Prison inmates at a California institution, many of whom were "realigned" to counties' custody.(Photo: Pubic Policy Institute of California)In 2019, California outlawed private prisons. By the time the ban went live in January 2020, the world’s biggest private prison contractor, the Florida-based GEO Group, lost $223 million in contracts with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
A facility run by CoreCivic, a private-prison company. The photo was taken in November 2019, shortly before private prisons were outlawed in California. (Photo: Shuttertstock)In January 2020, Californians thought they were getting out of the private prison business. They are, but under a new law, AB 32, which went into effect at the first of the year, the state remains heavily invested in backing for-profit correctional services — including facilities that resemble detention centers run by the same companies who operate private prisons.
The city of Cerritos may be a trailblazer of sorts among local governments, but it’s leading the way on a trail that local governments probably don’t want to follow. The southern California community, which boasts a population just shy of 50,000 residents, is among the first of several city governments in California to go to the mat against the state controller’s review of its shift of local assets from the redevelopment agency.