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Two Soylentils wrote in to tell us of news from the US Justice Department's plans to stop using private prisons.
Justice Department Says it will End use of Private Prisons
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.
Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or "substantially reduce" the contracts' scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is "reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons."
"They 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.
This really took me by surprise; I had thought this was beyond hope. The article doesn't mention my main beef with private prisons though, which would be the incentive for those profiting to lobby for and otherwise encourage increased jail time for more people, including making more things illegal (war on drugs), and increased chances of wrongful prosecution.
Related Coverage:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20880-for-profit-prisons-eight-statistics-that-show-the-problems
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-lotke/the-real-problem-with-pri_b_8279488.html
https://www.aclu.org/blog/private-prisons-are-problem-not-solution
[Continues...]
U.S. Begins Phase-out of Private Prisons
A memorandum (PDF version) (plain text version fraught with errors) from the deputy attorney-general of the U.S. Department of Justice to the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons asks for "help in beginning the process of reducing—and ultimately ending—[the] use of privately operated prisons." This is to be done as contracts with private prison operators come up for renewal: the services contracted for are to be lessened, or the contracts are to be allowed to expire. According to the memo:
[...] the Bureau is already taking steps in this direction. Three weeks ago, the Bureau declined to renew a contract for approximately 1,200 beds. Today, concurrent with the release of this memo, the Bureau is amending an existing contract solicitation to reduce an upcoming contract award from a maximum of 10,800 beds to a maximum of 3,600.
The memo follows a report (PDF) released this month by the Department of Justice's inspector-general, which said
Our analysis included data from FYs 2011 through 2014 in eight key categories: (1) contraband, (2) reports of incidents, (3) lockdowns, (4) inmate discipline, (5) telephone monitoring, (6) selected grievances, (7) urinalysis drug testing, and (8) sexual misconduct. With the exception of fewer incidents of positive drug tests and sexual misconduct, the contract prisons had more incidents per capita than the BOP institutions in all of the other categories of data we examined. [...] Contract prisons [...] had higher rates of assaults, both by inmates on other inmates and by inmates on staff. [...] the BOP still must improve its oversight of contract prisons to ensure that federal inmates' rights and needs are not placed at risk when they are housed in contract prisons.
On the day of the release of the memo, trading in the stocks of two of the three prison operators was temporarily halted due to declines in their prices.
Related Coverage:
Reason blog about inspector-general's report
The Atlantic about inspector-general's report
Washington Post
Reuters
BBC News
Los Angeles Times
Mother Jones
Atlanta Black Star
The Guardian
Esquire
U.S. News & World Report
Time
ABC News
NPR
USA Today
Toronto Star
Further reading:
- Mother Jones, "My four months as a private prison guard." by Shane Bauer This reporter was himself a prisoner in Iran.
- The Nation, 'This Man Will Almost Certainly Die' by Seth Freed Wessler
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday August 19 2016, @04:39PM
I like this trend, seems that some people are realizing that we have to fix some of the problems before the country is inspired to tear itself apart!
Good job DOJ!
instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or "substantially reduce" the contracts' scope
I know it will be a work in progress, there is no simple magic button to press to make private prisons go away, but I will be keeping an eye out for the actual reductions / removals.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:57PM
Eh, you still have overcrowding in federal prisons. While it is anticipated that sentencing reform will reduce numbers in the distant future, overcrowding will probably get worse as there are less beds to go around.
Not to argue for private prisons, but this isn't quite the improvement you might be lead to believe.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 19 2016, @05:41PM
Except, there have been prisons that have been ordered to release prisoners due to overcrowding. The prisons and the courts have to get together, and just decide which prisoners really aren't dangerous, and turn them loose. If there are unlimited beds available from private contractors, then there is no limit to the number of people who can be incarcerated.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 19 2016, @09:33PM
This happened in California awhile back, when due to prison overcrowding non-violent prisoners were released to the city jails with the result of -- wait for it, -- that's right, overcrowding the city jails!
And some city jails are worse than prison with regard to things like mold and communicable diseases, even if there are overall less violent people crammed into them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday August 19 2016, @05:43PM
There's an important point here, though.
The feds have already had very few private prisons. They dipped their toes in, but didn't jump in like some states did. This isn't going to fix the biggest source of this particular problem.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday August 19 2016, @07:26PM
from the inspector-general's report:
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) [...] was operating at 20 percent over its rated capacity as of December 2015. [...] contract prisons housed roughly 22,660 of these federal inmates, or about 12 percent of the BOP’s total inmate population.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @11:28PM
Maybe economics will do that.
Private Prison Stocks Plunge on DOJ's Plan to Kill Contracts [thestreet.com]
Corrections Corp.'s (CXW) credit rating was cut to 'junk' status at Moody's (MCO) today [thestreet.com]
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