President Biden Signs Executive Order to End DOJ Partnerships With Private Prisons
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to end its reliance on private prisons.
Biden explained, “to decrease incarceration levels, we must reduce profit-based incentives to incarcerate by phasing out the federal government’s reliance on privately operated criminal detention facilities,” he wrote in the order. As The Hill notes, it directs the DOJ not to renew any of the contracts with private prisons that house federal inmates, roughly 14,000 out of the 2 million people incarcerated in America.
The executive order which was signed along with three others is part of an effort to address racial inequality. The move will effectively revert the Justice Department to the same posture it held at the end of the Obama administration.
“I ran for president because I believe we’re in a battle for the soul of this nation. And the simple truth is, our soul will be troubled as long as systemic racism is allowed to persist,” Biden said before the orders were signed. “I firmly believe the nation is ready to change, but government has to change as well” He added, “This is a first step to stop corporations from profiting off of incarceration,” Mr. Biden said.
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