|
| Obama during his visit to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution outside Oklahoma City, 2015 (Reuters) |
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department plans to phase out its use of privately-operated prisons, which it called less safe and less effective than government-run facilities, according to a memo released publicly by the department on Thursday.
In a move that hammered corrections company share prices, the internal Justice Department memo called for gradually phasing out the use of private prisons by letting contracts expire or by scaling them back.
Geo Group Inc shares fell about 28 percent while Corrections Corp of America shares sank about 20 percent.
Privately-run prisons “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 the memo.
Senator Bernie Sanders sponsored a bill during his presidential campaign attempting to end the use of private prisons in September 2015 saying “we cannot fix our criminal justice system if corporations are allowed to profit from mass incarceration.”
In a statement after the decision, Senator Sanders called the move “an important step in the right direction.” He added 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.”
Leave a Reply