By Nigel Duara

WHAT THE BILL WOULD DO

AB 2178 by Assemblymember Phil Ting, a Democrat from San Francisco, would cap the number of empty beds at all California prisons at 11,300 by the summer of 2026. It would require further cuts each year until reaching the state’s minimum capacity requirement of 2,500 empty beds. That likely means closing prisons.

The measure is meant to reduce spending on prisons, which house about 65,000 fewer inmates today than they held in 2011. Despite the falling inmate population, California is expected to spend $18 billion on state prisons over the next year, an annual budget of $3 billion more than at the start of the Newsom administration in 2019.

WHO SUPPORTS IT

A wide variety of public defense and civil rights organizations support Ting’s bill. They include the ACLU of Northern California, the California Public Defenders Association and a prison advocacy group called Californians United for a Responsible Budget. The California Nurses Association also backs the proposal. 

WHO IS OPPOSED

The bill is opposed by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union for prison guards, which said that tightening capacity limits will mean tighter quarters that pose more danger to guards. It’s also opposed by the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians, a smaller union that represents mental health workers in state prisons and state hospitals.

WHY IT MATTERS

California prisons have an empty bed problem. The prison system, which was once so crowded that inmates slept in hallways and day rooms, has cut down on its population over the last decade under federal court orders. The result is that the prison system now has too many empty beds, at least 13,000 in January. By 2028, the prison system is anticipated to have 19,000 empty beds, about one-fifth of the system’s total capacity.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has moved to close four prisons, a reduction that his administration says will save about $3.4 billion by 2027. A recent report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office says the system can afford to close five more, which would save an additional $1 billion a year. 

GOVERNOR’S CALL ❌

Newsom announced Sept. 29 that he vetoed the bill, saying that he “fundamentally disagreed” with the approach: “We must leave the practice of warehousing incarcerated people in the past and instead focus on a future that provides humane and dignified housing that facilitates rehabilitation. Codifying this prescriptive approach to ‘empty beds’ will undermine this effort.”