The Justice Department has decided to take steps toward ending its use of private prisons after finding that these facilities fail to maintain the same safety and security guidelines as those ran by the Federal Bureau of 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,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in a memo.
Per the memo, she has officially instructed officials to decline to renew contracts for private prison operations or to “substantially reduce” their scope once they expire. The goal is to end the use of privately operated prisons altogether. However, instead of closing all 13 facilities at once, they will instead review the contracts once they turn up for renewal. Yates said that this will happen over the next five years.
Washington Post:
“Yates wrote that the bureau also would amend a solicitation for a 10,800-bed contract to one for a maximum 3,600-bed contract. That, Yates wrote, would allow the Bureau of Prisons over the next year to discontinue housing inmates in at least three private prisons, and by May 1, 2017, the total private prison population would stand at less than 14,200 inmates. She said it was “hard to know precisely” when all the privately run facilities would no longer have federal inmates, though she noted that 14,200 was less than half the inmates they held at their apex three years ago, a figure she said indicated the department was “well on our way to ultimately eliminating the use of private prisons entirely.””
This decision helps President Obama’s initiative to reform the criminal justice system. He believes that far too many people are put in jail, especially minorities.
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/18/justice-department-says-it-will-end-use-of-private-prisons/
