Taft Correctional Institution

Taft Correctional Institution is a low-security federal prison for male inmates located in Taft, Kern County, California, owned by the BOP and operated by Management and Training Corporation under contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. [1] It also includes a satellite prison camp for minimum-security male inmates.

Taft Correctional Institution

Location	1500 Cadet Road Taft, California
Status	Operational
Security class	Low-security (with minimum-security prison camp)
Population	2187 (360 in prison camp)
Opened	August 20, 1997
Closed	January 31, 2020
Managed by	Management and Training Corporation

The facility opened in 1997 as the first private prison contract of the FBOP; the facility was initially operated by Cornell Corrections, which changed its name to Cornell Companies. Cornell was bought out by the GEO Group in 2010.[2] In August 2016, Justice Department officials announced that the FBOP would be phasing out its use of contracted facilities, on the grounds that private prisons provided less safe and less effective services with no substantial cost savings. The agency expects to allow current contracts on its thirteen remaining private facilities to expire.[3]

In an announcement delivered to facility staff on October 1, 2019, the facility is anticipated to close as of January 31, 2020. It was estimated that the facility required about $100 million worth of repairs.[4]