In an on Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said the Department of Justice would begin to reverse the process of privatization for some U.S. prisons.
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The directive applies to 13 privately run facilities, which house more than 22,000 inmates.
The US Department of Justice has said it will end the use of private prisons to detain federal inmates.
Almost a third of the market value of what has been a growing subsector of the US economy in the past two decades was wiped away on fears that other federal and state departments would also curtail the use of for-profit prisons.
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. Only one in eight federal inmates was in a private facility in 2015.
Geo Group said on Friday that the BOP had rescinded a contract for a prison in Georgia.
Vallas also called on the government to stop contracting with for-profit prison transport services, which have come under fire following a scathing news investigation by The Marshall Project, which found at least four people have died since 2012 in prison extradition vans run by a private company.
Further, even if the private-prison industry were completely eliminated, private companies would still be integral to the prison industry.
Effective immediately, the Justice Department will seek to reduce and “ultimately end” the use of privately operated prisons.
The policy change does not cover private prisons used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which hold up to 34,000 immigrants awaiting deportation.
As a faith leader committed to justice, reconciliation, and building a stronger nation, I applaud the Justice Department’s decision to begin washing its hands of the blood money of private prisons – a decision that is in the interest of public safety and the common good.
The private prisons are operated by three companies – Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group Inc. and Management and Training Corporation. In addition to providing fundamental residential services, our facilities offer a variety of rehabilitation and educational programs, including basic education, faith-based services, life skills and employment training and substance abuse treatment.
In response to the inspector general report, the contractors noted their inmate populations consist largely of noncitizens, offering challenges that government-run facilities do not have.
Which doesn’t really answer the question one way or the other, but an ICE official also noted that ICE’s immigrant detention facilities serve very different purposes than Bureau of Prison facilities.
In an emailed statement Thursday, ICE defended the use of private prisons and gave no indication it would halt the practice.
The privatization of prisons and jails stems from the early 1980s, when the Corrections Corporation of America was formed.
The federal government started to rely on private prisons in the late 1990s due to overcrowding.
Let us now work passionately to address the problems that led to the rise of the prison industrial complex in the first place – access to good jobs, quality education, housing, fair sentencing guidelines, and health care – and create a society where human beings are not traded like stock options on Wall Street.
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Yates, in an interview with The Washington Post, said that it was “hard to know precisely” when BOP contract prisons will be emptied of federal inmates.
