FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – August 18, 2016
CONTACT: ACLU of Florida Media Office, media@aclufl.org, (786) 363-2737
TALLAHASSEE, FL – The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced today that it is ordering the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to begin phasing out the use of private prisons.
ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon had this statement on the DOJ’s decision.
“The U.S. Department of Justice, finding that private prisons are both less safe and less effective than those run by the government, has announced plans to end its use of private prisons.
“It is time for Florida to follow suit and end its experiment with for-profit prisons as well.
“The DOJ detailed alarming abuses inside private prisons, documenting that they are causing preventable deaths – from untreated cancer, untreated HIV, suicide, and heart attacks and seizures. Private prisons cut costs by failing to hire proper medical staff, throwing new prisoners into solitary for lack of space, and delaying transferring prisoners in need of care to hospitals.
“In Florida, approximately 10% of the state’s prison population has been placed in seven privatized prison facilities. All of its juvenile detention facilities are run by these same for-profit companies that are endangering lives while delivering a worse investment of taxpayer money.
“One such company, the GEO Group, was the subject of a blistering ruling by a federal judge in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the SPLC over inhumane conditions and violence at a juvenile facility in Mississippi. The judge called the GEO prison a ‘cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions ‘and ‘a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.’
“Corrections for both adults and juveniles in Florida need serious reforms. The DOJ’s findings should prompt our state’s officials to cease shoveling taxpayer money at the failed experiment of mass-incarceration-for-profit.”
A statement on the DOJ’s decision from David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, is avaibale here: https://www.aclu.org/news/justice-department-tells-bureau-prisons-phase-out-private-prisons
The DOJ memo can be found here: https://www.aclu.org/letter/doj-memo-reducing-use-private-prisons
