After years of scathing criticism from advocacy groups and journalists alike, the feds are planning to end the use of private facilities in the federal prison system, as the Washington Post reports. The decision follows a recent report from the U.S. Inspector General that found private prisons were less safe, for both staff and people housed in the for-profit facilities.
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The US Department of Justice on Thursday announced it was ending the use of private prisons to detain federal inmates, severing itself from a practice that had become increasingly controversial.
The memo instructs federal officials to not renew private prison contracts at their expiration or to reduce their scope.
The Justice Department does not have jurisdiction over state prisons. “The fact of the matter is that private prisons don’t compare favorably to Bureau of Prisons facilities in terms of safety or security or services, and now with the decline in the federal prison population, we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to do something about that”.
The Justice Department decided three weeks ago to end a private prison contract for 1,200 beds, Yates said in a blog post. The cessation of private prisons by the Justice Department will likely see an uptick in costs, despite what Yates may be publicly stating at this time, but the “for-profit” prison industry has been under public scrutiny for many years. In a report released earlier this month by the DOJ Evaluation and Inspections Division found private prisons are more risky than facilities managed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. But since the peak of prisoner population in 2013, at which point 30,000 inmates, or about 15 percent of all prisoners, were housed in private prisons, there has been a steady decline in inmates.
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The federal prison population increased by nearly 800% between 1980 and 2013, at a rate the Bureau of Prisons couldn’t accommodate in their own facilities. The decline is partially a result of new, progressive prison policies that reduced sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. “The conclusion is wrong and is not supported by the work done by the [Inspector General]”. “As such, we think today’s stock action is more based on fear than actual cash flow risk”, said Ryan Meliker, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, which maintained Thursday a “hold” rating on Corrections Corp. and a “buy” on GEO. In response to the inspector general’s report, the private prison contractors noted that there prisons mostly include non-citizens, and present new challenges that the government-run facility will not be able to handle. She says the number of federal inmates rose by 800 percent between 1980 and 2013.
