Editorial: Trimmed San Quentin proposal is still worth pursuing

Gov. Gavin Newsom garnered a lot of media attention in March with his proposal to turn San Quentin State Prison into a model for preparing inmates for a life outside prison after having served their sentences.

His proposal even included changing the name of the 170-year-old institution to San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, creating what he calls the “California Model” of incarceration.

The objective is to reduce the state’s troubling history of recidivism.

But Newsom, in making his announcement and earmarking $360 million to convert San Quentin, was sadly light on details.

Even after the state Legislative Analyst’s Office raised questions regarding financial vagaries of Newsom’s plan, the governor made it one of his top budget priorities and won the Legislature’s endorsement.

His goal is right, but his plans to achieve it were sort of a financial and procedural blank check.

The governor formed a 21-member advisory council headed by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a former president of the state Senate, to fill in those details.

Taking San Quentin, the home of the state’s death row and at one time filled with some of the state’s most hardened criminals, and turning it into a true pathway for inmates’ rehabilitation, is more than symbolic. In recent decades, the prison has methodically moved in that direction.

Still, the change is going to take a huge capital investment, money for new programs and the expense of training correctional officers in what promises to be a big change in their job.

Over the past six months, the council has taken input from advocacy groups, victims groups, San Quentin inmates and correctional officers.

The council has turned in a report to the governor that would trim Newsom’s budget proposal for the rehabilitation center and programs by at least a third, to roughly $240 million.

The savings, the council says, should be earmarked for needed construction and repairs to the aged prison, which today holds 3,900 men. Improvements and repairs are needed to make the prison’s cells and facilities safer, more humane and liveable. Work is also recommended for housing for prison employees.

The council’s work has provided a baseline of details that Newsom’s March proposal sadly lacked.

The follow-up legislation not only changes the name of the prison, but it exempts any construction and demolition for state historic, environmental and typical bidding requirements.

The governor’s plan, politically advanced as a “groundbreaking transformation,” is laudable, if not long overdue. The advisory council’s conclusions agree that it is one worth pursuing, but that Newsom’s budget proposal was too ambitious.

The bureaucratic shortcuts that he proposed and won legislative approval for need to be closely monitored to protect against costly expenses.

The council’s work is done, but there still needs to be some sort of practical effective oversight.

The public deserves to be told about details before demolition and construction plans are approved.

The governor’s overall concept is a good one. California’s recidivism rate of around 50% is costly, for taxpayers, public safety and inmates’ lives and families.

Newsom’s goal is ambitious, but one that has been sorely needed for years.

“San Quentin is becoming a national model to show positive rehabilitation can improve the lives of those who live and work at prisons and make all communities – inside and out of our institutions – safer,” Newsom said after receiving the advisory council’s report.

Implementation of this seismic reform is not going to be a simple task, from construction to changing the mindset of state corrections.

It is the right thing to do, but it needs to be done the right way.