Deputy Attorney General Yates also wrote, “Private prisons served an important role during a hard period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities”.
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In fact, just a week ago, a report by the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog, the inspector general’s office, found that “in most key areas, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable [Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)] institutions”. Yates wrote that the goal is to reduce, and ultimately end, the use of privately operated prison 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.
The Justice Department’s decision comes as the private prison industry has fallen under increasingly critical scrutiny. “It is historic and groundbreaking”, David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, told The Washington Post.
When asked if absorbing the prisoners now outsourced to corporations could mean more taxpayer dollars spent on housing those inmates, Hilinski-Rosick said she thinks it could have the opposite effect.
Three corporations that run Bureau of Prisons facilities, Geo Group, Corrections Corporation of America and Management and Training Corporation, also run facilities in Arizona.
Following the decision he said it was “an global embarrassment that we put more people behind bars than any other country on Earth… due in large part to private prisons”.
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.
The Bureau of Prisons began contracting with privately operated institutions in 1997 to alleviate overcrowding and in response to orders from the U.S. Congress.
But with the decline, she said, the government “can better allocate our resources to ensure that inmates are in the safest facilities and receiving the best rehabilitative services – services that increase their chances of becoming contributing members of their communities when they return from prison”. Instead, there will be a review of those contracts that come up for renewal.
A spokesperson for the Marshals referred questions to the Justice Department, an official of which noted a memo written by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates directing the change was addressed only to the Bureau of Prisons.
“We have got to end the private prison racket in America as quickly as possible”. The Federal Bureau of Prisons spent $639 million on contracts with private prisons in fiscal year 2014.
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Meanwhile, the companies maintain contracts at the state level, which are also unaffected by the Justice Department decision. However, Schwarz said, Congress has funded a minimum of 34,000 beds a day for immigration detention, and 62 percent are in facilities run by private contractors.
