The Justice Department announced Thursday that it intends to reduce and eventually eliminate its reliance on privately owned prisons to house federal inmates.

In ordering the shift, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said the privately run facilities don't measure up to government-run detention centers in a variety of ways and put prisoners and the public at greater risk.

"Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities," Yates wrote in a memo to acting Bureau of Prisons Director Thomas Kane. "They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources; they do not save substantially on costs, and as noted in a recent report by the Department's Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security."

Yates also said rehabilitation services offered at federal facilities "have proved difficult to replicate and outsource." She said the Justice Department is already allowing contracts with private prisons to expire or be reduced in scope and plans to continue to do so.

"As each private prison contract reaches the end of its term, the bureau should either decline to renew that contract or substantially reduce its scope in a manner consistent with law and the overall decline of the bureau's inmate population," Yates added in a blog post on Justice's website. "This is the first step in the process of reducing—and ultimately ending—our use of privately operated prisons."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hailed the decision for adopting one of the key criminal-justice reform planks of his recent presidential bid.

"The Justice Department's plan to end its use of private prisons is an important step in the right direction. It is exactly what I campaigned on as a candidate for president," Sanders said in a statement. "We have got to end the private prison racket in America as quickly as possible. Our focus should be on keeping people out of jail and making sure they stay out when they are released. This means funding jobs and education not more jails and incarceration."