“There is no doubt that mass incarceration has caused devastating and disproportionate harm to Black, Brown, and low-income communities – with the harm often felt for generations. Private prisons have grown into a billion-dollar industry, despite clear evidence that they are, and have long been, plagued by inhumane conditions and substandard staff training, and despite the fact that they exploit the labor of incarcerated people and subject them to work conditions that harken back to slave labor.

“The step the Biden administration took yesterday, to refuse to renew U.S. Department of Justice contracts with private prison companies, is an important step in stopping additional harms caused by mass incarceration. No one should profit – ever – from prisons and from incarcerating millions of people. 

“We hope and expect that this is the first of many steps the Biden administration will take and look forward to additional actions, including ending solitary confinement, abolishing the federal death penalty, and ending the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s private prison contracts, which deny immigrants in detention the humane conditions and basic human rights everyone deserves. That, too, must end immediately.”

-Statement of Beatriz Beckford, National Director, Youth and Education Justice, MomsRising

“Too many families, most of them Black and Brown, have been devastated and too many children separated from their families by our country’s broken criminal justice system. We are extremely grateful that the Biden administration will not renew U.S. Department of Justice contracts with private prison companies, which have profited while amassing a shameful record of violating the rights and safety of those in their custody.

“And while yesterday’s executive order on private prisons is important and meaningful, it is a first step: In addition to reforms and protections, government contracts with private prison companies who operate immigrant detention centers through the Department of Homeland Security, must also end right away.

We ask the Biden administration to overhaul our entire criminal legal system so that every person in custody will be safe, have adequate health care, and be treated with dignity and respect.

"Further, while stopping for-profit prisons is key, the U.S. still has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with structural racism embedded throughout our policing and criminal justice system, and the entire criminal justice and police system still needs reforming. MomsRising is committed to doing the work to get our nation toward justice for everyone.”

-Statement of Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director and CEO, MomsRising