Bernie Sanders wants to abolish private prisons within 3 years

A visitor walks down the hallway of a former prison in Berlin.

(Image credit: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)

published 17 September 2015

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will unveil a plan Thursday to stop private companies from running federal, state, and local prisons, The Washington Post reports. Under Sanders' proposed Justice is Not for Sale Act, governments would have three years to end private ownership of jails and prisons, which he argued have "perverse incentives."

"It runs counter to the best interests of our country," the Democratic presidential candidate told the Post. "You should not be making a profit off of putting people in prison."

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Sanders' bill will also propose reinstating the federal parole system and removing a congressional mandate requiring Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to hold at least 34,000 detainees per day.

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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.