“Taken together, these steps will reduce the private prison population by more than half from its peak in 2013 and puts the Department of Justice on a path to ensure that all federal inmates are ultimately housed at bureau facilities”, Yates concluded.
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Corrections Corp.is the largest USA owner of private prisons and specializes in providing services for government agencies. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing – and ultimately ending – our use of privately operated prisons”.
A report released last week by the department’s inspector general found that privately operated prisons had more problems with assaults and contraband. Mother Jones recently published a 35,000-word exposé detailing a reporter’s undercover work as a private prison guard in Louisiana – a piece that found serious deficiencies.
The question is: If this is what federally-contracted facilities are like, what about the ones in Mississippi? But lately, the for-profit prison industry has come under pressure as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has spoken forcefully about a desire to phase out private prisons as part of the USA criminal system.
Facilities won’t close immediately, but existing contracts will come under review upon renewal.
In the memo, Yates says the Bureau declined to renew a contract for approximately 1,200 beds at a private prison three weeks ago.
“Private prisons served an important role”, Yates said in responding to the rapid rise in the inmate population.
As of December 2015, private prisons incarcerated about 22,600 federal inmates. She said the drop in federal inmates gave officials the opportunity to re-evaluate the use of private prisons.
“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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The decision comes on the heels of a major internal report by the Justice Department showing that its contractors – Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and Management and Training Corporation – weren’t running safe prisons.
