Last week, the Department of Justice released an inspector general’s report on private prisons that found for-profit detention centers to be substantially more dangerous for both the inmates and for the correctional officers. In response to those findings, the Obama Administration is moving to stop keeping federal detainees in private prisons altogether within the next five years. President Obama has already overseen a fifty percent reduction in the use of federal private prisons, which are run by three corporations and cost over $600 million tax dollars annually.

The 13 privately run facilities will not close overnight. Yates said the Justice Department would not terminate existing contracts but instead review those that come up for renewal. She said all of the contracts would come up for renewal over the next five years…. by May 1, 2017, the total private prison population would stand at less than 14,200 inmates.