Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in the Justice Department’s memo that private facilities fall short of federal facilities in their services, programs, resources as well as safety and security.
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The Federal Government houses about 12% of the Bureau of Prison’s total inmate population in facilities run by three companies: Corrections Corp. of CXW -35.45 % America, GEO Group Inc.GEO -39.58 % and Management and Training Corp.
The announcement of the phase out comes about a week after an Office of the Inspector General report that found prisons that held government contracts were less safe and secure than those run directly by the BOP.
In the memo, Yates writes that while private prisons served an important role previously, they compare poorly to federally-owned facilities.
Effective immediately, the Justice Department will seek to reduce and “ultimately end” the use of privately operated prisons.
In the memo, Yates said that by May 2017, the bureau is expected to house just 14,200 inmates in private prisons – a small percentage of the approximate 195,000 federal inmates now in the US.
In its report released last week, the DOJ inspector general’s office also showed higher per person rates of “contraband finds, assaults, uses of force, lockdowns, guilty findings on inmate discipline charges, and selected categories of grievances”, a press release said.
The government made a decision to use private prisons to house inmates about a decade ago, Yates said.
The U.S. government will begin phasing out its use of private prisons, and shares of two major private prison companies are crashing on the news. Corrections Corp. stock dropped $13.22, or 48.6 per cent, to $14 and Geo Group tumbled $13.80, or 42.7 per cent, to $18.49.
The number of prisoners held in privately run facilities at both the state and federal levels had been slowly decreasing since its peak in 2013.
Mr Hanson said both companies would need to update their financial outlooks after the Justice Department news.
“They’ve come to realise it doesn’t save money, it doesn’t help with rehabilitation, it doesn’t make these people better people when they come out of prison”.
Contracts for the U.S. federal government’s private prisons won’t be torn up immediately, but reviewed as they come up for renewal.
The most recent ICE detainee figures, supplied by spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea, indicate an average daily population of 33,676 as of early August, about 73 percent of whom (24,567) are housed in privately operated facilities. “It is historic and groundbreaking”, David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, told The Washington Post.
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However, Height Securities industry analyst Daniel Hanson called the department’s goal of ending private prison contracting “more aspirational than attainable”. Sommer and Kwan believe the Bureau of Prisons “will evaluate each facility at the time of its contract renewal date, taking into account the quality of each facility and the agency’s overall needs”. The move would cut back the countrys reliance on privately run prisons until they are out of service, the Washington Post reports.
