They have completely segregated prisons by race and gang affiliation. Their prisons have always had a lot of inner politics with the gangs and inmates, cause the wardens and COs are notorious for playing them against one another with their yard politics and escalating violent tensions (this is also how drugs are often smuggled into prisons more often than not. With all their super tight security with visitors, it ain't getting in from that. It's COs and Wardens hustling). If there is anything I learned from Big Herc and his Fresh Out/Prison Talk videos, it's that.

Furthering on, they have built so many prisons in California that in the past 20 years, they've been moving the for-profit run ones out of state with California prisoners. These are the prisons built usually out in the middle of nowhere, in a de-industrialized rural small town somewhere in Utah or Nevada. The prison becomes the main source of a steady job in that local community and it beats having to work at a dollar store or McDonalds for shit wages, hence why a lot of people in these small towns will end up going into police academy and working to become a CO. It's easier for them to get employed at for-profit prisons cause they're ran like walmarts.

And last but not least; the forced labor in California, indeed is as bad as a southern prison. They are probably worse than Louisiana when it comes to that.