In the twilight months of the Obama administration, the Department of Justice made an unprecedented announcement: The Bureau of Prisons would phase out the use of privately run contract prison facilities after inspectors concluded that those facilities were “both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government,” as the Washington Post put it at the time. The evaluation by officials should surprise no one: Research suggests that private facilities tend to keep citizens behind bars longer, and in worse conditions.
But the Trump administration doesn’t see it that way. On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions effectively undid the Obama administration’s private prison plan, condemning the 10 percent of the federal prison population in private facilities to a for-profit carceral limbo. The reasoning? Barack Obama’s order “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 a statement Thursday.
[For more of this story, written by Jared Keller, go to https://psmag.com/twenty-four-...9f2d1f617#.hihv08hku]
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