Attorney General indicates reverse course on using private prisons

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions has issued a memo on Thursday reversing one made by his predecessor, Sally Yates, concerning the private prison system.

In August, Yates issued a memo stating that the Department of Justice would scale back its reliance on private prisons, indicating that private prisons were not as well run as those run by the Bureau of Prisons. According to Yates’ memo, the Department of Justice should seek to reduce its reliance on private prisons by either declining to renew contracts as they came up or making other moves to “substantially reduce its scope.”

In fact, a report in 2016 issued by the Inspector General indicate that prisons run by the Department of Justice were safer and more secure than those run by private organizations.

However, Sessions’ memo goes in the entirely opposite direction, indicating that Yates’ policy “impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”

After the memo was issued, CoreCivic, a private prison company, issued a statement in support of the new direction, saying that Sessions’ action “validates our position that the Department’s previous direction was not reflective of the high quality services we have provided to the federal government for decades.”