It appears that though the Department of Justice told the public it would be drastically reducing and then eliminating the widespread practice of private prisons, thanks to Donald Trump’s presidential win, that promise is now null and void.
It was just a few short months ago that the Department of Justice announced, albeit reluctantly, that they would soon be ending the private prison industry. Their decision was hailed as it was bringing to a close the commodification of human crime and incarceration.
Their decision came from a revealing report which discovered that private prisons were both less safe and less effective than government-ran facilities.
The report revealed that privately run prisons were far more violent than public prisons. Both inmates and correctional officers committed more violent acts, while contraband and other illegal activities raged on far more often in privately ran facilities.
According to Quartz, the DOJ has already lapsed on the promises they made concerning private prisons in the wake of an incoming Trump presidency.
“Last week, CoreCivic (CCA), one of the country’s two largest prison operators, announced that the BOP had renewed its contract for two years to run the McRae Correctional Facility in Georgia. According to the company, the new agreement was barely changed, with only an 8% reduction in inmate beds. This despite an August memo from the deputy attorney general Sally Yates that stated that the Department of Justice, which oversees BOP, would either nix the contracts, or “substantially” reduce them when they came up for renewal.”
That particular facility is one that has been the subject of scrutiny by the ACLU and other human rights organizations which requested that it be shut down amid rumors of inhumane treatment. So rather than shuttering the dangerous facility, the DoJ is content to extend its contract with a minor reduction in capacity. Progress?
This is another example of the complete moral depravity in our Department of Justice.
The truth is that any bit of incremental change that President Obama advocated for in his eight years as president are on their way to being fully reversed. Anything that’s not nailed down in the constitution or law-books is liable to be tossed out.
Welcome, once again, to Trump’s America.
