In the event you’re serving exhausting time inside a California jail, you’ll typically end up caught in a cramped cell with a stranger. You grasp a bedsheet to fabricate the illusion of privateness between mattress and bathroom. Any little factor can erupt right into a supply of stress and angst — physique odor, loud night breathing, lights.
Every second turns into a check to keep away from confrontation or brawling. With no instant assist from officers, the concern and nervousness festers inside you. And daily, your psychological well being deteriorates.
“You don’t essentially know what the capability of this individual is, or like what their crime is,” mentioned Steven Warren, a resident inside San Quentin Rehabilitation Heart. “You’re not instructed any of that once you’re put in a cell with them.
“I don’t know if this individual has the propensity to homicide me in my sleep or commit a violent act towards me simply because they’re feeling some kind of manner.”
Some California policymakers and jail officers imagine it’s time to rethink these probably dangerous housing conditions. They contend that providing extra single-occupancy cells may serve the very best pursuits of jail residents and public security.
That’s potential as a result of California’s incarcerated inhabitants continues to say no — from its peak of over 173,000 folks in 2006 to fewer than 90,000 at present. A handful of prisons have closed, whereas modifications in resentencing and parole eligibility have helped launch 1000’s of people.
Beneath former Gov. Jerry Brown and now Gov. Gavin Newsom, rehabilitation and reentry alternatives stay a rising point of interest, too. San Quentin Rehabilitation Heart stands on the forefront of the dialogue, with an “earned residing” housing unit comprised completely of single-person cells and plans to equally repurpose the vacated Demise Row buildings. A spokesperson for the jail mentioned it’s “working towards” making single-person cells accessible to all incarcerated folks by spring 2026.
A invoice superior within the California Legislature this yr that goals to set up single-cell models at extra prisons. The measure didn’t make it to Newsom, but it surely’s anticipated to return in 2026.
“We wish folks to have the chance to return again to our group, and we wish them to try this within the healthiest method,” mentioned San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins, who helped draft the laws.
“You possibly can’t do this should you’re in an atmosphere that causes chaos and stress — or you may’t sleep, you’re having confrontations, you’re irritable since you’re sleeping with one eye open.”
Conversations spark change
Jenkins visited San Quentin quite a few instances during the last two years and spoke with Warren and others. Extra importantly, she listened.
“One of many conversations that we had inside with quite a lot of the residents was the cellmate on cellmate violence and all the points that include sharing a cell,” mentioned Jenkins.
She reached out to Assemblymember Damon Connolly, the Democrat representing San Rafael. Collectively, they wrote the Meeting invoice that proposes establishing single-occupancy cell pilot packages at 4 California prisons.
“To correctly be capable of interact in rehabilitative programming,” states the invoice’s textual content. “Incarcerated individuals should be capable of sleep with out concern of bodily hurt.”
Connolly mentioned that single-cell housing models moreover promote safer work environments for corrections officers and employees. “It matches in, for my part, with the bigger goals that the governor and many people have pursued.”
The state’s jail union agrees with Connolly and Jenkins.
The California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. normally has supported Newsom’s emphasis on rehabilitation for prisoners, and it has begun lobbying in public towards additional jail closures.
The 24,500-member union is a participant within the Capitol, the place it has given $7 million to state lawmakers since 2015, in line with the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. It additionally kicked in $1.75 million to assist Newsom defeat the 2021 recall marketing campaign towards him, and one other $1 million to again Newsom’s 2024 psychological well being poll measure.
“The specter of violence and stress in shared cells… fosters conflicts amongst cellmates, necessitating intervention from correctional officers, who place themselves in jeopardy, thereby escalating the general threat throughout the facility for all events concerned,” the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. mentioned in a assist letter to Connolly.
Warren recalled a 2021 scenario of cellmate violence that he can’t neglect.
“A younger man beat an older gentleman to dying in a cell perhaps 4 or 5 cells down from me,” he mentioned. “It was loopy. After every part was all mentioned and performed, there have been so many conversations about how these two folks shouldn’t be collectively — about how one individual was having a difficulty with the opposite individual, however (officers) not giving it full regard of the psychological well being points.”
