U.S. has miles to go in ending private prisons
The U.S. Department of Justice announced in August that it will phase out its use of private prisons. The decision was widely celebrated as a move away from exploitative and dangerous for-profit facilities. Rights groups have for years pressured the U.S. government to halt the growing trend of prison privatization.
Legal advocates say the decision is just one step in the right direction, however. There is still a long way to go to end the use of private prisons in the U.S.
For starters, the announcement will apply to just a fraction of people incarcerated in the U.S. The DOJ only has authority over federal prisons, while the vast majority of prisoners in the U.S. are in state facilities. The department can provide informal guidance to states, but its decision to move away from private prisons is not binding for individual states.
Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not have jurisdiction over the detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where privatization is increasingly common. Private prison companies oversee roughly three-fourths (73 percent) of the roughly 34,000 people detained in facilities run by ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Salon spoke with Carl Takei, a staff attorney at the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, who focuses on the U.S. criminal justice system. He applauded the decision, but noted that there is still a lot of work to be done.
“I think this is a turning point,” he reflected. Takei pointed out that, before the DOJ’s announcement, ICE and state correctional agencies had pointed to the Bureau of Prisons to justify using private prisons.