Comment on Justice Department reverses order to phase out private prisons

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.