The Justice Department’s decision to begin phasing out the use of private prisons is at once a milestone in criminal justice reform and an acknowledgment that the benefits of privatizing government functions were greatly oversold.

In a memo announcing the decision Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates wrote, “Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown they compare poorly to our own (Federal Bureau of Prisons) facilities. They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.”

The decision helps advance prison reform efforts. But problems remain:

— The Bureau of Prisons houses about 12 percent of its 22,100 inmates in 13 so-called “contract prisons.” But the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have roughly double that number of inmates locked up in private facilities, usually for relatively short periods.

The marshal’s service handles prisoners awaiting trial while ICE deals with those suspected of immigration violations. Those agencies also should begin looking for better alternatives.

— State departments of corrections use private prisons to house about 7 percent of the 1.4 million inmates in state facilities. There are more than 130 private prisons in operation, and studies have found conditions in them vary between functional and abysmal.

Private prisons were a product of the Reagan-era argument that the free market could perform basic government functions more efficiently than government itself. Outsourcing and public-private partnerships became a craze for everything from prisons to war-zone logistics. In the 1990s came “three strikes” and “mandatory minimum” sentencing laws that caused prison populations to surge.

Lawmakers in western and southern states in particular decided that private prisons should be part of the solution. Private prison companies like Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group made big contributions to key lawmakers’ campaigns, and the industry boomed.

Missouri and Illinois bucked this trend. Illinois, whose Legislature is dominated by public sector unions, passed a law against private prisons. Two private prisons were built in Missouri, both in the northwest part of the state, but neither housed Missouri inmates — only transfer prisoners from out of state.

Both are now closed. The fundamental problem with private prisons is that you can’t provide humane, effective corrections programs when the bottom line is the dominant business concern.

Sentencing reform is cutting into the need for these operations by reducing prison populations. The same conservative lawmakers who once argued for private prisons now realize that drug courts and strict community supervision are far cheaper and more effective than prison, public or private.

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(c) 2016 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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