In the memo to Bureau of Prisons, Yates also cited relatively poor performance of privately operated prisons as reasons to ultimately end the use of these prisons.
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In a memo released Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote that private prisons do not “provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources”, do not provide substantial cost savings and “do not maintain the same level of safety and security”.
CCA, the largest USA private prison company, earned 44 percent of its revenue from federal contracts in 2014, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
A statement from the branch of DHS that runs detention facilities for migrants said it used various models for immigration detention but made no mention of a move to close privately run migrant detention facilities.
And Hawaii is locked in with the new contract with CCA for three years – or up to five years, if the state exercises its option to extend it twice on one-year increments.
The Inspector General’s report says that in the majority of the categories they examined, private prisons have more safety and security incidents per person than do federal prisons.
In December of 2015, the inspector general’s report revealed that some 22,660 federal inmates were being housed in privately run prisons, although the Bureau of Prisons website lists a slightly smaller number.
In the memo, Yates writes that while private prisons served an important role previously, they compare poorly to federally-owned facilities.
Three companies run the prisons in question: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group and Management and Training Corporation.
In 2010, it closed the Huerfano Correctional Facility, another private prison in Walsenburg.
The Bureau of Prisons began contracting with privately operated institutions in 1997 to alleviate overcrowding and in response to orders from the US Congress.
Schwarz said the Justice Department isn’t the only government agency to employ private prisons.
Since peaking in 2013 at almost 220,000 inmates, the federal prison population has declined in recent years to fewer than 194,000. Problems including low food quality and medical care have plagued private prisons for years, with periodicals such as The Nation publishing exposés on the conditions at the prisons.
Burns also disputed the findings of the Inspector General’s report. Yates says that for-profit facilities will house just 14,000 inmates-down by more than half-by May 2017. Numerous inmates are foreign nationals who are being held on immigration offenses, the audit said. “It is historic and groundbreaking”, David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, told The Washington Post.
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“And I think it’s recognition that when we are talking about depriving people of their liberty, we shouldn’t be turning that decision over to a private entity – that’s not what we should be doing in a democracy”, said Mauer.
