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)

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."

About 19 percent of federal prisoners and 7 percent of state prisoners were held in private facilities at the end of 2013, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

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.

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Julie Kliegman

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.