Biden will not renew his Government’s contracts with Private Prisons

Globe Live Media, Tuesday, January 26, 2021

US President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Tuesday not to renew his Government’s contracts with companies that manage private prisons, in an attempt to increase security in those precincts and tackle the discrimination suffered by African Americans and Hispanics.

At a press conference, Susan Rice, Biden’s adviser for domestic policy, announced the president’s intention to sign this executive order this afternoon as part of a package to advance his policy of racial equality.

Specifically, according to that source, Biden’s order will instruct the Department of Justice not to renew any contract with the companies that manage prisons because, according to an independent government body, these facilities are less “safe” than those that run prisons. than public.

“President Biden is committed to ending mass incarceration, while making our communities safer. And that starts with ending the federal government’s reliance on private prisons,” Rice said.

In 2016, in an attempt to reform the penal system, then-President Barack Obama (2009-2017) implemented a regulation to reduce the Executive’s contracts with private companies; But his successor, Donald Trump, overturned that rule shortly after arriving at the White House in 2017.

Some of the companies that run prisons donated large amounts of money to Trump during his campaign for the November election, which Biden won.

The former president’s donors included GEO Group and CoreCivic, which also run detention centers for undocumented immigrants and saw their profits grow under the Trump administration.

Biden’s order only affects federal prisons run by those companies and not immigration detention centers, Rice said.
Biden’s measure falls within his racial equality program because African-Americans are currently 5.9 more likely to be incarcerated than their white peers, while Hispanics are 3.1 more likely to end up in prisons than whites, according to a report by the organization for a fair judicial system.

EQUAL ACCESS TO HOUSING AND MEASURES AGAINST RACISM

On the other hand, Biden will also sign today a memorandum that asks the Department of Housing to ensure that all citizens have the same opportunity to access a home, regardless of their skin color.

Likewise, it will sign another memorandum that asks different departments to implement measures to end xenophobia against Asian Americans, who have suffered greater violence in the last year.

Finally, Biden will proclaim another measure to strengthen the relationship between the federal government and American Indian and Alaska Native tribes.

Biden has made racial equality a central part of his agenda and, last week, shortly after his inauguration, he already signed executive orders including directing the federal government to “adopt a comprehensive approach to promoting equity for all, including people of color and others who, historically, have been neglected, marginalized and negatively affected by poverty and inequality.”