{"id":181255,"date":"2016-08-18T19:49:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T00:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/08\/18\/a-good-start-12\/"},"modified":"2016-08-18T19:49:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T00:49:00","slug":"a-good-start-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/08\/18\/a-good-start-12\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Justice has announced that it will be ending its use of private prisons<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.<\/span>

<\/span> Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or \u201csubstantially reduce\u201d the contracts\u2019 scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is \u201creducing \u2014 and ultimately ending \u2014 our use of privately operated prisons.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cThey 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\u2019s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,\u201d Yates wrote.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that this only applies to federal prisons run by the DoJ, not state and local prisons or immigrant detention facilities maintained by the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

As to whether this policy will move quickly enough, my guess is that we’ll have to wait for the next President.
Memo after the break.
<\/a>