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posted by martyb on Friday August 19 2016, @04:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the 'cell'ing-out dept.

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:


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday August 19 2016, @05:50PM

    by frojack (1554) on Friday August 19 2016, @05:50PM (#390183) Journal

    Needs more citations:

    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.

    Seriously, is this really a problem? Are private prison companies really flooding the hill with lobbyists for longer sentences and defining more things as crimes?
    I think you made that shit up.

    Needs Less Citations:
    Butthurt, adding more links to redundant coverage does not make the point stronger, or more well researched. Especially when several are just verbatim copies of the same wire-story.
    Two links are more than enough, and when both cite the same source one would suffice.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 19 2016, @06:03PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday August 19 2016, @06:03PM (#390197) Journal

    Are private prison companies really flooding the hill with lobbyists for longer sentences and defining more things as crimes?
     
    Yes.
     
      How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about [washingtonpost.com]
     
      Several industries have become notorious for the millions they spend on influencing legislation and getting friendly candidates into office: Big Oil, Big Pharma and the gun lobby among them. But one has managed to quickly build influence with comparatively little scrutiny: Private prisons. The two largest for-profit prison companies in the United States – GEO and Corrections Corporation of America – and their associates have funneled more than $10 million to candidates since 1989 and have spent nearly $25 million on lobbying efforts. Meanwhile, these private companies have seen their revenue and market share soar. They now rake in a combined $3.3 billion in annual revenue and the private federal prison population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @07:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @07:33PM (#390226)

      I'm curious to know how that compares to lobbying by the unions of prison guards and police for basically the same thing.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday August 19 2016, @08:18PM

      by frojack (1554) on Friday August 19 2016, @08:18PM (#390250) Journal

      Wrong.

      They are simply lobbying for contracts, and against federal funding of federal prisions.

      The article presents no evidence of lobbying to make more things a federal crime so or lengthening sentences so that they can hold people longer.

      Again, the claim was hype, and you've perpetuated by myth but presented no evidence.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @11:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @11:54PM (#390344)

        American Legislative Exchange Council Exposed [alecexposed.org]

        Bills that prop up the for-profit bail bond industry, a long-time ALEC board member, through
        [list]

        Bills that benefit long-time ALEC members of the global for-profit prison industry, like the Corrections Corporation of America
        [list]

        Bills that add new penalties for retail theft, which increase prison population and aid ALEC corporations that are retailers, like corporate board member Wal-Mart
        [list]

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Friday August 19 2016, @08:16PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday August 19 2016, @08:16PM (#390249) Journal

    > [...] adding more links to redundant coverage does not make the point stronger, or more well researched.

    It doesn't. However it makes it easier for readers to consult various accounts of the same story, which can be complementary, or conflicting.

    > [...] several are just verbatim copies of the same wire-story.

    I try to avoid doing that. I don't see that I've done it here.

    > Two links are more than enough [...]

    So pick zero, one, or two stories to read and scroll past the other links, please?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:05AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:05AM (#390349)

      I see no point in including a list of hyperlinks if nothing is quoted from any of those "sources".

      As frojack said: redundant coverage [...] of the same wire-story

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 1) by butthurt on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:41AM

        by butthurt (6141) on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:41AM (#390361) Journal

        I asked frojack which stories are identical, and there has as yet been no answer. If you also see that, I ask you which are identical. I don't see it, unless you are referring to the two links to the Washington Post which happened because another submitter turned in a separate submission before mine.

        I didn't use the terms "sources" or "citations." I used the term "coverage." As I said, they are different accounts covering the same event. I fail to see a problem with that.