US President-elect Joe Biden has signed a decree that will end the use of private prisons to punish criminals. Bloomberg reports.
Biden instructed the head of the Ministry of Justice not to renew contracts with operators of private detention centers. “This is the first step to ensure that corporations do not profit from a conclusion that is less humane and less secure,” the American leader said. However, the order does not apply to USCIS detention centers, which also enter into contracts with private prison operators.
Two of the largest companies in the industry were under attack: GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic Inc. At the same time, the agency notes that the shares of these operators have significantly risen in price under the past President Donald Trump. He in 2016 lifted the moratorium of his predecessor Barack Obama on such contracts in the penitentiary system. Since then, companies have sought to abandon federal contracts by signing state-level agreements to build and operate prisons.
The GEO Group responded by saying that, with few exceptions, its prisons contain foreign criminals convicted of crimes at the federal level. In this way, the company “allows government agencies to take care of US citizens without significant overcrowding problems.”
At the end of 2019, there were about 116,000 inmates held in private prisons in the United States at the end of 2019, according to the Statistical Office of Justice, representing approximately 7 percent of all state criminals and 16 percent of all federal inmates.
