Politics drives prison move

Illogical closure could hurt movement for ending state’s mass incarceration

When your town’s biggest business is punishment, how do you fight back when you’re being punished?

That’s the predicament facing Susanville, a small Lassen County town in northeast California.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is righteously trying to close prisons, a historical reversal and acknowledgment that the state incarcerated too many people for too long. But it is wrongfully targeting one of Susanville’s two state prisons, the California Correctional Center, or CCC, for closure. Shutting CCC would reduce the town’s population, cost it jobs and weaken the town’s health care infrastructure.

And state officials don’t seem to care. There is no discernible plan for mitigating impacts on the community. The state has not offered a full accounting of the reasons for their unexpected decision. Before the state announced it would close CCC, the Susanville facility had not appeared on public and private lists of California prisons that should close.

In the absence of public explanation, it’s fair to wonder about the real motives behind the attempted closure. California’s prison construction boom was driven by politics. Will the state, in closing prisons, repeat that same mistake?

Susanville’s closure is a puzzle because there’s an obvious alternative prison for closure: California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. The Riverside County prison has been in disrepair, and Gov. Jerry Brown tried to shut it down a decade ago. In 2016, it appeared all but certain to close, but it got a reprieve, so that the state had flexibility to manage shrinking prison populations.

Even if Norco can’t be closed, there are other, better places to shut down than Susanville’s CCC.

Last year, Californians United for a Responsible Budget, a criminal justice reform coalition, published a list of 10 prisons the state should close, based on five criteria (health conditions, overcrowding, costs, location, homicide-suicide rates). Norco was on the list. So were prisons in Tehachapi (Kern County), Vacaville, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles County and the San Joaquin Valley.

The coalition has welcomed the Susanville prison’s closure, noting that its remote location makes it hard for families to visit. But the coalition has criticized the Newsom administration’s process for prison closings as arbitrary and confusing.

That’s an understatement. The way Susanville is being closed — without due attention to local context — could undermine the movement away from mass incarceration.

Compare the likely impact of closing Norco to closing Susanville. Shutting down Norco would likely be an economic boon; the prison site is in a busy part of the Interstate 15 corridor in Riverside County and could be redeveloped as a hotel or for other business purposes. But in Susanville, geographically isolated in northeast California, any closure would do real damage.

Correctional officers at the closed prison won’t lose their jobs but will be reassigned elsewhere, probably forcing their families to move. That will hurt Susanville economically — officers are wellpaid — and because officers are leaders in civic organizations. Prisoners represent a significant portion of Susanville’s population, more than 6,000 of the town’s 16,000 people; losing one of the prisons means losing funding tied to population. And the town’s health care infrastructure, including its hospital, depends in part on serving the people who live and work at the prison.

But such local realities are taking a back seat to politics in this decision. Norco is in Inland Empire — a competitive region where Democrats have been making gains — while Susanville is small and conservative. Lassen County had the highest vote share in the state for President Donald Trump’s re-election and for the failed 2021 gubernatorial recall.

Of course, the location of prisons has always been a political issue. Lassen knows this, and its leaders have emphasized the community’s devotion to its prisons.

In a community meeting on the Susanville courthouse steps last year, state Sen. Brian Dahle, a former Lassen County supervisor, talked emotionally and practically — in ways that did not satisfy the angry crowd — about how Susanville might convince Newsom to negotiate with the town and to close a different prison instead.

“Let’s think like Democrats,” one local community leader said.

But it’s not clear if a negotiated settlement is possible. Susanville has taken the fight to court, challenging the shutdown on the grounds that it violates the California Environmental Quality Act. The announced date for deactivating the prison is June 30, but the legal fight may extend beyond that.

And there is a new political dimension. Dahle, the state senator, is now running for governor, on a platform of public safety. If the Republican advances through June’s first-round election, as seems likely, the debate about prison closures, in Susanville and elsewhere, will go statewide.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square, which is hosting an online event, with an in-person audience in Susanville, entitled “What Would the End of Mass Incarceration Mean for Prison Towns?” on Thursday at 6 p.m. You can RSVP at Eventbrite.

The way Susanville is being closed — without due attention to local context — could undermine the movement away from mass incarceration.