I read the news with absolute glee, after an investigation the Justice department have ordered the beginning of the end for private prisons for their inmates.

They concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective than government run prisons!

We all know this!

So, instructions have been given to refuse contact renewal or greatly reduce the scope of the contract, pushing towards a complete end to their use.

AMAZING NEWS RIGHT? Well…. yes, it’s good but maybe not quite what you think!

This directive only actually affects around 22,000 inmates held in 13 privately run facilities! A tiny fraction of the country’s prisoners.

Huh?

Well, the Washington Post reported:

While experts said the directive is significant, privately run federal prisons house only a fraction of the overall population of inmates. The vast majority of the incarcerated in America are housed in state prisons — rather than federal ones — and Yates’ memo does not apply to any of those, even the ones that are privately run. Nor does it apply to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Marshals Service detainees, who are technically in the federal system but not under the purview of the federal Bureau of Prisons.

The directive is instead limited to the 13 privately run facilities, housing a little more than 22,000 inmates, in the federal Bureau of Prisons system. The facilities were meant mainly to house inmates who are mostly low security, “criminal alien” men with 90 months or less time remaining on their sentences, according to a recent Department of Justice Inspector General report. Yates said the Justice Department would review the contracts for those facilities as they come up for renewal, as all will do in the next five years. She said they would then be reduced or allowed to expire, though none would be terminated prematurely.

Oh! That makes sense now, basically, this is nothing, the State prisons are actually the one’s running privately!

A step in the right direction but certainly not the news I had hoped when I stumbled across it.

Read more here: http://wapo.st/2b3vJQG