Newsom said efforts to reduce that rate will boost public safety.
Norway has a low rate of people who reoffend after leaving prison.Īs of 2015, two-thirds of people convicted of felonies in California were rearrested within two years of release, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California. In maximum-security Norwegian prisons, cells often look more like dorm rooms with additional furniture such as chairs, desks, even TVs, and prisoners have kitchen access. Oregon and North Dakota have also taken inspiration from the Scandinavian country’s policies. Officials from the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation toured Norwegian prisons in 2019, where they took note of the positive interactions between inmates and staff. Newsom’s office cited as a model Norway’s approach to incarceration, which focuses on preparing people to return to society. A panel of judges later ordered the state to dramatically reduce the prison population because of overcrowding. The latest plan is part of a decades-long transformation of the state’s sprawling prison system, which went under federal receivership in 2005 after a court determined prison medical care was so lacking it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. The state spends about $326 million operating San Quentin annually, and Newsom’s administration didn’t say if the new approach would save money. The move by Newsom, who recently began his second term, follows his 2019 moratorium on executions, which drew criticism from some who argued he was neglecting the will of voters who in 2016 upheld the death penalty at the ballot box.įrom 2020 to 2022, more than 100 inmates with death sentences were transferred from San Quentin to other prisons under a pilot program run by the state. He is allocating $20 million to launch the plan.
It remained unclear how far the plan would go to reimagine a prison once home to California’s most notorious criminals, like Charles Manson, and the site of violent uprisings in the 1960s and 1970s.įlorida police arrest man, search for 2 others in Memorial Day beach shootingĪ group made up of public safety experts, crime victims and formerly incarcerated people will advise the state on the transformation, which Newsom hopes to complete by 2025. If San Quentin can do it, it can be done anywhere else.”ĭespite Newsom’s ambitious tone, he offered few concrete details on what the new system would look like and who it would serve. “San Quentin is iconic, San Quentin is known worldwide. “We want to be the preeminent restorative justice facility in the world - that’s the goal,” Newsom said from an on-site warehouse that will house his envisioned programs.
The prison houses more than 2,000 other inmates on lesser sentences. The facility will be renamed the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center and the more than 500 inmates serving death sentences there will be moved elsewhere in the California penitentiary system. Gavin Newsom on Friday touted a plan to overhaul the facility in favor of a rehabilitation-centered approach that could become a model for the world. (AP) - Visiting San Quentin, California’s oldest prison once home to a gas chamber used to execute inmates on the nation’s largest death row, Gov.
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