In a memo sent to the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the federal government will continue to contract private prisons to help house federal inmates. In doing so, Sessions is reversing a directive the Obama Administration gave in August 2013 to begin phasing out the government’s reliance on for-profit prisons.

“The memorandum changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal corrections system,” Sessions wrote, referring to the 2013 memo that was written by then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. “Therefore, I direct the Bureau to return to its previous approach.” A Justice Department spokesman later clarified that private prisons give the Bureau increased “flexibility” in housing federal inmates.

For a little over a decade, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been contracting private prisons to house a portion of federal inmates. As the prison population began to swell over the past few decades, hitting record levels under the Obama Administration, the federal government decided to outsource its imprisonment activities. By 2013, private prisons held 15 percent of the federal inmate population, or about 30,000 total prisoners. The prisoner population began to drop in 2013, and the Obama Administration decided private prisons, with their high costs and safety concerns, were no longer necessary.

“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 in her August 2013 memo. President Donald Trump fired Yates last month, when as acting attorney general she refused to enforce his ban on refugees and travelers from seven largely Muslim countries.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, most of the private prisons the federal government contracts hold “criminal aliens who may be deported upon completion of their sentence.” Of the more than 189,000 federal prisoners in the U.S. today, 12 percent, or about 21,500, are housed in private facilities. The rest are distributed among the 122 federal prisons spread across the country or in “other types of facilities.”

In a scathing series of tweets on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) called out the Trump Administration’s decision to continue using private prisons as a “reward” for the “hundreds of thousands of dollars” private prisons donated to Trump’s presidential campaign. Sanders added:

We must end private prisons in America. Corporations should not be profiting by incarcerating our fellow Americans.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 23, 2017

And Cory Booker, the Democratic Senator from New Jersey, said for-profit prisons undermine “the cause of justice and fairness” by adding a “profit motive to imprisonment.” He added, referring to the Sessions memo: “This damaging decision cuts against our deeply held values of justice and liberty, while creating vast wealth for private prison operators.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons for federal prisoners, according to a memo from Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates released on Thursday. According to Yates, the Department of Justice plans to either not renew existing private prison contracts or significantly reduce the scope of the agreements in the coming years. Over time, this will end the use of private prisons at the federal level, but that’s only part of the picture. Let’s take a closer look at what this means.

Why Now?

The decision comes less than a week after the Office of the Inspector General released a harsh report about the quality of these contract prisons. According to the report, “in most key areas, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable BOP institutions and that the BOP needs to improve how it monitors contract prisons in several areas.” The announcement also comes on the heels of an investigation from Mother Jones, which involved a reporter going undercover for multiple months in a Louisiana private prison. That story highlighted many of the security concerns involved with private prisons as well as the way that the profit motive can negatively affect prison conditions.

In her memo, Yates also points out that this move is in part a response to recent progress shrinking the size of the federal prison population. The use of private prisons was largely a product of the massive increase in federal prisoners over the past several decades. But 2014 marked the first year in which the number of federal prisoners actually decreased. The chart below shows the massive growth in the number of federal prisoners since 1980.

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, CSTAT

In 2013, the Department of Justice began its Smart on Crime Initiative, which sought to improve fairness and efficiency in the criminal justice system. An important part of the initiative was sentencing reform, which sought to ensure that sentence lengths were appropriate, particularly for nonviolent criminals. The new sentencing guidelines later became retroactive for drug offenders, which allowed inmates to challenge their sentence and get it reduced if approved by a judge. As a result, the DOJ hopes that the recent prison population decline will become a sustained trend, which in turn will reduce the need for private prisons.

How Many Prisoners Does This Affect?

While we know that the federal prison population has grown significantly over the past couple decades, how many of those prisoners are held in private prisons? Currently, private prisons account for about 11 percent of all federal prisoners, or about 22,100 prisoners. There are 13 private prisons used by the federal government, which will now be phased out over the next several years. But it’s important to note that most of the prisoners held in private prisons are at the state level. Here’s a look at the use of private prisons by states and the federal government since 1999:

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, CSTAT

What This Won’t Change

As you can see in the chart above, states use private prisons a lot more than the federal government and that won’t change with the DOJ’s recent decision. Another prominent use of private prisons is immigrant detention, which is overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Marshalls Service. Because immigration detention is not overseen by the DOJ, this decision will also not affect those facilities.

Simply put, this decision will not affect the majority of inmates in private prisons. But that doesn’t mean that the DOJ’s move will have no effect. In her memo, Assistant Attorney General Yates notes:

Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities. 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 oflnspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.

