Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo Thursday signaling the federal government will continue to use private prisons, a reversal of the Obama administration’s plan.
Memo from AG Sessions rescinding Obama-era memo on phasing out private prisons. pic.twitter.com/xjZ0ZnV7Ni
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 23, 2017
The memo to the acting head of the Bureau of Prisons replaces one issued by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in August that said the federal government would be phasing out its contracts with private prisons. Yates’ memo “changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system,” Sessions said in his memo.
” Therefore, I direct the bureau to return to its previous approach,” Sessions wrote.
Memo from AG Sessions rescinding Obama-era memo on phasing out private prisons. pic.twitter.com/xjZ0ZnV7Ni
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 23, 2017
The Bureau of Prisons is in contract with 12 private prisons holding roughly 21,000 inmates. A Justice Department inspector general report had previously found private prisons were more far more dangerous than prisons run by the bureau.
The phasing out of contracts with private prisons was part of a broader criminal justice reform push by President Barack Obama.
In January, two ex-Sessions aides joined Geo Group, one of the two big private prison operators. David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux both left Bradley Arant Boult Cummings to help lobby the federal government on behalf of Geo Group over the use of privately-contracted prisons.
Pablo Paez, vice president of corporate relations at GEO Group, told the Washington Examiner that the company “welcomes” Sessions’ memo.
Paez added that GEO found the decision by Yates and the DOJ last year was “based on a misrepresentation of the report issued” by the inspector general’s office.
“[T]he OIG found that privately operated facilities experienced lower rates of inmate deaths, lower rates of guilty findings of inmate on inmate sexual assault, lower rates of allegations of staff against inmate sexual assault, lower rates of positive drug tests, and lower rates of inmate grievances,” Paez said.
David C. Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, called the decision a “recipe for abuse and neglect.”
“[T]his memo is a further sign that under President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, the United States may be headed for a new federal prison boom, fueled in part by criminal prosecutions of immigrants for entering the country,” Fathi said.
