Biden should end all private prison deals

President Joe Biden is ordering his attorney general not to renew federal contracts with private prisons, calling out poor conditions and inadequate programs for inmates.

It’s a good start.

The president correctly indicates that a disproportionate number of the more than 2 million incarcerated in the United States are people of color.

“To decrease incarceration levels, we must reduce profit-based incentives to incarcerate by phasing out the Federal Government’s reliance on privately operated criminal detention facilities,” Biden’s directive reads.

It also states that “privately operated criminal detention facilities consistently underperform Federal facilities with respect to correctional services, programs, and resources.”

You certainly could make that case for its immigration detention centers. According to a USA TODAY investigation, more than 400 allegations of sexual assault or abuse, more than 800 instances of physical force and at least 29 fatalities have occurred in centers nationwide since Trump took office in January 2017.

But Biden’s new executive order only phases out Department of Justice contracts with for-profit prisons. The directive issued on Tuesday conveniently excludes contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, which handles immigration detentions.

Biden needs to explain that — and pronto. He must be more transparent about why he is letting private profiteers continue to manage immigration detentions and provide details of such contracts.

CoreCivic, a major provider of private prison services in Arizona, runs the Eloy Detention Center under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It also runs an immigration detention center known as La Palma Correctional Center and the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex.

Steven Owen, CoreCivic vice president of communications, said in response to Biden’s executive order that the company isn’t responsible for mass incarceration and that only 8% of inmates overall are in facilities run by private contractors.

“Any assertion that our company or the private sector is responsible for the rate of incarceration or detention is false,” he said in a statement. “While we aren’t the driver of mass incarceration, we are working hard to be part of the solution.”

Then again, what about the thousands of folks detained in privately operated immigration facilities?

Biden needs to end all contracts with private prisons and detention centers. Period. It’s inherently wrong to incentivize profits to keep people behind bars.