The decision comes after a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general last week released a critical report concluding that privately operated facilities incurred more safety and security incidents than those run by the federal Bureau of Prisons.
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The federal prison population increased by nearly 800 percent between 1980 and 2013, often at a far faster rate than the Bureau of Prisons could accommodate in their own facilities. But the federal prisoner population has begun to decline, thanks in part to “several significant efforts to recalibrate federal sentencing policy”, and private prisons “simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources” as government-run institutions, Yates said in her memo.
The announcement Thursday only impacts the 195,000 inmates in federal prisons, a small portion of America’s 2.2 million incarcerated adult prisoners.
In addition, private prisons used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which house about 34,000 immigrants awaiting deportation, are not covered by the policy shift. The decision follows a recent report from the U.S. Inspector General that found private prisons were less safe, for both staff and people housed in the for-profit facilities.
“For example, the contract prisons confiscated eight times as many contraband cell phones annually on average as the BOP institutions”, the report said.
Yates said that ultimately, the goal is “reducing-and ultimately ending-our use of privately operated prisons”. Yates wrote that rather than shift operations immediately, contracts will be reviewed as the come up for renewal.
Similarly, another major private prison operator, GEO Group, saw its share prices on the NYSE fall about 53 percent – from a 52-week high of $35.14 in mid-July to $16.26.
Privately run immigration detention facilities include two family detention centers in Texas, holding up to 2,500 mothers and children.
In a few years there will be no private prisons in the US. His group runs a campaign to encourage companies to divest from for-profit prisons. Not only that, but privately run prisons do not save the USA taxpayers any substantial amount of money.
Out of the 13 prisons that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has a contract with, 5 of them belong to Corrections Corp of America. The Nation magazine also recently reported about deaths under questionable circumstances in privately operated facilities. Numerous inmates are foreign nationals who are being held on immigration offences, the audit said.
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Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, a national civil rights organization, called DOJ’s Thursday announcement “a step in the right direction”, but added that: “Much more action is needed to scrub private prisons from our criminal justice system”.
