Laurie Roberts

opinion columnist

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced plans to stop using private prisons, declaring them less safe than government-run prisons and no cheaper to operate.

“They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said, in announcing that the feds are “reducing – and ultimately ending – our use of privately operated prisons."

“The rehabilitative services that the Bureau provides, such as educational programs and job training, have proved difficult to replicate and outsource – and these services are essential in reducing recidivism and improving public safety.”

The announcement, first reported in the Washington Post, comes a week after the inspector general released a report concluding that private prisons have more security issues than those run by the federal prisons of prisons.

Among those findings: “The contract prisons confiscated eight times as many contraband cell phones annually on average as the BOP institutions. Contract prisons also had higher rates of assaults, both by inmates on other inmates and by inmates on staff,” the report says.

Meanwhile, here in Arizona, our leaders continue their love affair with private prisons. They’ve spent a couple hundred million dollars just in the last two years to build yet another private prison. Meanwhile, Gov. Doug Ducey recently gave a $2.5 million state subsidy to the GEO Group, which operates the private prison near Kingman and coincidentally, I’m sure, is a campaign contributor.

Private prisons have long been a sacred cow at the state Capitol. Well-connected lobbyists spread around campaign cash to ensure that their interests are paramount and their prisons are full – or if not, they’re paid as if they are full anyway.

Never mind that state Department of Corrections studies for years showed it costs more to incarcerate inmates in privately run medium-security prisons than in similar state-run prisons. In 2012, the Legislature decisively responded to those DOC studies. Our leaders outlawed future cost-comparison studies, claiming they were bogus.

Since then, they've continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars opening more private prisons, contending that they save the state money.

How strange that both DOC and now, the Justice Department have concluded precisely the opposite.