While she compares private facilities to the ones operated by the Bureau of Prisons, her comments amount to a strong statement against these prisons. Having a clear federal policy to stop using these facilities on the grounds that they are inferior to publicly controlled prisons may send a message to states to reconsider their private contracts. And shortly after the decision was announced on Thursday, Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group–the two largest private prison companies–saw their stock prices plummet.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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A recent study concluded that private prisons are more likely to hold African American prisoners when compared to public correction facilities. The study argues that contractual provisions, specifically health care related exemptions, have a measurable effect on the racial makeup of private correctional populations and are the primary contributors to this trend.

This report was the second part of a research study conducted by Christopher Petrella, a UC-Berkeley graduate student, and sought to explain the existence of the disparities found in his initial research. Petrella argues that the existence of unique medical exemptions in private prison contracts has caused their populations to include more black Americans than public prison populations.

We have covered private prisons before, but this study marks another example of why private prisons have become controversial recently. Private for-profit prison companies hold over 12 percent of the total prison population. The total number of inmates in these facilities totals over 130,000, and has continued to rise in recent years. These prisons have grown dramatically in size over the years and continue to develop political influence.

According to Petrella’s research, the presence of health exemptions for private prisons, allow such companies to avoid holding prisoners with chronic medical conditions or who may have above average medical costs. Statistics further indicate that younger inmates are much more likely to be black, and older inmates are relatively more likely to be white. The study attributes this disparity to the recent “war on drugs” campaign, which has had a disproportionate effect on young black Americans.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Prisoners in 2010 report, the estimated sentenced prisoner rate per 100,000 people was significantly larger for blacks in every age group, particularly those under the age of 50. Consequently, age becomes what Petrella calls “a proxy” for race, as grouping inmates by age also tends to separate them by skin color. Petrella cites a study done by the ACLU to explain how age affects health care costs. The ACLU found that the annual cost of holding the average prisoner is $34,135, but the cost of holding a prisoner over the age of 50 years old is $68,270.

It is also important to note that Petrella decided not to use statistics from federal detention centers that are operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or local ones controlled by the U.S. Marshall’s Service in order to avoid inflating the statistics even further.

Steve Owens, the senior director of public affairs for Corrections Corporation of America, told NPR that he found the study to be “deeply flawed.” He cited the fact that the government agrees to the contracts and typically has a lot of control over what prisoners are held in private facilities.

Although, it does not appear that race was the motive for these exemptions and policies, it does point to another example of discrimination and racial injustice within the prison system. Profit is clearly the overriding rationale behind the actions of private prison companies, but this problem is simply a part of a much larger issue of racial injustice.

Racial Injustice in Prisons

Here is an infographic created by ArrestRecords.com, which outlines many prominent examples of racism in the criminal justice system. According to the infographic, African Americans represent 37.1 percent of the American prison population, yet makeup only 12.6 percent of the country’s citizens. Racism is arguably even more noticeable among prisoners on death row, as blacks represent 43 percent of that population. Furthermore, African Americans who have killed white people were sentenced to death 22 times more often than a white person convicted of killing a black person.

Statistics also show a growing trend in the proportion of blacks in the overall prison population. This holds true for men, women, adults and children, as prisoner totals have gone up dramatically since 1960. Not only are blacks more likely to be incarcerated during their lifetime, they are also more likely to receive higher bail totals, longer prison sentences, get stopped by law enforcement officers in public, and get convicted by all-white juries.

The infographic also indicates how the “War on Drugs” has adversely affected the black community in America. Although blacks represent just over 12 percent of the population, they constitute 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses, and as many as 58 percent of the people in state prisons for such crimes. According to The Sentencing Project the average drug related sentence for African Americans is almost the same as the average violent crime sentence for a whites. This indicates that not only are black people more likely to be convicted of a crime, but are also more likely to serve more jail time than a white person would be for the same crime.

Finally, some statistics indicate that there is hope for the future, as the incarceration rate for both black male and females has started to decrease in recent years. These rates remain well above those of white males and females, but these trends may indicate that the gap is starting to close. However, there is a long way to go before the American prison system is equitable, and much needs to be done to combat the extensive history of injustice within the United States. Creating awareness and making reforms in the criminal justice system are an important part of addressing many of the existing issues.

[NPR] [The Color of Corporate Corrections]

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The old saying “crime pays” has typically been used to explain organized crime, but few people consider organizations on the other side of the law, where private prisons profit for every additional prisoner housed in their facilities. These companies have been developing a significant amount of political clout recently, and their influence on state and local governments only continues to grow.

Some quick facts about prisons in the United States:

• In 2010, there was an estimated 2,266,832 prisoners in the United States.

• There were 130,950 prisoners in private correctional facilities in 2011, which is more than 12 percent of total prisoners in the U.S.

• The private prison population has almost doubled since 1999.

• The U.S. incarceration rate (prisoners per 100,000 U.S. citizens) has risen from 131 in 1978 to 492 in 2012.

