Written by Nicholas Vetrisek
In another round of useless symbolic legislation, Governor Newsom just signed a bill to end private prisons. Despite activists’ claims of this being a major victory for the California criminal justice system, it solves nothing and will not have any impact on California’s prisons.
While Governor Newsom and his supporters rallied for lawmakers to “end the outrage of private prisons once and for all,” this bill is unlikely to do anything given the fact that in California, only five percent of prisoners are held in private prisons.
In total, roughly 7,000 prisoners are in for-profit prisons and due to this incredibly small number, the Democratic narrative that private prisons are responsible for driving up mass incarceration rates solely to make money for their shareholders appears to be a bald-faced lie.
At this point, it’s just regulation for regulation’s sake. The number of prisoners housed in private prisons is so statistically insignificant that it will do nothing to change incarceration rates. This bill serves only one purpose: to allow progressive Democrats to virtue signal to minority communities and hopefully secure their votes.
It’s the only plausible explanation given how small the private prison industry in California is. Once again, Democrats put into effect a bill that sounds good, but won’t change a single thing.
