The
United States Department of Justice will no longer use private
prisons to incarcerate federal inmates. On Thursday, Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates sent a memo to DOJ officials instructing them to
either decline to renew federal contracts with for-profit prison
facilities when those contracts expire, or to “substantially
reduce” the scope of those contracts.
“[Private
prisons] simply do not provide the same level of correctional
services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on
costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office
of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety
and security,” Yates wrote in the memo. She added that the
ultimate goal of the DOJ’s new policy was “reducing — and
ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.”
The
report Yates cited was issued by the Office of the Inspector General
(OIG) for the Department of Justice last week. In the report, the OIG
found that both inmates and guards at private prisons were far more
likely to experience assault, and confiscation of contraband
cellphones was eight times higher than in facilities operated by the
Federal Bureau of Prisons. The report cited a 2012 riot at a private
prison in Mississippi that led to “extensive property damage,
bodily injury, and the death of a Correctional Officer.” The
riot allegedly stemmed from inmates protesting poor medical care and
low-quality food.
“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,” Yates told the Washington Post.
Private
prison issues recently came into the national spotlight earlier this
summer, when Mother Jones published an extensive investigation into
abuses at a private prison facility in Louisiana. According to Mother
Jones, 131,000 of the nation’s 1.6 million inmates are housed in
for-profit prison facilities operated by companies like the GEO
Group and the Corrections Corporation of America.
The
DOJ’s new private prison policy is expected to come fully into
effect as contracts expire over the next five years.
Source:
Shortly
after the announcement, stock prices for two of the biggest companies
in the private prison industry suffered massive, historic losses:
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