WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions has jettisoned an Obama administration order to phase out the use of private prisons to hold federal inmates.
The new order reverses one issued by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in August that sought to eliminate the department’s use of private for-profit prisons, which hold slightly more than 10 percent of the current prison population.
The Obama administration order “changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system,” Sessions wrote Thursday.
Civil rights and prisoner rights groups decried the Sessions’ decision, saying private prisons are not as cost-effective or as safe as government-run facilities, citing numerous abuses in the past.
The Bureau of Prisons houses about 21,000 of its 190,000 inmates in a dozen private prisons.
“Attorney General Sessions has shown that he is not taking the mass incarceration crisis seriously,” said Wade Henderson, who heads the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“Continuing to rely on private prisons for federal inmates is neither humane nor budget-conscious,” Henderson added. “We need a justice system that can work better for all people.”
Yates’ order did not affect facilities used to detain people in the country illegally.
The use of private prisons is expected to surge under President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on illegal immigration.
Trump has signed an executive order calling for expansion of immigrant detention facilities and authorized the use of private contractors “to construct, operate, or control facilities.”
Stocks in private prison companies have jumped since Trump won, and they continued their rise on news of Sessions’ order.
