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Attorney General Sessions Directs Justice Department to Use Private Prisons, Reversing Obama Administration Order
In a reversal of an Obama-era order to phase out the use of private prisons, Attorney General Sessions issued a brief memo directing "the Bureau to reutrn to its previous approach."
The Justice Department will once again use private prisons to house federal inmates, reversing an Obama-era directive to stop using the facilities, which officials had then deemed less safe and less effective than those run by the government...
“The memorandum changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system,” Sessions wrote.
While in practice this does not have a huge impact, as most of America's prison population is in state prisons and Obama's order did not impact immigration facilities, Obama's Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote last August that the privately run prisons were more dangerous, to both inmates and staff.
The idea that incarceration could be a money making operation dates back to Reconstruction, when former plantations and budding southern industry gave former slaves long sentences for all varities of crimes, a practice which some would argue continues to this day in a modified form. A move away from private prisons at all levels of the penal system is an important step toward reforming the prison system toward a more effective one reducing recidivism, rather than a primarily punitive system that we have today.
The GEO Group, one of the largest companies profiting off the incarceration of our fellow citizens, recently hired former Sessions aides David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux as lobbyiest "on federal government use of contract correctional facilities." Blatent corruption right before our eyes.
ACTION: A consortium of organizations founded a group called Prison Divestment Movement, "working to divest from criminalization and incarceration." Read up on their campaign, follow them on Twitter (@PrisonDivest). Also, check out The Sentencing Project, a group working on many facets of criminal justice reform.
For more on private prisons in America: