In a historic announcement, the Justice Department has told the Bureau of Prisons to end the use of private prisons. In a memo released yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote that private prisons “simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources … do not save substantially on costs [and] do not maintain the same level of safety and security.” This is former President Bill Clinton speaking earlier this year about the need for prison reform.

Bill Clinton: “We need prison reform. He will tell you. We overdid it in putting too many young, nonviolent offenders in jail for too long. Now, 90-plus percent of them are in state and local facilities, but the federal government can set an example. And this is something a lot of Republicans agree with. So, let these people out of jail, but give them education, training.”

That was Bill Clinton. Laws enacted during Clinton’s presidency increased the national prison population by more than 60 percent. The Justice Department’s directive will affect 13 federal prisons, but does not mean all federal agencies will necessarily stop using private companies for detentions. The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement also uses the private corrections industry and is not included in the order. We’ll have more on this announcement after headlines with investigative reporter Seth Freed Wessler, Democracy Now!’s Renée Feltz and journalist Shane Bauer, who went undercover for Mother Jones to work as a private prison guard and who himself was a hostage imprisoned by Iran for more than two years.