The decision will affect 13 privately run prisons housing just over 22,000 people, or about 11 percent of the federal prison population, mainly foreign nationals.
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The private prison industry is worth about $5 billion today, with 130 private prisons throughout the country housing almost 20 percent of the federal prison population and 7 percent of state prisoners, Mother Jones reports.
The decision comes on the heels of a critical report from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General which found “contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable [Bureau of Prisons’] institutions”.
The policy change does not cover private prisons used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which hold up to 34,000 immigrants awaiting deportation.
The bureau will look to scale down inmate slots at private prisons from 10,800 to a maximum of 3,600, The New York Times reported.
The US federal prison population increased by nearly 800 percent between 1980 and 2013, and in an effort to manage the rising prison population, US authorities began contracting with private prisons to confine some federal inmates a decade ago. Yates writes the goal is reducing, and ultimately ending, the country’s use of privately operated prisons. She did not specify a timeline for when all federal inmates would be in government-owned facilities.
The contract for the prison in Big Spring, which has more than 3,100 inmates, is set to expire in March but is in the middle of a rebidding process.
Elzea says the agency uses a mix of privately operated and public facilities “to meet the agency’s detention needs while protecting taxpayer resources”.
Yates told the Post that the Bureau of Prisons system now includes 13 private facilities that will all be due for contract renewals within five years. As of Thursday afternoon, the stock price of Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group had dropped more than 35 percent from the previous day’s close.
The Management and Training Corporation and Corrections Corporation of American issued statements saying they were disappointed with the decision.
Big news today from the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons: They’re going to stop relying on for-profit companies to run their prisons.
“Three weeks ago, the Bureau declined to renew a contract for approximately 1,200 beds”, noted Yates.
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The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government. California state Sen. Ricardo Lara, who authored a bill up for consideration in Sacramento that would ban state governments from contracting with the corporations, was quick to voice his opinion Thursday. Some states, such as Kentucky, already have. “It’s heading in the right direction, but it isn’t as extensive as the headlines make it sound”, says Ann Schwartzman, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, the oldest prison reform advocacy group in the world. “Lives have been lost to this broken system”.
