US Justice Dept. to halt use of private prisons

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON

The Justice Department announced Thursday that it plans to stop using private prisons after concluding they are less safe and secure than their government-run counterparts.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in a memo to the acting director of prisons that private facilities “simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs.”

Citing a report by the department’s inspector, Yates added that private prisons also fail to meet “the same level of safety and security” as department-run facilities.

The U.S. initially decided to use private prison systems roughly a decade ago to combat overcrowding in government prisons. But prison populations have been on the decline since 2013.

Fewer than 195,000 inmates are currently housed in federal prisons, down from 220,000 in 2013, Yates wrote.

She said private prisons “served an important role during a difficult period”, but said over time they have been shown to “compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons will begin to reduce and ultimately end its use of private prisons by declining to renew contracts as they expire, or substantially reducing the contract’s scope, Yates directed.

She said she expects three or more facilities to be shuttered within a year as a result of the new directives, and that will “reduce the total private prison population to less than 14,200 inmates by May 1, 2017.”

That would be a 50 percent decrease since 2013, she wrote.