The United States Department of Justice announced on Thursday the discontinuation of all contracts with private prisons, citing public outcry about the treatment of prisoners and the statistical correlation between for-profit prison companies with mass incarceration.
US Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said in a Thursday statement that she sent a memo instructing officials not to renew contracts with private prisons and to reduce all existing contracts.
"This is the first step in the process of reducing – and ultimately ending – our use of privately operated prisons," she said.
In Thursday’s stock trading, publicly traded private prison behemoths Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO both plunged more than 40% in response to the news.
But the decision by the Department of Justice, while undermining the for-profit prison business model, does not mean the complete elimination of the notorious facilities nationwide.
The practice of using for-profit prisons, based on arguments of economic efficiency with regard to taxpayer dollars remains, despite numerous studies finding the opposite, a regular practice within state governments. Under the existing system, an influential and deep-pocket prison lobby can directly subsidize the political campaigns of lawmakers, and submit model legislation in conjunction with organizations including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative group with disproportionate influence in statehouses across the country.
The decision by the Obama Administration appears to be, at least in part, a response to public outcry over a controversial $1 billion contract between the US Department of Homeland Security and CCA, as part of the White House policy of "sending a message to" women and children fleeing violence in South and Central America, who seek asylum in the United States.
On Thursday, prior to the decision, Loud & Clear’s Brian Becker sat down with Margaret Winter, former Associate Director of the ACLU Private Prison Project, to discuss the controversy surrounding the $1 billion prison contract with CCA.
"The big picture here is that when large numbers of families, primarily women with their children, began arriving in the US seeking asylum from the huge rise in violence in Central America, particularly in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, the Department of Homeland Security and the Obama Administration did what one might call a publicity stunt, something that they called an aggressive deterrence policy, in deciding that they would do a complete turnaround on amnesty," said Winter.
"Previously, when families would come in seeking asylum from brutality and oppression in other countries, the policy was that these families would be housed in the communities where they landed, they wouldn’t be put into prison," explained the expert. "However, the administration made a deal with Corrections Corporation of America, the biggest for-profit prison system in the world, for a billion dollar contract, a real sweet deal whereby CCA would get $20 million a year, $1 billion overall."
"It didn’t matter whether the facility turned out to be full, half-full, or empty, the money was going to come in anyways. That was the deal."
