Penitentiary security

Will Homeland Security Continue to Use Private Prison Companies?

The Justice Department's surprise announcement Thursday that it will phase out its contracts with private prison companies sent shockwaves through the criminal justice world and private prison industry, but the bigger question is whether the decision will pressure the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to sever its considerably larger ties with private contractors as well.

As I noted yesterday, the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons contracts with private companies to run 13 prisons, which house about 12 percent—or 22,000 inmates—of the federal prison population, most of them foreign nationals. But private prison contractors currently run 46 U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigrant detention centers, housing about 70 percent—about 24,000 people a day on average—of the detainees held by ICE.