A brand new period of decarceration
Outdated prisons, corresponding to San Quentin and Folsom, have been initially designed to accommodate one individual per cell. In response to mass incarceration and overcrowding within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, the corrections division threw beds into areas by no means meant for housing. That they had folks sleeping in gyms, hallways, and even stairwells.
And so they welded and bolted further bunk beds into virtually each single-person cell.
Many years of jail rights litigation ultimately compelled the system to handle the difficulty of housing folks at 200% design capability. Two class-action lawsuits, Coleman vs. Newsom and Plata vs. Newsom, led to federal oversight and a mandated lower to 137% capability.
Present housing charges stand at about 120% design capability, averaged throughout all 31 state prisons.
Newsom faces some stress to shut extra of them. His administration estimates that shutting down one jail saves about $150 million a year, and it’s the one dependable approach to truly convey down corrections spending. He has closed 4 prisons thus far — with another shutdown within the works.
Some advocacy teams and incarcerated people opposed Connoly and Jenkins’ invoice to supply extra single-cell housing. Often known as jail abolitionists, these teams wish to see as many prisons shut as potential. They imagine offering extra single-cell models might intervene with that agenda.
Kenthi Porter, an incarcerated resident of Ironwood State Jail, submitted a letter to the Legislature by the abolitionist group Provoke Justice that mentioned single-cell insurance policies “might reinforce the infrastructure of mass incarceration… by using present extra mattress house and offering a pretext for halting future jail closure or increasing current jail infrastructure.”
Connolly emphasised that the invoice doesn’t try to legislate on any jail closure choices.
“The objective right here is to not in any other case hold prisons open which might be slated to be closed or to reopen closed prisons,” he mentioned. “I totally perceive the objective of decreasing incarceration that’s aligned with the governor’s objective of closing sure prisons. This isn’t what that’s about.”
Jenkins mentioned that closing prisons to accommodate lowering jail populations amid fiscal price range concerns is probably not the very best resolution.
“Closing prisons is symbolic,” she mentioned. “I don’t suppose that it represents a real take care of the people who find themselves at the moment incarcerated. I feel now we have to consider the situations that they’re in and never symbolic gestures.”
Incentivizing good habits
One large roadblock that may derail parole and reentry alternatives is the widespread jail observe of holding each cellmates accountable for the actions of 1. When officers discover contraband like narcotics, weapons or cellphones in a cell, they generally situation a disciplinary guidelines violation report that holds each occupants chargeable for the infraction.
“A write-up may very well be given to you based mostly on the truth that your cellmate was concerned in sure actions,” mentioned Warren. “It’s a must to collectively pay for what this individual did as a result of, in right here, you’re responsible till confirmed harmless — and more often than not, they normally discover us responsible.”
Disciplinary infractions stay a part of an incarcerated particular person’s everlasting file and have an effect on their possibilities of parole or resentencing. A mistake or exoneration might get documented, however these stories by no means fully go away.
Jenkins requested San Quentin administration to supply information on the quantity of write-ups that occurred inside Donner, its single-cell “earned residing” unit for residents who reveal disciplinary-free conduct.
“San Quentin had over 3,000 write-ups final yr, and out of these 3,000, I imagine it was seven that got here out of Donner,” mentioned Jenkins. “What you see is that it’s working. It’s efficient in that it permits the correctional officers who work in that unit to really be capable of have much less stress themselves as a result of they know that these inmates are incentivized to behave.”
Erick Maciel resides in Donner and has been there since its inception as an earned residing unit in 2023. He mentioned it’s the primary and solely time he’s had a cell to himself in additional than eight years of incarceration.
“Donner seems like I’m on parole,” mentioned Maciel. “It’s the closest factor to virtually feeling free in jail as a result of we’re not feeling stress from correctional officers or something like that. It’s tremendous essential, as a result of now I’m capable of simply focus on myself.”
Staying in Donner requires remaining disciplinary-free, so Maciel and others within the unit act accordingly.
“I’m afraid of the results,” he mentioned about probably getting a write-up and shedding his single-cell privileges. “I’m very aware that I’m following the foundations on a regular basis — as a result of I respect the place I’m at.”
Joe Garcia writes for CalMatters.
