The Department of Justice will stop contracting with private prisons following its own critical report on the safety, security, and oversight of private prisons, which incarcerate 12 percent of federal inmates. The decision also comes in the wake of a Mother Jones investigation of private prisons in Louisiana that found serious deficiencies in staffing and security, and where a higher rate of violence was occurring than the prison was reporting. The MacArthur-supported Mother Jones reports that its in-depth investigation into private prisons, in which a reporter took on a job as a prison guard, cost about $350,000 to conduct, an expense few for-profit news outlets are able to spend. The resulting story was more than five times the length of a typical feature, complete with charts, graphs, companion pieces, six videos, and an accompanying radio documentary.
