“President Biden’s Executive Order is a solution in search of a problem. For more than three decades, our company has provided high-quality services under a private-public partnership with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. During this timeframe, our facilities, which are newer and more modern than the generally older government-run prisons, have helped the BOP meet the significant overcrowding challenges facing the federal prison system. Our facilities have almost exclusively housed non-citizen criminal aliens convicted of federal crimes, thus allowing government-run facilities to care for U.S. citizens without significant overcrowding challenges.
Given the recent decline in federal prison populations, in part due to the COVID pandemic, the BOP had already announced steps over the last four months to not renew expiring contracts with private sector operators. Given the steps the BOP had already announced, President Biden’s Executive Order merely represents a political statement, which could carry serious negative unintended consequences, including the loss of hundreds of jobs and negative economic impact for the communities where our facilities are located, which are already struggling economically due to the COVID pandemic. Additionally, limiting the federal government’s options to deal with potential overcrowding challenges in the future could result in worsening and unsafe conditions for the men and women in federal custody.
The claim that any one company or private sector providers are responsible for mass incarceration is blatantly false. Our company’s focus has always been on promoting the benefits of public-private partnerships in the delivery of residential care in secure facilities, as well as, the provision of evidence-based rehabilitation and community reentry programs through our award-winning GEO Continuum of Care. We have been a trusted service provider to the federal government for over three decades, under Democratic and Republican Administrations, and in that time, we have never advocated for or against nor have we ever played a role in setting criminal justice policies.
As such, policymakers should decide whether they want to score political points by targeting private sector providers that make up less than 8 percent of the prison system, or if they truly want to improve prison conditions and in turn the lives of those in their care and custody.
As a global leader in evidence-based rehabilitation, we will continue our efforts to provide enhanced in-custody rehabilitation programming integrated with reentry and post-release support services with the objective of reducing recidivism and ensuring individuals successfully transition back into local communities. We are proud of the work our employees perform on a daily basis to improve the lives of those in our care and believe that we are most successful when helping those individuals reenter society as productive citizens. On an annual basis, we highlight important disclosures and metrics related to our efforts to reduce recidivism, as well as our commitment to respecting human rights, in our Human Rights and ESG Report.”