Last week, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report that found private prisons are less safe and less effective than government-run corrections facilities.
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“Private prisons served an important role during a hard period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities”, Yates wrote in the memo.
“We believe all of our (Bureau of Prisons) facilities meet or exceed quality standards comparable to government operated facilities”, said George Zoley, the CEO of the GEO Group, which operates three private prisons in Texas for the federal government – two in Pecos and one in Big Spring. The vast majority of America’s incarcerated are housed in state prisons – rather than federal ones – and Yates’ memo does not apply to any of those, even the ones that are privately run.
Federal inmates serving time in privately owned prisons will be a thing of the past within a few years.
A recently published, four-month-long investigation by Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer gave a harrowing account of the violence and poor health conditions inside one private prison, where he worked undercover as a corrections officer.
The directive, however, only applies to federal prisons, not state ones.
The DOJ has instructed the Federal BOP to decline to renew contracts with these private facilities as they reach the end of their terms or reduce the contract in a manner consistent with the law. A memo issued on Thursday by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates sparked a plunge in Corrections Corp. of America and GEO stock at midday, both companies briefly plunging 40 percent on the news. “Florida can carry on it’s course with private prisons as we have been and this is not going to have any influence on what happens here”.
The Justice Department plans to stop using private prisons, according to a report in The Washington Post. It also does not apply to those people detained by U.S. Marshals Service or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That includes the Federal Correctional Institution in Taft.
“In recent years, disturbances in several federal contract prisons resulted in extensive property damage, bodily injury, and the death of a correctional officer”, said the report.
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In a transcript provided to ABC News, Damon Hininger, CCA’s President and CEO, told investors on Friday afternoon: “I also wanted to note that while almost half of our revenue comes from our federal partners and the other half from our state partners, the BOP only makes up about $131 million of our revenues”. DOJ said in a memo announcing the new policy that “time has shown that [private prisons] compare poorly to our own … facilities”.
