The Department of Justice recently announced that it will cease contracting with private prisons. The decision was hailed as a major step in shrinking the country’s massive prison industrial complex.
But we can’t celebrate just yet. The Justice Department’s change in policy will actually only affect 13 prisons.
That’s how many private prisons the Justice Department currently has contracts with. Those 13 prisons hold only 22,000 inmates, a tiny fraction of the 2.3 million people currently in prison in the United States.
How Many People Are In Private Prisons?
As of December of 2010, there were 128,195 state and federal prisoners in private prisons. Assuming that there is a similar number of people in private prisons today, the Justice Department’s decision will only affect about 17 percent of people currently in private prisons.
The number of people affected is low for two reasons. First, the Department of Justice has no control over contracts between states and private prisons. Second, the Department of Homeland security actually has more contracts with private prisons than the Justice Department.
The Department of Homeland Security relies on private corporations to keep immigrants in detention centers before deporting them. The centers might not be called “prisons,” but they have all the characteristics of prisons.
There are currently about 33,000 people in immigration detention centers, and about 62 percent of those are people are in a private detention center.
The Department of Homeland Security has no plans to end its contracts with private prisons.
How Many People Are In Prison In The Country?
The Department of Justice’s decision affects less than one percent of the entire prison population in the United States. The U.S. prison population of 2.3 million comprises about one quarter of all the prisoners in the world.
Meanwhile, the United States makes up only five percent of the global population.
About 1 in 5 United States prisoners is incarcerated for a drug-related crime. Black people make up about 40 percent of the prison population, while only making up 13 percent of the country’s population.
There is evidence that the country’s system of mass incarceration causes more crime than it prevents.
What Is The Solution?
Perhaps states will follow the Justice Department’s lead and end their contracts with private prisons. The sharp decline for two of the largest prison stocks indicates that investors fear private correctional facilities are going to meet their demise very soon.
But even if private prisons were abolished in the United States, we would still have a prison population of over two million. The Department of Justice needs to look carefully at sentencing policies which imprison people for non-violent offenses and disproportionately affect people of color.
Check out this video of staggering statistics about the United States prison population:
Featured Image: miss_millions Via Flickr/CC By 2.0.
