Feds to phase out private prison use; NEOCC’s fate unclear

Staff/wire report

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration announced Thursday it will phase out its use of some private prisons, affecting thousands of federal inmates and immediately sending shares of the two publicly traded prison operators plunging.

In a memo to the Bureau of Prisons, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told it to start reducing “and ultimately ending” the Justice Department’s use of private prisons. The announcement follows a recent DOJ audit that found that the private facilities have more safety and security problems than government-run ones.

What the decision means for the fate of the private prison in Youngstown is unclear.

Steven Owen, managing director of communications for the Nashville-Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America, did not respond concerning the DOJ decision’s impact on CCA’s Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, 2240 Hubbard Road.

When the U.S. Bureau of Prisons nonrenewed its contract to house some 1,400 inmates at NEOCC as of May 31, 2015, that left only about 580 U.S. Marshals Service inmates there and resulted in the layoff of 103 NEOCC employees.

The U.S. Marshals Service contract to house inmates at NEOCC expires Dec. 31, 2018. The U.S. Marshals Service is part of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Although Owens didn’t address the fate of NEOCC, Jonathan Burns, CCA’s senior manager of public affairs, decried what he said in a prepared statement were flaws in the Inspector General’s report that buttressed DOJ’s decision.

“The findings simply don’t match up to the numerous independent studies that show our facilities to be equal or better with regard to safety and quality, or the excellent feedback we get from our partners at all levels of government,” Burns said.

Immigration and human-rights advocates have long complained about the conditions in privately run prisons.

Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, a national civil rights organization, called DOJ’s Thursday announcement “a step in the right direction,” but added that: “Much more action is needed to scrub private prisons from our criminal justice system.”

The Obama administration says the declining federal prison population justifies the decision to eventually close privately run prisons. The federal prison population – now at about 193,000 – has been dropping due to changes in federal sentencing policies over the past three years.

The policy change does not cover private prisons used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which hold up to 34,000 immigrants awaiting deportation.

“Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities,” Yates wrote in a memo to the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. As private prison contracts come to an end, the bureau is not to renew the contract or it should at least “substantially” reduce its scope, Yates wrote. She did not specify a timeline for when all federal inmates would be in government-owned facilities.

The private prisons on the chopping block are operated by three private companies – Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group Inc., and Management and Training Corp. After the announcement Thursday, Corrections Corp. stock dropped $13.22, or 48.6 percent, to $14 and Geo Group tumbled $13.80, or 42.7 percent, to $18.49. Both companies get about half their revenue from the federal government.