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California bans private prisons and immigration detention centers (2019)
- sacks2k 6y agoI can understand private prisons (which make up a small percentage of overall prisons). However, what will be the solution for people that come into the US illegally, if not temporary detainment?
- gyrgtyn 6y agohospitality
- klipt 6y agoIf we're going to have free movement it should probably be via a proper agreement, like in the EU. Not a mishmash of contradictory state and federal policies. And it should be mutual - if Mexicans and Canadians can live in the US, Americans should be freely allowed to live in Mexico and Canada.
- tathougies 6y agoWe should also have standards like the European Union. And one of those standards should be that any country participating should not be run by warlords.
- rayiner 6y agoThis shouldn’t get downvoted. Freedom of movement in the EU is based on consent. Movement is allowed from countries that have been accepted into the EU after an extended process that ensures that the country’s governance and laws are compatible with those of the existing members. Freedom of movement in the EU bears no resemblance to the non-consensual movement of people that happens in North America.
- sdenton4 6y agoAt risk of godwinning, by this logic the US should never have taken in all those Jewish scientists fleeing Nazi Germany... Or any of the many, many incredible Iranians I've known and worked with in my life. Often the best people are fleeing intolerable conditions. btw, the Open Borders graphic novel is fantastic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/openborders/ https://www.smbc-comics.com/openborders/
- catalogia 6y agoOne could surmise that provisions for refugees would be an exception case augmenting a more general border policy. As is the case in the EU, I believe?
- AlexandrB 6y agoThe inconvenient truth is that many illegal immigrants from South America are refugees from various US-backed coups, dictatorships, and war-on-drugs fuelled drug cartels. Unfortunately they can't always claim refugee status on these grounds. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation#Graduates_of_the_School_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...
- tathougies 6y agoOh no, we can take mexicans in of course, we just should't have open borders. I would hope that, when the US took in Jewish scientists, there was a mechanism in place to make sure they didn't take nazis disguised as jewish scientists.
- xyzzyz 6y agoWe took Nazi scientists too, and they didn’t have to disguise themselves. They built our rockets and put us in space.
- jolmg 6y ago> Americans should be freely allowed to live in Mexico I think they effectively already are.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoFrom reading the article, which is slightly unclear, I think they mean that the federal immigration detention centers in California that are privately run - probably by someone like G4S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G4S_Secure_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G4S_Secure_Solutions
- carlisle_ 6y agoThey're not banning detention centers, they're banning private detention centers. I was confused at first too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MikeTheGreat 6y agoFrom the article: "California moved to end the use of private, for-profit lockups in America’s largest state prison system as well as in federal immigration detention centers in the state" If you wanted a super-duper clear title then an alternate title for the entry here on HackerNews could be "California bans private prisons and _private_ immigration detention centers"
- noer 6y agoReleasing people on bond or electronic monitoring?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- avs733 6y agothe solution is the people who wish to temporarily detain people should create systems that do so humanely...i.e., * without intentionally separating families as punishment * without freezing/starving/killing/forgetting people * without detaining the wrong people because of their skin color The fact that people want/feel a need to do this does not create a requirement for them to allow anyone to do in in as slapshod a way as possible. The problem you state was created by ICE's behavior, not by California's concern for that behavior.
- bruceb 6y agoIts more complicated than one might think. People presenting themselves as families doesn't actual mean they are families. Do you house men and older boys with women and girls?
- openasocket 6y ago> People presenting themselves as families doesn't actual mean they are families. While that does happen, it's not as common as people think it is. A common statistic cited (and you might be alluding to) that ICE has released is that 30% of asylum seekers are faking family relationships. But that's blatantly false. This statistic comes from a pilot program of running DNA tests on migrants that ICE conducted. What they leave out is it was a pilot program for suspected human traffickers. So it's not 30% of migrants that are human traffickers, it's 30% of suspected human traffickers are actually human traffickers.
- avs733 6y agothey use the threat of separation as a tool...when they stop doing that people can start straw manning in their defense. Until then, it doesn't sound like people lying to them is what they care about.
- dumbfounder 6y ago@dang can you add 2019 to the title so people know this is an old article?
- rodiger 6y agoYeah important to note the article is from 2019, and not in response to any recent events as you might assume.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoEmailing them at hn@ycombinator.com is a better way to get this done, as they see it faster and it avoids meta-conversations like this one lowering the signal-to-noise ratio of the comments.
