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Seth Freed Wessler is an independent journalist and senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. He is the recipient of a 2014-15 Soros Justice Media Fellowship.
Statues celebrating Confederates and conquistadors keep old myths alive, with stories of “benevolent slave owners,” heroic colonizers and enslaved people “contented with their lot.”
For decades, the U.S. has run private “shadow prisons” for immigrants convicted of federal crimes. Biden has ordered the government to wind down those contracts.
In a historic rebuke of the private prison industry, the U.S. Department of Justice today announced plans to eliminate the use of private prisons to incarcerate federal inmates.
The Bureau of Prisons has notified one of the country’s leading private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America, that a troubled federal prison the company operated for 16 years will be closed down.
The family of a federal prisoner has filed a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging that private prison operators negligently left him in the care of underqualified medical workers who failed to respond properly to a medical emergency.
The Bureau of Prisons has 11 facilities – operated by private corporations – that are used exclusively for noncitizens. But these contract prisons are bound by a less stringent set of rules, and an independent review suggests that inadequate medical care likely contributed to some inmate deaths.
