WASHINGTON: Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled Thursday his strong support for the federal government’s continued use of private prisons, reversing an Obama administration directive to phase out their use. Stock prices of major private prison companies rose at the news.
Sessions issued a memo replacing one issued in August by Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general at the time. That memo, which followed a harshly critical government audit of privately run prisons, directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin reducing and ultimately end its reliance on contract facilities
But Sessions, in his memo, said Yates’ directive went against longstanding policy and practice and “impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”
Private prisons hold about 12 percent of the total federal prison population of 190,000, the Justice Department has said.