San Quentin to be Converted Into Scandinavian Rehab Campus

Earlier this month Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the oldest prison in California, and the most expensive to maintain, will be transformed into a rehabilitation center.  Nigel Duara of Cal Matters reports that the Governor’s vision is to copy the rehabilitation campuses in Norway, where inmates can wear their own clothes and cook their own food while attending classes to get college degrees and licenses in trades like plumbing and truck driving.  A bill to allow similar programs in other, more modern prisons was vetoed by Newsom last year because it was too expensive.  According to the Governor, the price tag for this transformation will be $20 million.  In 2021 the state spent $1.6 billion just for maintenance of San Quentin.  This follows the Governor’s plan to close three other California prisons and his decision to allow the early release of over 70,000 violent and serious inmates, some after serving less than half of their sentences.   Two of those inmates were arrested for raping teen-aged girls in an El Cajon motel last week.

California is not Norway.  Violent prison gangs, divided by race, control most of the inmates in California prisons.  They operate criminal enterprises that traffic drugs across U.S. borders, defraud state entitlements out billions of dollars and arrange for murders both inside and outside of prison.  As a former warden of Folsom Prison told me years ago, “The inmates enforce the discipline here.  If nobody goes over the wall today, we’ve done our job.”  Prison gangs will undoubtedly take advantage of the lower security, campus-like environment Newsom and his supporters envision.

To transform San Quentin, which was built in 1852, into some kind of campus will cost much more than $20 million.  With a reported budget deficit this year of $22 billion , California should be closing down San Quentin and selling the 432 acres of ultra-prime ocean-view real estate it sits on, and using the proceeds to build one or more a new facilities inland, away from the expensive coast.

California’s Governor, its other elected statewide officers and most members of the Legislature live in fantasyland, where there are no consequences for stupidity.