The report concluded that private prisons were more risky than prisons operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and that private prisons had higher incidents of violence and inmate contraband than state-run facilities.
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In an internal memo released by the department, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said her agency would begin the gradual process of reversing the privatization of some U.S. prisons, a practice which had proved more problematic but no less costly than the use of government-managed correctional facilities.
Yates told the Post that the Bureau of Prisons system now includes 13 private facilities that will all be due for contract renewals within five years.
In the public memorandum Yates wrote that “private prisons served an important role during a hard period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities”.
Following news of the announcement, stock for the private prison companies Geo Group and Corrections Corporation of America, also known as CCA, fell sharply.
About 40,000 federal inmates were detained in United States private prisons in 2014, Bureau of Justice Statistics reported.
“The Department of Homeland Security has made no announcement similar to the Department of Justice”, she said, “so the bulk of federal contracting with private prison companies is going to continue through the immigration detention system”.
According to a recent report from the DOJ Inspector General, those issues include more lockdowns, poor quality food, sexual misconduct.
“This is the first step in the process of reducing-and ultimately ending-our use of privately operated prisons”. The memo was in response to a report by the Office of the Inspector General earlier this month that reviewed the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) monitoring of contract prisons.
The Justice Department explained the plans to reduce the use of private prisons, which will affect thousands of inmates.
The U.S. Marshals Service contract to house inmates at NEOCC expires December 31, 2018.
Yates told the Washington Post in an interview that there are 13 privately run facilities in the Bureau of Prisons system and they will not close overnight. All of those contracts should come up for renewal over the next five years, she said.
The report also says the prisons who have contracts with the Federal BOP are operated by 3 private corporations- one being Corrections Corporation of America– which has a facility in Central Georgia.
According to the aforementioned SEC filing, the Marshals Service and ICE combined accounted for 40 percent of CCA’s revenue in 2015. The private prisons are reputed to spend millions on lobbying each year, so they may be hard to sever-and we are, after all, facing a change of administration, so will this resolution stick?
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GEO said in an e-mail to USA TODAY that although the company was disappointed by the Department of Justice’s memo, “the impact of this decision is not imminent”.
