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Harris said a Biden administration would get rid of private prisons, cash bail, and decriminalized marijuana, in addition to banning chokeholds. Let's UNPACK 
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Private companies only hold 8 percent of people incarcerated in the U.S., but have 15 percent of federal prisoners and more than 70 percent of immigration detainees.
An incoming president could direct the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security not to contract with private detention companies. The Obama administration did this (to limited effect) in 2016 for federal prisons...
and a DHS advisory council recommended to do the same for immigration detention later that year. The election of Donald Trump rapidly reversed that momentum, in a massive financial boon for the industry.
As a practical matter though, phasing out private prisons is a lot harder than writing a memo to cabinet secretaries, if it isnât accompanied by an aggressive plan for decarceration.
The private prison industry began in the early 1980s amid a rapid rise in incarceration, because the government didnât have enough space in public facilities. That remains the case, and a multi-billion dollar government buy-out of private facilities is highly improbable.
This is especially true for immigration detention, where the industry makes up most of the governmentâs capacity (local jails handle almost all of the rest).
As for cash bail, like chokeholds, the issue here is that the federal government can't tell local jurisdictions how to run their pretrial detention systems. It's already been virtually abandoned at the federal level.
Beyond just staking out a strong position against bail or convening a WH task force, a president would be mostly limited to working with Congress to pass legislation like Bernie Sandersâs proposed âNo Money Bail Act of 2018,â
which would have offered grants to states to adopt alternatives. The federal government could also withhold funding from jurisdictions that continue to use traditional cash bail.
On Marijuana, that's something a president can actually do. A new president could move to downgrade cannabisâ designation as a schedule one controlled substance, even without Congress. That would probably need to start with a DoJ request for a review of the scientific lit...
...on the drug, involving agencies like Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency. A congressional bill, like the MORE Act, which Harris wrote, could accomplish the feat much faster.
