By the New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said on Thursday that it would begin to phase out the use of private for-profit prisons to house federal inmates. In announcing the policy shift, the Justice Department cited a critical recent report by the department’s independent inspector general about safety and security problems in private prisons.
The Bureau of Prisons were ordered not to renew contracts to use private prisons as existing ones expire, or to at least “substantially reduce” the number of beds. A pending contract solicitation will be scaled down from 10,800 prisoner slots to a maximum of 3,600. Also, the bureau recently declined to renew a contract for a private prison that had provided beds for up to 1,200 federal inmates.
The Justice Department’s inspector general, issued a report. It found that private prisons were more violent and problematic than public prisons
In 2013, Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general at the time, announced a policy of not listing specific quantities of drugs in indictments, to avoid bringing mandatory minimum sentencing laws into play. That and other changes made in 2013 had helped reduce the federal inmate population, making it possible to start phasing out the use of private prisons.
“This is the first step in the process of reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons, to ensure that all federal inmates are ultimately housed at bureau facilities.”