The United States has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners totaling up to about 2.4 million. This system of mass incarceration intersects almost every social and economic issue that exists with a disproportionate number of racial minorities imprisoned for crimes committed at similar rates, violence against queer people and especially queer people of color in prisons and the exploitation of prisoners by a system designed to profit off of it all. This is why the Department of Justice’s announcement to end its use of privately operated prisons matters even if only slightly. Read the official memo here.
Regardless of the fact that the declaration by the DOJ effects 13 prisons and only moves federal prisoners to different locations, it’s still something to be cautiously hopeful about. In the face of a system that profits off of incarceration, a declaration by the United States Federal Government that there ought to be a baseline of safety, security, and rights that people in prison have is pretty radical. A stance against the terrible conditions so many endure in private prisons is an important first step in the fight to secure the rights of the 2.4 million incarcerated people throughout the United States. More specifically, a stance against profiting from incarceration is even more important especially when you consider the disproportionate number of minorities in prison forced to work for essentially nothing. Additionally, the focus in the memo on the quality of rehabilitation and reducing recidivism is an important challenge to the current models of establishing a continuous flow of workers who are released from private prisons only to return to their workforces.
Although the announcement is something to be hopeful about, the actual policy forwarded within the DOJ memo does very little to address the structural problems the memo focuses on. The Federal Bureau of Prisons consists of less than 200,000 prisoners, and private prisons contain about 22,660 of those inmates. The memo does nothing the change the conditions and use of halfway houses and immigration control centers whose conditions are just as bad if not worse. And by no means do I want to argue that the conditions in Federal prisons are anywhere near perfect. The decision also does nothing to address the effects of mass incarceration and seems to do little more than place the power to profit from incarceration in the government's hands rather than corporations.
However, in a world of political lobbying, lockdown, and general laziness, any change is something. A stance against a system that profits off of suffering is a good start, no matter how small. All we can do at this point is hope that the goals outlined in the memo get some serious consideration and that the DOJ follows through on their promises.
