President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday to phase out the Department of Justice’s use of private prisons. The order began under the Obama administration and comes from an effort to address racial inequality and to make good on a promise to Black Americans, who helped Biden win the presidential election.
According to an NBC report, the order that was stopped by the Trump administration in 2017 now asks the Justice Department to decline to renew contracts with privately-operated, for-profit prisons.
John Pfaff, a Fordham University School of Law professor, stated, “When it comes to private prisons, the impact of this order is going to be slight to none. This is not about shrinking the footprint of the federal prison system, it’s just about transferring people to public facilities. Biden is telling an executive agency under his control what kind of contracts they can enter, that’s a core executive function of Biden’s.” Pfaff went on to comment that states can still choose “who to write contracts with. In practice, this will end up being more symbolic and will have little impact on any issue of racial justice and the system. The symbolism carries the very real risk of making us blind to the nearly identical incentives of the public prison sector, and the public side is so much vaster in scope.”
State Auditor Jim Zeigler stated the Biden order will not block a plan by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to contract with private firms to build three super prisons. The state plans to lease the prisons from these private firms for 30 years.
Alabama has in recent months been looking into ways to alleviate prison overcrowding and other dangers. According to an NPR report, in December, Alabama was sued by the Justice Department, alleging dangerous and unconstitutional conditions in the state’s prisons. Ivey released her plan to build the super prisons soon after.
Zeigler stated, “The Biden order does not apply to the Ivey plan for two reasons. First, the order applies only to federal prisons and federal contracts with prisons. Second, the Ivey plan is not for privately-run prisons but for private construction, private ownership, and state leasing of the private prisons. The state Department of Corrections would run the prisons.” In a recent opinion piece, Zeigler called for an independent management audit of Alabama’s Department of Corrections.
The state would pay $88 million in rent for 30 years – a total of $2.6 billion. Zeigler says, “At the end of 30 years, the state would own equity in the prisons of zero. State taxpayers would have to start over and pay for the prisons a second time.”
A 2016 Federal Bureau of Prisons report found that private prisons see “high rates of assault, use of force incidents and lockdowns. Biden stated that the order was “the first step to stop corporations from profiting off of incarceration that is less humane and less safe.”
Ivey is expected to sign contracts with the private prison construction firms within days.
