Citing a report by the department’s inspector, Yates added that private prisons also fail to meet “the same level of safety and security” as department-run facilities.
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Privately operated prisons became popular in the late 1990’s as the federal inmate population expanded rapidly.
By May 1 of 2017, the plan is reduce the total private prison population to less than 14,200 inmates. In a report released earlier this month by the DOJ Evaluation and Inspections Division found private prisons are more unsafe than facilities managed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Ms. Yates also talked about how the private facilities have served an important role in the past few years when prison population exploded; however, they have recently proved to be less effective than others run by the government. Yates wrote in the memo that the Bureau of Prisons has already begun cutting back on renewing beds and will close three private prisons over the next year.
She said that in Arizona, the private prison companies have been pushing that state to guarantee them 90 percent occupancy – or the financial equivalent.
The Justice Department is directing the Bureau of Prisons to take steps to reduce and ultimately end the use of privately operated prisons.
Per the Washington Post, President of Management and Training Corporation Scott Marquardt has since disputed the inspector general’s report and questioned how BOP facilities and privately run ones could even be compared to one another.
“Any casual reader would come to the conclusion that contract prisons are not as safe as BOP prisons”, Marquardt said. The Bureau of Prisons spent $639 million on private prisons in fiscal year 2014, according to the report. The DOJ’s report itself, as well, found that private prisons are generally more violent than federal prisons.
As soon as the news broke the DOJ would be abandoning for-profit prisons, stock value crashed for both Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group.
The move to decrease the government’s reliance on for-profit prison companies is part of a larger push by the Obama administration to reform the criminal justice system, including commuting sentences for non-violent offenders and reducing the overall incarceration rate, which is the highest in the world. He added that it is “an global embarrassment that we put more people behind bars than any other country on Earth. due in large part to private prisons”. Fire the prison or reward the prison based on their outcomes, as states do, Moore said.
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