- enlyth 6y agoBut this way people know that this has already been requested and don't need to keep on spamming emails
- dang 6y agoThat's a minor problem. In that case we just say thank you to more than one person. The real problem is not knowing about the issue in the first place, so it's definitely best to email. Even if you see me replying in the thread, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23501998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23501998, that's usually because someone called our attention to it by email.
- sneak 6y agoThe concentration camps and child prisons the US is operating presently are mostly in Texas and the southwest, so this won't have much meaningful effect on the situation.
- Tomte 6y agoIsn't California southwest? I mean it borders on Mexico and the Pacific ocean. Or is "southwest" in American usage synonymous with Texas?
- crazygringo 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States
- clairity 6y agomany of us consider southern califoria part of the southwest, but not so much the central and northern parts. similarly with texas, the southwestern parts, less so with the rest. that's because that's what borders mexico, and we have a politico-cultural fascination with that border in particular.
- catalogia 6y agoTo me, "southwest" is sand and cactuses. San Francisco isn't the southwest because it doesn't have that sort of climate. Also because 37°N doesn't seem meaningfully "south" relative to the continental US as a whole. I don't think it has much to do with Mexico. Nevada (well, Las Vegas anyway) seems the "southwest" to me, and Nevada has no border with Mexico.
- clairity 6y agosure, that might be the picture that pops into our heads, but the reason we think about the southwest as a thing at all is not because we all love the desert.
- bradly 6y agoWould love to see California ban sales of goods made at private prisons as well. Or at least disclose it on the packaging so consumers can make a decision.
- ultrarunner 6y agoWildland firefighting is another thorny issue, where prisoners who choose to fight fires are summarily banned from working as firefighters after release. I’m not sure I’d advocate for removing that choice from prisoners, but the extremely low wage seems unethical.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoAs I see it, cheap prison labor is legalized slavery. Maybe not cheap labor, too, but I haven’t thought about that. It’s horrible.
- fennecfoxen 6y agoI guess this is nice, but I think the question of "private prisons" can become a bit of a distraction. Maybe they make things worse, but they're not the root of our problems. Consider that California state prisons were trying to save money by illegally sterilizing inmates as recently as 2010. Here's a great headline to consider: "California Bans Sterilization of Female Inmates Without Consent". 2013. In the United States. Two thousand and god damn thirteen. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/california-bans-sterilization-female-inmates-without-consent-n212256 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/california-bans... other links. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/09/200444613/californias-prison-sterilizations-reportedly-echoes-eugenics-era https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/09/200444613... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/california-female-prisoner-sterilization https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/califo...
- noworriesnate 6y agoWow that is awful. I didn't realize this was happening. Here's a link: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/california-bans-sterilization-female-inmates-without-consent-n212256 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/california-bans... Also, to your point, private prisons only account for 8.41% of the prison population in the U.S. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#United_States
- adventured 6y agoDuring the 30-35 years of the rapid prison population expansion, private prisons represented an even smaller portion of the US prison population, closer to 2-3% averaged. Their expansion in market share has occurred at a time when the US prison population has been shrinking, but that's a wildly inconvenient fact. It was government prisons nearly all of those people were put into during the prime years of the massive drug war, not private prisons. Commenters always and without exception intentionally ignore that fact, for obvious reasons (implodes the propaganda). I'm entirely against private prisons, however it's comical the lengths people will go to, to pretend it wasn't government prisons those millions of people were put into. The prison boom was a government prison boom. The prison industrial complex was a government effort almost exclusively. The drug war was a government effort. The cops (government) benefitted, the police unions benefitted, the government contractors benefitted, the politicians benefitted (jobs and construction in their districts, along with more tax money and government spending).
- egberts1 6y agoNice while it lasted. How many Democrats enjoyed the payola from private prison unions?
- freshly_pancho 6y agoThis article is pretty old -October 11, 2019 / 10:40 PM / 8 months ago...
- Shivetya 6y agoThis isn't about protecting prisoners or their rights, this is about protecting the jobs that the California Correctional Peace Officers Association controls and insuring no one else performs this task. Private prisons were forced into accepting CCPOA members but he union set forth in campaign after campaign to rid the state of private prisons. Back in May Newsom announced he was trying to reduce some of the in excess of thirteen billion dollar prison budget and between allowing more prisoners out, reducing chances more got in, and considering the role of private prisons. However the CCPOA basically went to the legislature which it effectively owns and here is the result. More money instead of less. It gets wrapped up and sold under a different banner to hide the real move. California state government is under the boot of the CSSA and both are responsible for that the high incarceration rates. go look at any state approaching those numbers and you will find a similar police related organization behind it all. This all synchronizes neatly with the problems all the recent rallies brought forth. The public sector employee unions that run our police, fire, prison, and education, have so much power that any attempt at reform instead usually ends up with more money going to the very organizations causing the problem. Besides the front facing public relations problem the back end that will soak the public is the largess in the pension and health retirement programs, the very same gold plated programs that resulted in the ACA being hampered from day one.
