{"id":290855,"date":"2023-02-23T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/?p=290855"},"modified":"2023-02-22T19:06:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T19:06:00","slug":"how-many-prisons-does-california-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/_ko\/justice\/2023\/02\/how-many-prisons-does-california-need\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin Newsom moved to close 4 California prisons. How many more can he shut?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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California spends more than $15 billion a year on its prison system. Now, with the number of people behind bars plummeting, the Newsom administration is moving to shut down more institutions. <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n

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California used to need lots and lots of prisons. Big prisons, little prisons, prisons with special cells for gang leaders and prisons for those convicted of nonviolent financial chicanery. There were so many prisoners packed into so many prisons that federal courts intervened, mandating that the state find a way to alleviate the overcrowding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the inmate population\u2019s peak in 2006, California incarcerated 165,000 people in state prisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today \u2014 after a decade of sentencing reforms and a surge of releases tied to COVID-19 \u2014 California prisons house a little more than 95,000 people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how many prisons does California actually need? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDifficult decisions have to be made, but if we don\u2019t make those decisions, the alternative is paying hundreds of millions for prison beds we don\u2019t need to be paying for,\u201d said Caitlin O\u2019Neil, an analyst at the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Neil is the co-author of a new report<\/a> that lays out how the state can close up to nine of its 33 prisons and eight yards within operating prisons while still complying with a federal court order that caps the system\u2019s capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The potential closures signal a seachange in California criminal justice, representing the wind-down of the tough-on-crime policies that packed prisons in the 1990s and offering one of the few ways the state can cut costs in its $18 billion prison system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If we don\u2019t make those decisions, the alternative is paying hundreds of millions for prison beds we don\u2019t need to be paying for.”<\/p>Caitlin O\u2019Neil, an analyst at the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

California prisons held about 120,000 inmates as recently as 2019. That year, newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a goal to close a single prison during his tenure<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to see, in my lifetime and hopefully my tenure, that we shut down a state prison,\u201d he said that year in an interview with The Fresno Bee editorial board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, he has already effectively closed two and his administration has plans underway to shut at least two more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 2021, the state closed Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy. The California Correctional Center in Susanville is scheduled to close in June, along with yards at six other prisons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two other prisons, in Blythe and in California City, are scheduled to close by March 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even after those shutdowns, according to the LAO analysis, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has the space to close five more entire prisons by 2027. Today, the corrections department operates 15,000 empty beds, according to the LAO. That number is expected to reach 20,000 empty beds by 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe state pays for empty beds, and that number hasn\u2019t been justified at this point, \u201cO\u2019Neil said. \u201cIt\u2019s really just math, simple arithmetic.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the communities are rallying to fight the closures. Susanville unsuccessfully sued the state<\/a> to halt the shutdown of California Correctional Center. Officials in Blythe are making their own plan to lobby for local jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to lose prison families and their children,\u201d said Blythe Vice Mayor Johnny Rodriguez. \u201cIf they do close this, all these families have to go somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which California prisons should close?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The state is committed to reducing its inmate population, a process that began in earnest with new laws in 2011 that diverted more convicted people from prison to local jails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

