In 2015, both companies received roughly half of their revenue from federal contracts. Privately run facilities at the state and county level will not be affected, nor will privately run immigration detention facilities, which fall under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security. Vehicle prisons hold noncitizens, many of whom have been criminally prosecuted for crossing the border.
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“With its announcement today, the Justice Department has made clear that the end of the Bureau of Prisons’ two-decade experiment with private prisons is finally in sight”, Fathi said. She says the intent is to reduce the number of prisoners in private facilities from more than 22,000 to 14,200 by May 1, 2017.
The DOJ’s Office of Inspector General found that private prisons don’t offer the same level of safety or security as publicly run prisons.
A report by the inspector general this month found violent incidents more prevalent at private institutions. The report listed several examples of mayhem at private facilities, including a May 2012 riot at the Adams County Correctional Center in MS in which 20 people were injured and a correctional officer was killed. “Any casual reader would come to the conclusion that contract prisons are not as safe as BOP prisons”.
There are some concerns that the recent DOJ announcement, and similar reforms, could actually undermine efforts to fundamentally change the American prison system.
It was also noted that rehabilitation services were not on par with the state operated facilities.
While the debate over the legitimacy and necessity of private prisons is needed, there is one thing escaping scrutiny as a result, according to Christopher Petrella, a lecturer at Bates College and member of Grassroots Leadership, an advocacy group that studies private prisons. They are incentivized to keep salaries and staff numbers low (the Mother Jones reporter was paid $9 an hour), for example.
The federal prison population is now at 193,299.
In her memo, Ms. Yates added: “The rehabilitative services that the Bureau provides, such as educational programs and job training, have proved hard to replicate and outsource – and these services are essential to reducing recidivism and improving public safety”.
The private prisons are operated by three private companies – Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group Inc., and Management and Training Corp.
In a report for the Washington Post past year, Michael Cohen wrote that private prison companies have spent almost $25 million on lobbying efforts since 1989, indirectly supporting punitive penal policies like California’s three-strikes rule.
In short, the announcement means that the vast majority of people now held in for-profit facilities will still contribute to a corporate bottom line.
“This outlook runs counter to what should be a rehabilitative mission of the nation’s criminal justice system”, he wrote. By comparison, private prisons now hold about 15% of federal prisoners and 6% of those in state corrections.
“Private prisons served an important role during a hard period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities”, Yates wrote in a memo to the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Organizations such as Amnesty International have been calling on both Democratic and Republican party leaders to dismantle them not only because of the deplorable conditions, but also because of the inherent problem of attaching dollars and market-driven stocks to the housing and incarceration of human bodies.
News of the policy shift was welcomed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate in 2016, who also questioned the morality of private jails.
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In its memo on Thursday, the DOJ noted that the federal prison population has dropped to 195,000 inmates from 220,000 within three years. That would depend on “the continuing decline of the federal prison population”. “For the last 35 years, the use of private prisons in this country has crept ever upward, and this is a startling and major reversal of that trend, and one that we hope will be followed by others”.
