US territory announced last year it would move 3,200 inmates but now concedes contract for transfers hasn’t been signed

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Puerto Rico’s controversial plan to send thousands of inmates to a private prison on the US mainland has been in effect abandoned, the Guardian has learned.

'This is human trafficking': After Maria, Puerto Rico to move 3,200 inmates to Arizona Read more

The US territory announced last year it intended to move 3,200 inmates, a third of its incarcerated population, to a private prison in Eloy, Arizona, in an attempt to save tens of millions of dollars as part of sweeping austerity measures.

But now the government concedes it has yet to sign a contract for the transfers and has dramatically reduced the number of inmates it is aiming to move offshore.

The plan met with forceful criticism by civil rights advocates, who argued it would separate families, interfere with inmate rehabilitation and lead to forced transfers.

In August 2018, the Guardian was granted extensive access to Puerto Rico’s prison system and identified a series of flaws in the plan, including failures to properly inform inmates of the transfers, significant resistance from the island’s most powerful prison gang, Asociación Ñeta, and a lack of clarity on a series of procedural issues.

The Puerto Rican government had been due to sign a contract with the private prison operator CoreCivic that month, but the move was delayed.

In October 2018 reports indicated that CoreCivic and the Puerto Rican government had agreed a new deal, this time to transfer inmates to a private prison in Tutwiler, Mississippi. But no inmates have been transferred there, as the government is yet to sign a contract with the private prison provider.

The government is now attempting to negotiate a deal to transfer just 200 inmates to Mississippi, the Puerto Rico corrections under secretary, Ulrich Jiménez, said on Friday.

But Jiménez said the plan had yet to be approved by Puerto Rico’s oversight board, Promesa, which controls the island’s economic affairs and manages its multibillion dollar debt repayments.

“We are hoping they [Promesa] will approve it in the next day or so,” Jimenéz told the Guardian.

CoreCivic confirmed that no Puerto Rican inmates had been transferred to any of its facilities. It did not respond to further questions.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Puerto Rico had branded the plan “state-sponsored human trafficking” and promised to sue the Puerto Rican government if the transfers went through. The government claimed all inmates moved to the US would leave voluntarily.

William Ramírez, executive director of the ACLU of Puerto Rico, said the abandonment of the plan was “a realization that they don’t know how to proceed because it’s more complex than they thought”.

“They just didn’t have the consent of all the people they believed they had,” Ramírez said.