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California bans private prisons

theguardian.com

31–40 of 646 posts

Re: California bans private prisons

#31

>Servin said that while the new law was a significant victory, there was one other thing immigrants rights groups were concerned about. When several sheriffs’ departments canceled their contracts to house Ice detainees last year, instead of freeing the detainees, Ice moved many of them to prisons in Colorado and Hawaii. Is this something that people against private prisons believe...that they just release all the pri…

No, people don't believe that people will just be let free.

Re: California bans private prisons

#33
post #5

Does it really remove the profit motive from incarceration? There are still thousands of vendors of various types making probably billions of dollars off of prisons, private facility or no.

Progress is better than no progress.. Removing profit motives can only happen by reducing profit motives

[deleted]

Re: California bans private prisons

#34
post #2

California is on a roll this week, it seems. Can someone local explain what’s going on?

Maybe if they’re ambitious they can do something about the homeless crisis next.

Seems like outlawing single-Family zoning should be easy, but how many NIMBYs reside in the state legislature?

Re: California bans private prisons

#35

>Two of Ice’s largest immigrant detention centers in California Can somebody explain to a legal immigrant why The Guardian keeps omitting the illegal part over twelve times throughout the article?

Has the legality of their immigration been determined at that point? Or is the detention center used to hold them until that has been determined?

Regardless, the statement as written is accurate. How many modifiers are necessary?

Re: California bans private prisons

#36

>Servin said that while the new law was a significant victory, there was one other thing immigrants rights groups were concerned about. When several sheriffs’ departments canceled their contracts to house Ice detainees last year, instead of freeing the detainees, Ice moved many of them to prisons in Colorado and Hawaii. Is this something that people against private prisons believe...that they just release all the pri…

The idea that a special interest that is financially powerful and interested in high prison population, may inject wrong incentives into the society is real and understandable.

But we also have other side of the equation - politicians willing to expand definition of "crime" to placate people's fears and emotions combined with prosecutors willing to throw the book to make and example and build a career on it, all while not appropriately funding the prisons.

California's real problem is MASSIVE prison population, where you have to BECOME a RACIST to survive the prison gangs. Prison overcrowd is a feature of CA prison system.

I wish they ordered their priorities right and built enough prisons to house the population safely.

This is one single step in a series of steps to get anywhere positive. Knowing their Governor and his political expedient past, I am skeptical.

Re: California bans private prisons

#38

Does it really remove the profit motive from incarceration? There are still thousands of vendors of various types making probably billions of dollars off of prisons, private facility or no.

Yeah it's not great but it's a move in the right direction and beyond closing all prisons there will always be a need for vendors to provide goods and services inside prisons. Prisoners need food and clothing at the very least and it'll be bought from someone.

Re: California bans private prisons

#39
Honestly, it's a bit of a red herring.. nothing is going to change from a criminal justice perspective. Less than 10% of incarcerated people are held in private prisons. But even more importantly, there are still so many private contractors / unions in the (public/private) prison industry that this ban won't really affect policies or outcomes going forward.. private interests will almost always exist in it that have perverse incentives that are contrary to what's actually good for crime and recidivism rates. [0]

An example would be the prison phones / video visitation industry. It's absolutely abhorrent what's going on there (removing in-person visits, replacing them with stupidly expensive phone calls that prisoners can hardly afford).. and yet public prisons / jails are using their services just the same. [1]

[0] - https://worthrises.org/picreport2019

[1] - https://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/state_of_phone_justice.h... Just look at how expensive those phone calls are :(

Re: California bans private prisons

#40
> Private prison companies used to view California as one of their fastest-growing markets.

This is such a bizarre and twisted sentence to hear without a hint of irony. It's like dream/nightmare logic except in real life. In 100 years private prisons are going to be a hideous stain on our history and this is such a huge step in the right direction that it really makes me proud to be living in California and supporting the state with my tax dollars.

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