Executive Order 14006: Reforming Our Incarceration System To Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities

What does Executive Order 14006 do?

EO 14006 told the Attorney General not to renew Justice Department contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities. Biden presented the change as part of reducing reliance on private prisons and improving federal incarceration policy. The action was a contracting instruction: it addressed what happened when covered contracts reached renewal, rather than ordering immediate closure of every privately operated facility. Official source.

The distinction between criminal detention and other forms of custody was important. The order covered Justice Department contracting, including the setting in which federal sentenced prisoners and pretrial detainees were held. It did not contain a parallel nonrenewal instruction to Homeland Security for immigration detention contracts. Nor did it direct states to terminate their own prison contracts or abolish every private service purchased within a publicly operated prison. Official source.

The signed text assigned the operative duty to the Attorney General and required implementation consistent with law and appropriations. It did not itself prescribe an individual transfer date, release inmates or change criminal sentences. Agencies administering custody still had to maintain lawful detention and arrange capacity as contracts ended, so the policy mechanism should not be confused with an entitlement to release. Official source.