The Justice Department announced today that it will cease using private, for-profit prisons.
The department cited the fact that they are less safe and effective at providing correctional services as part of the reason why the decision was made to move away from them. The decision was announced by Deputy Attorney Sally Yates earlier today in a memo. Officials are instructed to not renew contracts for private prisons in the document. She said the goal of the department is to completely end the use of these facilities. “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,” she wrote.
An Inspector General’s report showed that private run prisons have a higher occurrence of violent incidents than government run institutions. However, Jonathan Burns a spokesman for the Corrections Corporation of America said the report has “significant flaws” and claims they have been proven to be just as safe as government-run prisons. Politicians like Bernie Sanders have labeled the private prison system as a source of corruption within the U.S. During his presidential campaign he vowed to put a stop to their use. He was pleased with the recent decision and said in a statement that it was “an important step in the right direction,” and that it is “an international embarrassment that we put more people behind bars than any other country on Earth.. due in large part to private prisons.” Private prisons were used to help the overcrowding problem of state prisons in the 1990s. A recent decline in prisoner population in the U.S. helped the Justice Department come to this decision.
Source: washingtonpost.com
