California to Start Bringing Back Inmates in Out-of-State Prisons

With severe overcrowding easing in state lockups, California is winding down a controversial deal with the nation’s biggest private prison operator and will bring thousands of inmates housed in facilities as far away as Mississippi back to California within the next few years. Currently, some 9,500 state inmates are serving sentences in prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma operated by the Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America.

With severe overcrowding easing in state lockups, California is winding down a controversial deal with the nation’s biggest private prison operator and will bring thousands of inmates housed in facilities as far away as Mississippi back to California within the next few years. Currently, some 9,500 state inmates are serving sentences in prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma operated by the Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America. As part of a strategic plan announced in April, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will transfer those inmates back to California facilities by 2016.

Click here to read “Prison Bed Profiteers: How Corporations Are Reshaping Criminal Justice in the U.S.,” NCCD’s recent report focusing on the disconnect between claims made by supporters of privatization and the true impact of the private prison industry.