- hn_check 6y agoJust to understand your broken, the-conclusion-will-sustain-my-baises noise, this is all some masterful powerplay by a union that has control of both the public and private sectors. HURRRRRRRRRRR That's some grade A stupid nonsense. I see from your history that this "Let me tell you what the reality is" conspiratorial trash is the foundation of almost everything you say. Get back to stupid youtube videos.
- dahfizz 6y ago> The measure, which passed the California legislature last month, does not apply to privately owned prisons operated and staffed by the state corrections agency. It does seeem suspicious...
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- jokit 6y agoWhen California needs to be bailed out, will the correctly managed states even be heard about not wanting to pay for CA's sabotage? Since the self destruction is obviously intentional, any welfare for the state should come at the expense of federal representation until they have reimbursed, with interest, all that they take. Forced redistribution of wealth is dysgenics.
- lm28469 6y agoThere seem to be plenty of comments that are OK with private prisons. I highly recommend watching this documentary: https://youtu.be/krfcq5pF8u8 https://youtu.be/krfcq5pF8u8 It will most likely change your mind.
- bluntfang 6y ago>There seem to be plenty of comments that are OK with private prisons Can anyone help me understand their stance? I can see being pro-prison in general, but why pro-private prison? It's not like this specific ask is for removing all prisons.
- AlexandrB 6y agoBest I can gather is: "free enterprise is good, government is bad".
- fennecfoxen 6y agoThe premise is that government is bad at doing things — like, really really bad, with terribly wasteful spending and little ability to correct it. If the government pays $1B for a service and the private company can do it for $500M then they should be able to offer the services to the government for $750M, and both they and the taxpayers are better off. Sometimes this works better than others, particularly when the government group who makes the contract are held politically accountable for the quality of the services — e.g. private sanitation services are only going to get so bad before someone runs for office on a "fix the trash" platform. The UK has likewise managed to do a not-entirely-trash-fire job with train franchises, where there are several operators who bid on the rights to operate; if the trains don't run, you can replace one operator with another at the end of the contract. The Southern debacle of recent years is a bit of an outlier (the contract design there was quite unfortunate) and the year of strikes and service outages led to political pressure to do something about the state of affairs. Accountability is unfortunately rather absent for treatment-of-prisoner politics, though, so it's pretty much hit-or-miss just as regards the basic human dignity.
- jungletime 6y agoSeems to me like increasing the use of house arrest is so much preferable to prison, for everyone involved. Just have it monitored properly. Maybe ankle bracelet, an GPS monitoring. With meal delivery, and health checkups, it could be cheaper too than housing someone in a prison. Have them take online classes and possibly let them work online to offset the costs of the monitoring. Or some sort of program to trade time served for working in nursing homes taking care of the elderly.
- Thlom 6y agoWhere this is actually being tested, f.ex. some Scandinavian countries, the "inmate" is allowed to leave their apartment for work and necessary errands like grocery shopping or doctor visits. It's much better for everyone to let the inmate work than sitting on his arse all day watching netflix.
- antoineMoPa 6y agoShouldn't the date be included in the title? [October 11, 2019]
- subsubzero 6y agoPrivate prisons have an obligation through shareholders and ownership to maximize earnings/profit. They also have inherently less oversight than an institution that is controlled by the state. Given statement #1 they have a perverse incentive to acquire more inmates and keep inmates longer confined due to receiving govt. funding for their operations every day an inmate is housed. This also includes serving the cheapest possible food and providing little to no benefits. That being said state prisons are no shining beacon of enlightenment and prisoner reform.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoBan JPay next.
- specialist 6y agoActual bill: AB-32 Detention facilities: private, for-profit administration services.(2019-2020) http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB32 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml... Rant: Why are the medias constitutionally incapable of linking to the actual bill? Third millennium. It's all online. Cite and link your sources. Unbelievable. Edit: Somehow The Guardian is capable of using links. Maybe it's a British thing. Here's their version of the same story. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/12/california-private-prison-ban-immigration-ice https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/12/california-p...
- ykevinator 6y agoThey should just pay the prisoners to not repeat the crime
- bufferoverflow 6y agoThen you have to pay everyone. Otherwise you will radically increase crime, because people will want that free cash.