San Quentin State Prison will be transformed into a different kind of rehabilitation facility and on Wednesday, the governor’s lead advisor met with the warden, and inmates, about plans to change incarceration at the state’s oldest prison.
“This is the right place to take on this bold vision,” said Darrel Steinberg.
He’s Governor Gavin Newsom’s lead advisor for the San Quentin transformation.
“Now we have an opportunity to create the California model by building on what’s already happening in such a positive way here, but you also see the constraints. You see that the biggest constraint is space,” he said.
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Nearly $380 million, mostly bond money from the state, will be used to transform the prison with the largest death row in the country into a facility focused solely on rehabilitating prisoners to reduce recidivism.
The governor’s vision has three main parts:
- Provide the incarcerated skills and tools to re-enter society.
- Update living conditions
- Change how correctional officers are trained
It will also include tearing down a massive warehouse and rebuilding it to work like a college campus.
Local
NBC Bay Area took a tour of the place on Wednesday and captured the coding program, a new computer lab, as well as the media center, which includes the San Quentin News, a monthly news publication.
Steve Brooks is editor in chief and said, “One of the things that we celebrate here at San Quentin News is that we have a zero percent recidivism rate, out of the dozens and dozens of people that have worked in the media center, none of them have came back to prison for committing a crime.”
A K-9 training program was also introduced recently.
Nathan Venega has been in prison for 24 years and was transferred to San Quentin two years ago.
He’s training Wendle who will eventually go to the Wounded Warrior Project or a disabled person.
“He makes me human again, I shut everything off when I came in here, I’ve been here 24 years and he just let me open up my heart back up, ” said Venega. “Made me feel again, got rid of my anger. All that is gone.”
The name of the prison will also be changed to the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.
There are challenges ahead before the transformation begins in 2025 and a number of lawmakers are skeptical of the idea.
Nearly 4,000 incarcerated people live at San Quentin and some will need to be moved to make space for some of these renovations.
A task force is expected to make recommendations on how that will work and what programs should be included by December.
