Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has announced a plan to transform the state’s oldest prison into a rehabilitation, education, and training center modeled after Norwegian incarceration systems, which are far less restrictive than US facilities.
Newsom told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that his goal was “ending San Quentin [prison] as we know it” and working to “completely reimagine what prison means”.
San Quentin, established in 1852 on a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, houses nearly 4,000 people, including hundreds on its infamous death row, the largest in the United States, which is on track to be demolished.
The Democratic governor said that by 2025, he plans to transition the massive penitentiary into a final stop of incarceration before individuals are released, with a focus on the job training for trades, including plumbers, electricians, or truck drivers, the LA Times reported. His recently released budget proposal includes $20m to start the effort.
“The ‘California Model’ the governor is implementing at San Quentin will incorporate programs and best practices from countries like Norway, which has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world – where approximately three in four formerly incarcerated people don’t return to a life of crime,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Thursday.
The San Quentin Rehabilitation Center will be the new name of the prison. The transformation described by Newsom would represent a fundamental shift away from the extremely punitive American system, at least for San Quentin.
With nearly 2 million people behind bars at any given time, the United States has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world; beginning in the 1980s, state prison populations began dramatically expanding across the country as “tough on crime” efforts created mandatory long and indefinite sentences and locked up youth for life.
Despite being regarded as a leader in criminal justice reform, California’s prison system remains overcrowded, with thousands of elderly people languishing behind bars and Black residents disproportionately imprisoned for decades as a result of harsh sentencing laws enacted in the 1990s.
Scandinavian incarceration models, which have gained increasing attention from some US lawmakers, are less focused on punishment and are intended to provide imprisoned people with support and a sense of normal life behind bars in order to prepare them for reintegration into society.
This can include having access to computers, televisions, and showers, as well as having consistent classes and programming, fresh food, more freedom of movement, and stronger connections to the outside world.
“Do you want them coming back with humanity and some normalcy, or do you want them coming back more bitter and more beaten down?” Newsom told the LA Times.
A massive overhaul of San Quentin would be a massive undertaking, and there are many unanswered questions about what the transition would mean for its current residents as well as the tens of thousands of others housed throughout the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
San Quentin has a long and recent history of abuse, overcrowding, guard misconduct, and medical neglect scandals. It is also a prison with far more programming than some of the CDCR’s remote and rural facilities, including a well-known podcast produced by incarcerated San Quentin journalists.
The governor’s office noted research showing that every $1 spent on rehabilitation saves more than $4 on costs of re-incarceration; that people who enroll in education programs behind bars are 43% less likely to return to prison; and that crime survivor groups say victims prefer sentences that include programming designed to prevent recidivism.
Helping people “return to their communities as productive members of society” is critical in a state where roughly 35,000 people are released from prison every year, the office added.
Newsom gathered with Democratic lawmakers and advocates inside San Quentin on Friday, telling reporters the prison would become “the preeminent restorative justice facility in the world”, one focused on “homecoming”.
He criticized the traditional model’s failures, pointing out that two-thirds of people released from CDCR return: “Where is the public safety in that…?” He also proposed transforming death row into an “honor yard,” with more programming and privileges.
Assemblymember Mia Bonta noted that California spends $14.5bn on prisons each year – $106,000 a person – but traditionally puts only about 3.4% toward rehabilitation: “It’s time for a significant paradigm shift.”
Steve Brooks, an incarcerated journalist, and editor of the San Quentin Newspaper were among the reporters present, and he asked the governor how the Scandinavian model would be implemented in a prison where residents are still concerned about overcrowding and living conditions.
People were also concerned, according to Brooks, that those convicted of violent crimes would be barred from participating in programs under the new system.
“I’m not looking to cherry-pick specific offenses,” Newsom responded. “I support people who are actively interested in changing themselves, not just passively.”
James King, co-director of programs at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and a former San Quentin prisoner, said it was encouraging to see a push to prioritize rehabilitation, but he was sceptical of CDCR’s ability to fundamentally reinvent itself.
“The culture of CDCR and the [correctional officers’ union] is extremely biassed against incarcerated people, and it’s going to take a lot more than a policy change to change that,” he said, adding that the San Quentin facilities are over 100 years old and weren’t designed for classes, programming, or healing environments.
“I’m not sure if it’s possible to have people trained by CDCR, who are rooted in a very discriminatory mode of being towards the people they incarcerate, facilitate a cultural shift.”
He said he hoped to see the governor continue to close more prisons and push for alternatives to incarceration and sentencing reforms that allow people to come home: “There’s no humane way to hold people in captivity.
The answer to creating safer communities is not found in building better prisons. Prisons are fundamentally harmful to our society, and to any notions of justice or safety.”
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