its use of private prisons after concluding that the privately run facilities are not as safe or secure as government run facilities.
In her memo Thursday, Yates says the decline in the prison population over the past three years contributes to the decision not to renew private prison contracts. Yates wrote that by May 1, 2017, there will be about 14,200 inmates in federal private prison, which is less than half as many as there were at the industry’s peak in 2013. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates disclosed the decision today, and instructed officials to either stop renewing the private prisons’ licenses as soon as they expire, or substantially lower the contracts’ scope.
In 2013, the private prison industry housed almost 20% of federal prisoners and about 7% of state prisoners.
Most inmates serving time in the USA are in state prisons, not federal ones. Both contract with Florida’s Department of Corrections to run prisons for state inmates.
The private prison industry is worth about $5 billion today, with 130 private prisons throughout the country housing almost 20 percent of the federal prison population and 7 percent of state prisoners, Mother Jones reports.
According to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) it was a “unique” deal between the government and a private prison company because it provides “a fixed monthly fee for use of the entire facility regardless of the of the number of residents”, of $20 million a month.
The private prisons on the chopping block are operated by three private companies Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group Inc., and Management and Training Corporation.
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An undercover investigation at a private prison by a Mother Jones reporter found a lack of health care and a disregard for inmates’ health. Between then and 1980, the federal prison population had increased by 800 percent, according to the Bureau of Prisons. He generally disputed the inspector general’s report. “The conclusion is wrong and is not supported by the work done by the [Office of the Inspector General]”.