• The United States has the largest amount of prisoners in the world, in both total number and percentage of its population. [NY Times]

Prison privatization in the United States began in the 1980s when massive growth in prison populations forced many states to find new solutions for housing their criminals. This trend has picked up again in recent years, as budgetary constraints have caused local governments to pursue methods of cutting costs in public detention facilities. Although the financial benefits of privatized prisons has been called into question, states continue to agree to large contracts with the major private corrections companies.

The United States houses 16.4 percent of its federal prisoners and 6.8 percent of its state prisoners in privately owned correctional facilities. A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) determined that there has been a 700 percent increase in the U.S. prison population from 1970 to 2005, an increase that far exceeds the population and crime rate changes during the same period. The effects of the prison population growth has primarily been reflected in private correctional facilities, as their increase in prisoners has dramatically outpaced those in public facilities.

The bottom line is: people are being sent to jail more frequently than ever before, and the private prison industry is experiencing significant benefits as a result.

The most shocking detail about the recent prison privatization trend has been the presence of “occupancy guarantees” in contracts made between state governments and prison contracting companies. Many of these guarantees require states to maintain 90 to even 100 percent occupancy rates in private facilities. Not only can such guarantees cost states money when requirements are not met, but it may even prevent sentencing reform, as local governments now have an interest in keeping their prisons full.

Click here to see the Huffington Post’s map detailing the locations of prisons that have occupancy rate guarantees of 90 percent and above.

A recent example of occupancy guarantees’ negative financial consequences occurred in Colorado. In this case, the state managed to close five different prisons since 2009 because of its declining crime rate, but as a result Colorado was forced to move over 3,000 prisoners from public prisons to private ones in order to fulfill its contractual obligations.  An article in the Washington Post notes that doing so cost the state nearly $2 million in 2013 compared to what the use of public correctional facilities would have cost.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group are the two largest private prison companies in the United States. CCA, the largest company in the industry, posted revenue numbers totaling at $1.75 billion in 2012 alone, according to the companies’ most recent SEC filing. The private prison industry is extremely large, and as CCA’s board of trustees states in its annual letter to investors, “our revenue is primarily from government entities at the federal, state, and local level”. Prison expenses are a significant part of most states’ budgets; according to a survey of 40 states conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice, the average cost per inmate was $31,286, and total expenses added up to almost $39 billion each year, among the states who participated.

The private prison lobbying groups have also been gaining a significant amount of political influence, as politicians have started to rely on campaign donations from the industry. According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute, the three major methods that the prison lobbying groups have employed are direct campaign funding, lobbying, and the formation of relationships with legislators.

Corrections Corporation of America was co-founded by three men in Tennessee, one of whom was Tom Beasley, who prior to starting the company was the head of the State Republican Party in the same state. CCA has had close ties with politics from its inception, and because nearly all of its business is done with the government, therefore, it was able to penetrate the market with ease.

Both the GEO Group and CCA have their own political action committees (PACs), which they have been employed to lobby for bills and donate to congressmen with favorable policy views. To avoid attention, most of the companies lobbying efforts are spent on campaign donations, rather than specific bills and ballot measures. However, the connections that the company has formed provides unique political power. According to an article in the Tulsa World, CCA’s spokesman Steve Owen stated that it has historically been company policy to not lobby or advocate for any policy that would affect the “basis or duration of an individual’s detention or incarceration”. Yet, a lot of gray area remains regarding what constitutes supporting a policy or its policymaker.

Two notable political issues where the private prison industry has profited the most are the war on drugs and the immigration debate. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 52.1 percent of federal prisoners and 17.4 percent of state prisoners have been imprisoned due to drug related offenses. Because drug crimes contribute to a very large proportion of U.S. prisoners, they have been able to keep the demand for correctional facilities high.

Private prisons have also taken on a greater role in housing illegal immigrants in their facilities, as more and more people are being detained each year. According to the AP, there are some 400,000 illegal immigrants in US prisons each year, which cost Americans nearly $2 billion in 2012 alone. Like the war on drugs, immigration detainment has had significant effects on maintaining and increasing the american prison populations, which statistics show have unevenly benefitted private prisons in recent years.

Private prisons have been dramatically increasing their share of the United States prison population in recent years. Budgetary pressures and corporate lobbying has placed pressure on public officials at the federal, state, and local levels to pursue new means of imprisonment. The CCA and the GEO Group have gained an unprecedented amount of political influence, leading to the creation of what some have referred to as the “Prison Industrial Complex”. Their influence continues to grow as incarceration rates remain high and very little has been done to control their ability to develop relationships with politicians. Arguably, the most startling product of this political allegiance has been the adoption of contracts with occupancy guarantees, which have costed states large amounts of money that many of them cannot afford. As the cost effectiveness of private prisons continues to be debated, the question remains: why are representatives from every level of government pursuing privatization?

—

Featured image courtesy of [Kate Ter Haar via Flickr]

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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