in August 2018, I was doing research on the current state of California's jails and prisons. I typed into a Google search: "how many jails are in California?" and quickly realized there was no catch-all list of the hundreds of detention facilities statewide.

California has many types of incarceration facilities including city and county jails, state and federal prisons, privately-owned detention facilities, conservation camps, juvenile halls, and military jails.

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my goal for this page is to provide a proper list of facilities so that people can see what California's carceral landscape looks like; it is expansive, and very profitable for a very small few. it is a huge industry that enforces white supremacy, ableism, and classism with courts, policies, and law enforcement. it is violent and it will never stop being violent, no matter what kinds of reforms are enacted.

 we need to abolish the entire thing.

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since I started this count, several facilities have closed. when I first started, I counted more than 480 facilities statewide. California Assembly Bill 32 (#AB32) has passed, banning private prisons from operating in the state. that said, the CDCR system is still severely overcrowded.

as of January 2024, CDCR reports a total population of 129,602 incarcerated individuals in their custody and/or under their surveillance. this number doesn't include city, county, juvenile, or private prison-incarcerated individuals. 

the entire industry of incarceration must be abolished.