http://www.vox.com/2016/8/18/12536310/private-prisons-bureau-of-prisons

The US Department of Justice plans to end its use of privately operated prisons, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced in a memo on Thursday.

The news, reported by the Washington Post, comes after the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found serious problems and more frequent reports of violence at the privately run, for-profit facilities compared with federal public prisons.

In total, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons (BOP) will stop contracting with private operators at 13 prisons — although the terminations could take years as the federal agency lets existing contracts expire instead of ending them prematurely.

The 13 prisons don’t make up a big part of all the prisons in America or even a big segment of private prisons overseen by the federal government. There are thousands of prisons, including local jails and state prisons, all across the country — 122 of which are run by the Bureau of Prisons. And even with this announcement, other federal agencies will continue to rely on private prisons, particularly the 100-plus immigrant detention facilities overseen by the US Department of Homeland Security but run mostly by for-profit private companies.

Still, the decision is a swift reaction to the OIG report — one that will surely please liberals and criminal justice reformers who have decried private prisons for years.