California bans private prisons

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When will Texas follow suit?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-bans-private-prisons-and-detention-centers/ar-AAIEjNe?ocid=spartanntp

Fox news will no doubt be calling them the communist state of California.

I don't Texas will do the same. Greg Abbott, like Rick Perry before him, looked the other way when teens were being sexually abused at a private youth correction facility in Pecos (in west Texas). I think this is why he opposes marijuana, he is financially beholden to Big Pharma and prison-for-profit.

Our Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick, is a big time theocrat.

Good.

Plus the issues between law enforcement and people of color are why hashtags like #f**kthepolice and #allcopsarebad are popular, and why Colin Kaepernick is the most beloved athlete now.

Aren't profit-oriented prisons a form of slavery?

In many of the Southern states, it is. And with people of color incarcerated at a much higher rate than whites, and receiving longer sentences for the same crime than whites, I suspect that was the intent. Many Southern conservative politicians are neo-Confederates.

The War on Drugs, which began during Nixon's presidency, was actually a back-handed way to disenfranchise black people.

In the U.S., convicted felons can't vote in many places. Until 1965, blacks could only vote if they paid a poll tax and passed a literacy test, things whites weren't subject to. "Felons" was a proxy for "blacks". The book "The New Jim Crow", by Michelle Alexander, illustrates this much better than I can. In other words, the "war on drugs" was really the "war on blacks".

I often suspect Prohibition, the ban on alcoholic beverages that existed during the 1920s, was passed for the same reason.

I suspect this is another reason why Texas opposes marijuana legalization.

By slavery I meant forced labor for private profit.
Probably you have to be in the US to associate it with race.

Prisoners are usually paid a nominal salary.....like 50 cents an hour or something....for their prison jobs.

It doesn’t make it right. It just is.

There are many prisoners who deserve to be in prison. And many who do not.

I am, in no way, saying that everything California does is good or that everything Texas does is bad. But I think in this case, Newsom made the right call.

Eh how’s California going to afford to operate all the prisons themselves?
I suspect they shut down many and release bunch of violent felons.

My area built a prison, relied on federal funding for use, then feds found another one, so now over half the prison is empty cause they can’t afford it. Violent criminals get let out after a day in jail. It’s a revolving door.

Guess on plus side, crime will rise in California and Probably shootings too so they can use it to push complete ban in gun ownership they’ve been wanting.

USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world - which means in the US people are kept in jail more than anywhere else in the world.
Based on this: http://worldpopulationreview.com/countr ... y-country/ USA has one of the highest crime rates among developed countries.
Apparently, keeping more people in jails does not simply prevent crimes. Most likely, USA can afford jailing less people, coming closer to worldwide mean.

Private jails don't exist where I live and my country is pretty safe.

Counterpoint U.S. crime has been on a decades long decrease while U.S. incarceration rate has been on a decades long increase. Correlation does not imply causation, but there is a feasible theory of causality, so the correlation should not be ignored.

Comparing the U.S. to itself makes more sense than comparing the U.S. to Poland in my opinion.

Yes and no.
Comparing US to itself 100 years ago makes less sense than comparing it to Poland today. Comparing California to Texas may be very faulty.
The USA puts in jail bigger portion of its population than any other country in the world, so I think it is safe to assume that lowering this rate would not necessarily mean "violent criminals let out after a day in jail". If this would happen, then the real problem lays completely elsewhere.