Unclear how end of private prison use will impact Texas

The three major private prison companies that the Bureau of Prisons contracts with say the Justice Department’s decision was based on a faulty inspector general report that failed to take into account the different populations between their facilities and regular BOP prisons.

Stocks for prison operating companies nose dived after the Justice Department said it will end or sharply reduce contracts with the companies.

Private prisons hold about 22,100 of these inmates.

For years, rights organizations have been struggling to bring attention to the ways in which the private prison lobby has had a dire influence on the criminal justice system and immigration policies.

“Private prisons served an important role during a hard period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities”, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in a memo to the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

“For all these reasons, I am eager to enlist your help in beginning the process of reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons”, Yates told BOP’s acting director in the memo.

In fact, just a week ago, a report by the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog, the inspector general’s office, found that “in most key areas, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable [Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)] institutions”.

Corrections Corp. of America and GEO both plunged more than 40 percent in midday trade. “The ACLU applauds today’s decision and calls on other agencies – both state and federal – to stop handing control of prisons to for-profit companies”.

But with the decline, she said, the government “can better allocate our resources to ensure that inmates are in the safest facilities and receiving the best rehabilitative services – services that increase their chances of becoming contributing members of their communities when they return from prison”.

The Management and Training Corporation and Corrections Corporation of American issued statements saying they were disappointed with the decision.

So, the recent decision by the Justice Department to abandon its use on the federal level is a hard-fought victory in the struggle for broader prison reform, the abolition of mass incarceration, and the criminalization of immigrants in American society.

According to the memo, approximately 15 percent of federal prisoners were in private facilities in 2013. Some states, such as Kentucky, already have.

The Obama administration said Thursday it will phase out its contracts with private prisons, affecting thousands of federal inmates. Thursday’s policy change also included direction to change a current solicitation for a private prison contract, cutting the maximum number of beds required by 66 percent.