Will lawmakers halt Newsom’s plan to reform San Quentin?
SACRAMENTO — Two months after Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his plan to transform San Quentin State Prison from a maximum-security prison into a rehabilitation and education facility within the prison system, lawmakers are pushing back saying his proposal lacks a detailed strategy behind it.
During budget committee meetings last week, lawmakers grew noticeably frustrated over the limited information provided by the Newsom administration and corrections officials regarding their plan to reimagine California’s oldest correctional facility.
“I try not to consider it insulting, but it’s close,” Assemblyman Tom Lackey, R-Palmdale, said at a recent budget committee hearing. “I find it to be very disturbing that we’re following a pathway where we’re being asked to fund first and answers will come later.”
Meanwhile, the agency tasked with advising lawmakers on fiscal and policy matters is imploring the Legislature to reject the governor’s funding requests and demand accountability.
A newly released report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office blasted Newsom’s office for failing to set any clear objectives and for putting forward a $380 million funding proposal that lacks crucial information, such as the project’s full scope and projected operating costs.
The report called the governor’s plan to complete the transformation in less than three years “unnecessary and problematic.” It also found that the initiative could cost upwards of $20 billion to scale across California’s correctional system, as the governor expressed was his intent.
“While the administration has articulated some broad approaches to pursuing the goals of the California Model, such as ‘becoming a trauma-informed organization,’ it has not identified any clear changes to policy, practice, or prison environments it deems necessary to achieve the goals,” the LAO report reads.
Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, deferred questions to the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
CDCR spokesperson Terri Hardy called the criticisms “premature” and said that a newly-appointed advisory council — led by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg — was “actively working to develop recommendations to transform the prison by the end of the year.”
Newsom announced in mid-March that the 171-year-old penitentiary, which houses about 3,900 inmates and was home to the nation’s largest death row, would overhaul its approach to rehabilitating inmates to emphasize services and support over punishment.
Dubbed the California Model, Newsom said the plan that incorporates methods used in Norway and other Scandinavian nations would launch by the end of 2025.