The California assembly votes for the ban on private for-profit prisons

The California State Legislature on Wednesday voted to ban private for-profit jails, including some facilities used by the US Immigration and Customs Service.

The bill, to be enacted by California Governor Gavin Newsom to come into force, would ban new contracts with private penitentiaries in California from next year, and completely eliminate their use of drugs. 2028. It would also prohibit the California Department of Prison and Rehabilitation Services, which consists of imprisoning people in for-profit institutions outside the state.

Newsom's office refused to say whether it would sign the bill, but the governor has already shown his support for the removal of private prisons. "We will end the scandal of private prisons once and for all," he said in his inaugural speech in January.

The law was originally intended to prohibit only contracts between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and for-profit prisons, but was amended in June to prohibit all for-profit institutions in the state, including including those used by ICE.

Assembly Member Rob Bonta, the author of the bill, told NBC News: "These private for-profit facilities owned by Wall Street inhumanly treat people as commodities. Making profit on the backs of incarcerated people is not only morally wrong, but also inhumane and contrary to our California values. "

A spokesman for the GEO Group, a for-profit penitentiary company with dozens of facilities in California, said: "Unfortunately, the AB 32 goes against the anti-recidivism goals of Proposition 57 approved by voters ", referring to a 2016 voted voting proposal to reduce recidivism in the state.

According to statistics obtained by The Guardian, approximately 2,222 people incarcerated by the state of California had been incarcerated in for-profit facilities, according to statistics obtained in June. According to ICE statistics, about 1,300 people were held in ICE private detention centers in California.

"We are not commenting on pending legislation," said Bryan D. Cox, interim press officer for ICE. "But anyone with the impression that a state law in any way binds the hands of a federal agency responsible for law enforcement, which runs a national network of detention centers, would be a false impression. "