Justice Department announces the end of private prisons

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published 18 August 2016

The Justice Department announced Thursday that it will begin phasing out the government's use of private prisons. The decision arrived shortly after a report released by the Justice Department's Inspector General last week concluded that private prisons don't offer the same quality of correctional services and security as government prisons, and they also "do not save substantially on costs." The findings compound years of reporting on private prisons' problems, including "higher rates of assaults" and lack of medical care, The Washington Post reported.

The closure of the 13 private facilities currently in use will happen over the next five years, as each facility's contract comes up for renewal; existing contracts will not be prematurely ended. As of December 2015, an estimated 22,660 federal inmates — about 12 percent of the Bureau of Prisons inmate population — were being held in private prisons.