California now spends about $106,000 each year to keep a person incarcerated for a year, according to the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office. Political support for those expenses has been dropping, particularly among Democrats<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal, O\u2019Neil wrote in the LAO report, should be for the state to avoid spending on major capital improvement projects at a prison, then deciding to shut it down, like the audio-visual surveillance system installed at the prison in Blythe, or the $31 million health care facility built at the California City prison in 2021 \u2013 just months before the state announced its closure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But deciding which facilities to close based on their infrastructure needs has proven to be a frustrating analysis for legislators. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assembly Budget Committee chairman Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat, said the report is \u201csignificant,\u201d but wonders how to implement the closures when he has had trouble parsing just how the prison system chooses which facilities it plans to mothball. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe appreciate and we understand how difficult the job is that they are doing, but it has been difficult getting the most basic information,\u201d Ting said.  \u201cLike for example, we asked for information on capital planning, so instead of actually giving us a plan, they just told us all the deferred maintenance for every single facility across all the prisons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cUh, well, that’s fine, but they didn’t tell us what’s the schedule, which ones are taken first, which ones they’re doing last. And then when they present the report to us, with their budget requests, they don’t really give us any sense of how they were prioritized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CDCR did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment. Neither did the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union representing prison guards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some advocates want fewer prisons<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For prison abolitionists like Woods Ervin, co-director of the anti-prison activist group Critical Resistance, the LAO report\u2019s conclusions were \u201csuper exciting\u201d and come close to their group\u2019s goals of closing ten prisons, and announcing the closures by 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is big,\u201d Ervin said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the prisons close, Ervin said, prison abolitionists are also watching what becomes of the facilities themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe clearly don’t want public facilities to become privatized and then reused for immigration detention,\u201d Ervin said. \u201dNor do we want it to be used for any kind of extractive industry.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closures, they said, should be followed by the state directing money to both the communities that lose a prison and to the home communities of the people who were incarcerated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happened in Susanville<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The question of what becomes of a town that once relied on a prison played out in Susanville last year, where the 1,600-bed, minimum-security California Correctional Center was scheduled for closure before the city sued in state court<\/a>, claiming the shutdown violated environmental laws and failed to follow the prison system\u2019s own rules for choosing which facilities to close. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A judge dismissed the case<\/a> when the Legislature passed a bill that exempted all prison closures from environmental review.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

City officials in Blythe watched what happened in Susanville and worried. Their facility, the Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, is scheduled to close by March 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blythe is a rural community dependent on its prison not just for jobs, but the ripple effects of a big employer, said Rodriguez, the city\u2019s vice mayor. The prisoners who cannot be treated in prison come to the community hospital, which means more medical jobs in town. The schools will shrink, he said, and teachers will lose their jobs. The inmate program at Palo Verde College<\/a> would disappear, costing the institution about 250 students each semester.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It has been difficult getting the most basic information.\u201d<\/p>assemblymember Phil Ting, San Francisco Democrat<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rodriguez, a former Riverside County sheriff\u2019s deputy, said more prisons mean fewer people breaking the law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith all the crime in California, you see the benefits of not having criminals in the community,\u201d Rodriguez said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(While certain crimes have risen somewhat during the pandemic, crime and the homicide rate<\/a> in California is far down from its peaks in the late 1980s and early 1990s.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anything, said Mallory Crecelius, Blythe\u2019s interim city manager, a prison in a nearby community makes more sense to close \u2013 the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, an older facility that\u2019s closer to a population center which isn\u2019t as economically reliant on the prison. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s apparently a sentiment with which Norco agrees: \u201cThe City of Norco\u2019s official position is, if the state is going to close a prison, the right prison to close is the California Rehabilitation Center,\u201d said Norco city spokesperson Kelli Newton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rodriguez and Crecelius said they will be lobbying the state to ask for the change, trying to keep their facility open while public sentiment shifts away from them and the case for public dollars just took a big hit. <\/p>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t

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State Justice Department hasn\u2019t probed \u2014 or even logged \u2014 all police shootings of possibly unarmed people<\/a><\/h3>\t\t\t\t\t\t

The department told CalMatters it can\u2019t say how many cases it chose not to investigate during the past 18 months under a new state law, which aimed to ensure state oversight of police shootings.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

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No way out: Why a mentally disabled man was jailed nine years awaiting a murder trial that never happened<\/a><\/h3>\t\t\t\t\t\t

Lorenzo Mays, who is intellectually disabled, spent years lost in a criminal justice system in California that too often fails people with developmental disabilities and mental illness. <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\uc544\ubc14\ud0c0 \uc0ac\uc9c4<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tby<\/span> Jocelyn Wiener<\/a><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t