Thread: Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons

Will I.C.E. now release all children and mothers because they don't have a place to hold them?

Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons

By Matt Zapotosky August 18 at 1:06 PM

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates instructed Justice Department officials Thursday to end its use of private prisons. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated 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,” Yates wrote.

[The Justice Department’s memo announcing the end of its use of private prisons]

In an interview, Yates said there are 13 privately run privately run facilities in the Bureau of Prisons system, and they will not close overnight. Yates said the Justice Department would not terminate existing contracts but instead review those that come up for renewal. She said all the contracts would come up for renewal over the next five years.

The Justice Department’s inspector general last week released a critical report concluding that privately operated facilities incurred more safety and security incidents than those run by the federal Bureau of Prisons. The private facilities, for example, had higher rates of assaults — both by inmates on other inmates and by inmates on staff — and had eight times as many contraband cellphones confiscated each year on average, according to the report.

Bill Clinton: 'We need prison reform'

Disturbances in the facilities, the report said, led in recent years to “extensive property damage, bodily injury, and the death of a Correctional Officer.” The report listed several examples of mayhem at private facilities, including a May 2012 riot at the Adams County Correctional Center in Mississippi in which 20 people were injured and a correctional officer killed. That incident, according to the report, involved 250 inmates who were upset about low-quality food and medical care.

“The fact of the matter is that private prisons don’t compare favorably to Bureau of Prisons facilities in terms of safety or security or services, and now with the decline in the federal prison population, we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to do something about that,” Yates said.

The problems at private facilities were hardly a secret, and Yates said Justice Department and Bureau of Prisons officials had been talking for months about discontinuing their use. Mother Jones recently published a 35,000-word exposé detailing a reporter’s undercover work as a private prison guard in Louisiana — a piece that found serious deficiencies. The Nation magazine wrote earlier this year about deaths under questionable circumstances in privately operated facilities.

[Are private prisons better or worse than public prisons?]

It is possible the directive could face resistance from those companies that will be affected. In response to the inspector general’s report, the contractors running the prisons noted that their inmate populations consist largely of noncitizens, presenting them with challenges that government-run facilities do not have.

Scott Marquardt, president of Management and Training Corporation, wrote that comparing Bureau of Prisons facilities to privately operated ones was “comparing apples and oranges.” He generally disputed the inspector general’s report.

“Any casual reader would come to the conclusion that contract prisons are not as safe as BOP prisons,” Marquardt wrote. “The conclusion is wrong and is not supported by the work done by the [Office of the Inspector General].”

Yates, though, noted that the Bureau of Prisons was “already taking steps” to make her order a reality. Three weeks ago, she wrote, the bureau declined to renew a contract for 1,200 beds at the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico. According to a local TV station, the county sheriff said the facility’s closure would have a negative impact on the community.

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.”

“We have to be realistic about the time it will take, but that really depends on the continuing decline of the federal prison population, and that’s really hard to accurately predict,” Yates said.

According to the inspector general’s report, private prisons housed roughly 22,660 federal inmates as of December 2015.

That represents about 12 percent of the Bureau of Prisons total inmate population, according to the report.

In her memo, Yates wrote that the Bureau of Prisons began contracting with privately run institutions about a decade ago in the wake of exploding prison populations, and by 2013, as the federal prison population reached its peak, nearly 30,000 inmates were housed in privately operated facilities. But in 2013, Yates wrote, the prison population began to decline because of efforts to adjust sentencing guidelines, sometimes retroactively, and to change the way low-level drug offenders are charged. She said the drop in federal inmates gave officials the opportunity to reevaluate the use of private prisons.

Yates wrote that private prisons “served an important role during a difficult time period,” but they had proven less effective than facilities run by the government. The contract prisons are operated by three private corporations, according to the inspector general’s report: Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and Management and Training Corporation. The Bureau of Prisons spent $639 million on private prisons in fiscal year 2014, according to the report.

Yates said it was “really hard to determine whether private prisons are less expensive” and whether their closure would cause costs to go up, though she said officials did not anticipate having to hire additional Bureau of Prisons staff.

“Bottom line, I’d also say, you get what you pay for,” Yates said.
This post has been updated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ivate-prisons/

Oh I totally support this. The private prisons are the totally wrong way to go. You end up with prisons lobbying for mandatory sentences that aren't fair or right for the crimes for the sole purpose of sustaining their occupancy. It's completely disgusting. All states should do likewise and end the private prison systems many of them have on the earliest possible date. We have a government for the sole purpose of doing that which we can not correctly or properly do ourselves. Defense, roads and the justice system are at the top of the list of these functions.

I.C.E. will release the central american kids and mothers because they will have no place to put them.

Largest Private Prison Company Could Lose Lucrative Family Detention Contract

Critics say family detention treats refugees like criminals, but the Obama administration has expanded the practice.


08/12/2016 03:22 pm ET

Roque Planas National Reporter for The Huffington Post.


The country’s largest private prison company saw its stock price dip this month, after revealing to investors that it might lose a lucrative contract to lock up migrant families in south Texas.

Corrections Corporation of America reported in an Aug. 3 earnings call that it has presented a new plan to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to reduce costs at the South Texas Family Residential Center, located an hour south of San Antonio.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Signs in front of the entrance to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. The Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest private prison contractor, is renegotiating its contract for the center with the federal government.

“[W]e continue to engage ICE in discussions regarding our scale and cost of services, but can provide no assurance that we will be awarded a new contract for family unit detention, will successfully renegotiate our existing contract with ICE, or will be able to maintain the margins we currently generate from the contract,” the company said.

“If negotiations are successful, a modification to the contract will be announced and executed,” ICE spokesman Carl Rusno wrote in a message to The Huffington Post.

