(The Center Square) – The Virginia House Public Safety Committee voted 21-0 on Friday to advance a bill restricting private management of prisons and jails unless approved by The General Assembly.
The legislation has already passed the Senate and will now go to the full House of Delegates for further consideration.
Senate Bill 1283, introduced by Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, removes the authority of the Director of the Department of Corrections or a regional jail authority to enter into contracts with contractors for the operation of prison facilities or regional jails, including management, custody of inmates and provision of security, unless approved by the General Assembly.
It would shift more control of corrections back to the state while still allowing private contracts for specific services such as food and health care.
The bill passed a House subcommittee Thursday with a vote of 6-0. During the session, Ebbin stated that there were no privately owned prisons in Virginia and said, “I’d like to keep it that way.”
After concerns over safety, staffing shortages and rising operational costs, the commonwealth took over Lawrenceville Correctional Center, its only privately run prison, in August 2024. SB1283 further ensures that no private company can operate correctional facilities without General Assembly approval.
Virginia’s Department of Corrections oversees the commonwealth’s prisons and jails, managing over 31,000 inmates in around 50 facilities. It also provides re-entry services and parole supervision in an attempt to improve long-term public safety.
In FY2023, Virginia’s jails spent $1.1 million on jails, with the average daily cost per inmate being $145 a day, an increase of $19 from the previous year, according to documents.
This new bill aligns with a broader national discussion on private prisons and their role in the criminal justice system, which, according to a report by The Sentencing Project, housed over 96,000 people in the U.S., accounting for 8% of the total state and federal prison population in 2022.
The report stated that the higher rates of safety and security violations in private prisons compared to public facilities, such as understaffing, increased violence, inadequate medical and cost-cutting measures affecting inmates. Former president Joe Biden issued an executive order in January 2021 that phased out for-profit federal prisons.
During that time, the U.S. Marshals Service, the oldest federal law enforcement agency in the U.S., faced backlash from a civil rights organization, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. The organization stated that the department “used two work-around mechanisms to continue to pay for-profit prison companies to hold people.”
According to the USMS 2024 Overview, the agency does not own or operate detention facilities. Instead, it partners with state and local governments through intergovernmental agreements and contracts with private detention facilities to house federal prisoners.
California and Illinois have already banned private prisons, citing similar concerns noted in the takeover of Lawrenceville.
