Biden’s Policy on Private Prisons Produced Higher Costs, Less Control: DOJ Inspector General Report

The Davis Correctional Facility, which is a privately run prison in Holdenville about 70 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, Okla., in April 2022. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

A Biden administration policy to end federal contracts with private prisons is having the opposite of its intended effect, according to a new report from the office of Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Signed during President Joe Biden’s first week in office on Jan. 26, 2021, the executive order on “Reforming Our Incarceration System to Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities” directs the attorney general to cease renewals of DOJ contracts with private prisons with the purported purpose of lowering costs and incarceration levels and facilitating better conditions for detainees.

But according to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the order prompted complaints after one case in which the U.S. Marshals Service’s (USMS) compliance with the order resulted in “no substantive change” to the housing of detainees at a private facility while also increasing the costs of their detention “by as much as $500,000 per month,” or $6 million per year.

“To replace the USMS’s expiring contract with a private contractor to house federal pretrial detainees at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center (NEOCC), the USMS entered into an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) with a local government entity, which then contracted with the same contractor, to continue to house the detainees at the same facility,” states the report (pdf), which the OIG released on March 22.

Noting that alternative arrangements presented logistical challenges for USMS and legal issues for the detainees, the report reveals that the IGA not only increased costs but also decreased USMS’ operational control over the facility.

Questions Over White House Approval

According to the report, the OIG was informed by USMS and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) that the White House Counsel’s Office approved the use of an IGA to replace the expiring contract. Yet, no evidence of that approval could be produced.

“While we have no reason to doubt such approval, we found no documentation of the approval in the materials provided to us, and we were told that no such documentation existed,” the report states.

Additionally, the OIG could not find evidence that the White House had been informed of the resulting increase in costs or reduction of USMS control of the facility, despite ODAG’s assertion that those findings had been relayed.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.

Recommendations

Since March 2022, no other IGAs have been entered into by USMS. However, four other contracts with private detention facilities have expired since the executive order was issued, and an additional four are still ongoing, not set to expire before September 2023.

Laying out its recommendations for handling future contract expirations, the OIG asserted: “The Department should continue to assess available options for complying with the Executive Order and ensure that the details of each option are fully considered so as to avoid wasteful spending and maintain adequate USMS control over conditions of confinement.

“Additionally, consistent with government records laws and requirements, ODAG and the USMS should maintain documentation of any decisions made regarding the appropriate method for housing detainees, which should describe the rationale for those decisions.”