Assembly subcommittee takes testimony urging closure of two state prisons

The legislative budget subcommittee in charge of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation discussed a topic this week that might have seemed inconceivable a generation ago: closing prisons.

The informational hearing by the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Public Safety dove into the department’s proposed $13.4 billion budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year on Monday, though legislators did not take a vote. Department Secretary Ralph Diaz began by noting how far the state’s prison population has already fallen.

“As of this morning we are at 123,023 inmates,” Diaz testified. “That figure represents about 42,000 inmates less than 2010. That’s about a 25% reduction.” Diaz cited Proposition 57, a 2016 voter initiative making it easier to parole inmates the law defined as non-violent, as a major reason behind the decline. He also said his office has been taking advantage of a provision in the Penal Code that allows them to recommend reduced sentences in some cases, adding it has had the effect of influencing more prisoners to participate in rehabilitation programs.

An analysis prepared by the committee quoted Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal in laying out the next steps: “The department projects that the population will decline by approximately 4,300 inmates between June 2021 and June 2024. If these population trends hold, the administration will close a state-operated prison within the next five years.”

The rationale behind closing a prison can be seen in a pair of reports issued last month by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The first found prison spending has continued to grow despite a smaller inmate population, in part due to the remaining population having a higher proportion of serious criminal offenders and mentally ill convicts.

The second report, “Effectively Managing State Prison Infrastructure,” urged the state to shutter two prisons instead of the one closure proposed by Newsom. This was in part due to the costs of maintaining older institutions; 12 of California’s 34 prisons opened in 1965 or earlier.

While the report stopped short of recommending specific prisons, it laid out criteria the Legislature could use in creating a prison closure plan by next year. These implied the oldest and likely most famous institution in the system could be a possibility. San Quentin State Prison opened in 1852 and is awaiting more than $1.6 billion in needed maintenance, the highest in the system, the report said. Four other institutions also topped $1 billion each in needed repairs.

The report’s author, senior policy analyst Caitlin O’Neil, testified she found the state could reduce the prison population by 6,200 by 2024, “enough to close two prisons.”

“This would allow the state to avoid infrastructure improvements at those two prisons and concentrate remaining efforts at the other prisons,” O’Neil testified.

She added that closing two prisons would also reduce operations costs by about $1 million a year. Some prisons have been in such poor repair they have led to lawsuits, she noted. Her report cited a 2019 ruling in which a judge found a “failed roof” at Corcoran State Prison resulted in animal contamination of food and constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.”

One of the attorneys who brought that case testified a short time later. Prison Law Office founder Donald H Specter, read from the judge’s order in In re: Escareno, 17W0140A (Kings Super Ct., filed Oct. 2, 2017), stating the “long-neglected facility ... is nearly irreconcilable with its location in a nation and a state of such abundance.”

“Please keep in mind that California’s prisons a very overcrowded,” Specter testified. “By their own estimates, system-wide they’re at about 130% of what they were designed for. Some prisons are at 160%.” Specter also praised the department for its recent work on population reduction and rehabilitation. He urged the state to reach the closure goal by releasing more prisoners early.

“Some of these prisons are really crumbling,” Specter said. “They make life for my clients, the people who are incarcerated, intolerable.”