Tom Steyer said that California has eradicated private prisons. He’s wrong.

Tom Steyer said that California has eradicated private prisons. He’s wrong.

During the Democratic debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Friday, Tom Steyer claimed he got rid of private prisons in California. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A recently signed state law hasn’t phased out private prisons yet.

Billionaire Tom Steyer claimed during Friday night’s Democratic presidential debate that he had helped eradicate private prisons in his home state of California.

But the private prison industry is still thriving there for now.

The firm Steyer founded, Farallon Capital Management, was an early investor in private prisons and only divested in 2006 following pressure from Yale student protesters. Steyer has since expressed regret over the decision to invest in private prisons and has put out a criminal justice reform plan in which he promises to close private prisons nationwide. On Friday, he said that they had already disappeared from California.

“I worked to end private prisons in California and they’re gone,” he said on the debate stage.

It’s not clear what kind of work Steyer was referring to. But it’s also just not true that private prisons in California are gone.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill that phases out state-level private prisons and privately run immigration detention facilities that contract with the federal government. But it doesn’t block the federal government from constructing its own detention centers in the state.

State-level private prisons also won’t close overnight: the wind-down period runs through 2028 and, up until January 1, the state was allowed to renew its existing contracts with private prison companies as well as sign new contracts. That meant that the Trump administration was able to sign a flurry of new contracts with private immigration detention providers before the deadline worth a total of $6.8 billion and adding space for an additional 4,000 detainees in San Diego, Calexico, Adelanto and Bakersfield.

The new California law also includes loopholes that would allow private prison companies to continue to operate in the state. It doesn’t apply to private facilities that: provide “educational vocational, medical, or other ancillary services to an inmate”; that are leased and operated by a law enforcement agency; or that provides housing for state prison inmates in order to comply with a court-ordered prison population cap.

Steyer nevertheless didn’t face any pushback on his claims on the debate stage.

Author: Nicole Narea

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