Private prison companies are making billions off of treating prisoners and detained immigrants as inhumanely as they can get away with, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren—you guessed it—has a plan for that. Warren unveiled a proposal Friday to end private prisons, citing the facts that “From 2000 to 2016, the private prison population grew five times as quickly as the overall prison population. And the profiteers multiplied, too: today, nearly 4,000 corporations make money off mass incarceration.”
Warren’s plan builds on the Obama administration’s 2016 move to start phasing out private prison contracts in the federal prison system—a move that was obviously reversed by Donald Trump. Warren would not only end contracts with private prison companies contracting with the Bureau of Prisons, ICE, and the U.S. Marshals Service, but would “extend these bans to states and localities by conditioning their receipt of federal public safety funding on their use of public facilities.” The latter is a key part of the plan, since state prisons have many more inmates than federal ones. Additionally, Warren would increase oversight and transparency and stop contractors from charging extortionate fees for everything from phone calls to health care.
Politico notes that it might take time to implement the plan if it requires waiting for existing contracts to expire. Sens. Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris have all previously endorsed the basic concept of ending private prisons.