In 2009, lawsuits and protests had prompted the Obama administration to all but discontinue the country’s controversial family detention policy, which requires holding children and adults in large facilities while they wait for immigration hearings. But after more than 68,000 family units ― as immigration authorities call mothers traveling with children ― crossed illegally into the United States in 2014, the White House hastily expanded the policy.

The vast majority of the families come from the three violence-plagued countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. They often request asylum or other forms of humanitarian relief.

The family detention policy faces lawsuits in both federal and state court, with critics saying it treats refugees deserving of protection as criminals who need to be kept in what is essentially a jail.

For now, the detentions are continuing. And it’s big business for the for-profit companies running the centers.

Immigration authorities have been shopping around Texas for a new family detention center that might replace the Dilley facility or a similar facility in Karnes City, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Losing the contract would put a major dent in CCA’s revenues. The 2,400-bed Dilley facility generated $244.7 million for the company last year, according to its most recent annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in February ― more than 13 percent of the company’s total revenue.

The Karnes City family detention center is also run as a for-profit business by the country’s second-largest private prison contractor, GEO Group.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2015, one 7-year-old living at the South Texas Family Residential Center said she wanted to be a lawyer when she grows up, “to get everybody out of here.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b069e7e505148e

End all private prisons in the United States. You can't trust these people. These prisons lobby for long detentions, which means they want delayed deportation hearings, meaning the people aren't deported swiftly like they should be, eventually they're released under "civil rights", and free to roam and are never deported.

STOP PRIVATE PRISONS IN THE UNITED STATES AT ALL LEVELS.

The Obama Administration is seeking to totally destroy this county. I've seen at a local level how agressively their Party machinery is working to implement reckless policies of every stripe. I believe much of it is also ethical violations. In our state the Governmental Ethics commission is staffed by liberals, so they will be blind to any case you try to bring. At the federal level there are more agressive challenges, such as by the FBI. Therefore the Party machinery trots out their biggest guns to stop that also.

We are in the situation of Europe in the 1930's----where the fascist movements were sweeping all institutions. There is prejudice (against Christians, against Caucasians) and there is authoritarianism: Fascism. We are Germany of 1933, Spain of 1935, Italy at the rise of Mussolini.

Closing down these prisons isn't the answer unless you're replacing them with federal prisons. I saw no mention of building new prisons. What this basically means is many criminals will be set free to continue their life of crime simply because the liberals aren't tough on crime. These private prisons receive federal money which means they must act according to federal rules, regulations, and policies. Failure to do so should mean the suspension of federal funding.

All I'm hearing here is an excuse to pave the way to less prosecution and lighter sentencing for federal crimes. The people, including many victims of crime, rose up in the 80's and 90's against this very thing and the result was tougher sentencing laws. Of course now it seems the liberals are once again forcing their agenda of "soft on crime" on an unsuspecting population. Law-abiding citizens are the ones that will suffer from such action.

Yes, the end of private prisons would mean they are replaced or taken over by government.

"Ending federal use of private prisons is part of Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton's justice reform platform."
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Prison stocks plunge after report Justice Department will end use of private prisons

Evelyn Cheng | @chengevelyn
Thursday, 18 Aug 2016 | 4:23 PM ETCNBC.com

DOJ will end use of privateprisons Thursday, 18 Aug 2016 | 1:01 PM ET|02:55

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• 02:55
  DOJ will end use of private prisons
  08/18/16 1:01 PM ET
• 00:48
• DOJ will end use of private prisons -Report
  08/18/16 11:45 AM ET

Shares of two major prison stocks dropped sharply Thursday after a report the U.S. Justice Department will end the use of private prisons. But at least two analysts said the decline was overdone.

"The massive falloffs in the stocks imply that the risk will spread to other federal, state and local jurisdictions. While this is possible, we believe it is unlikely. As such, we think today's stock action is more based on fear than actual cash flow risk," said Ryan Meliker, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, which maintained Thursday a "hold" rating on Corrections Corp. and a "buy" on GEO.

Corrections Corp. of America and GEO both briefly plunged more than 40 percent in midday trade. Trading in both stocks was intermittently halted amid their decline Thursday. The stocks ended the day down more than 35 percent and 39 percent, respectively.





"The DOJ plan notes that there are 13 private prisons run by companies like GEO and CXW. It does not impact state contracts, ICE contracts or US Marshall contracts," Meliker said in the note, which pointed out that GEO has 11 percent exposure to the federally contracted private prisons and CXW has 9 percent exposure.

SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analysts also said in a Thursday note that the sell-off was "overdone" and that contracts with the DOJ will likely be reviewed individually over time, spreading out the risk of revenue loss. The firm has a "neutral" rating on CXW and a "buy" on GEO.

To be sure, states' use of private prisons has been under protest.

Exposure to those state operations is declining.

Corrections Corp said in a 10-K filing last year that state customer business constituted 42 percent of total revenue in 2015, down from 49 percent in 2013.

The news was initially reported by The Washington Post, which cited a memo from Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates instructing officials to either not renew private prison contracts or "substantially reduce" their scope.

The goal is to ultimately end the Justice Department's use of the privately operated prisons as they provide lower quality services and are less cost efficient, the report said.

Ending federal use of private prisons is part of Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton's justice reform platform.

http://blog.tsa.gov/2016/08/tsa-week...12th-18th.html

Yes, shut them down, put these prison corporations out of business. It's a disgusting endeavor, and totally wrong for our country.

Clinton hails DOJ's decision on private prisons

Washington Examiner (blog)-Aug 18, 2016
Hillary Clinton cheered the Justice Department's announcement ... "Glad to see that the Justice Department is ending the use of private prisons...