If you are serving hard time inside a California prison, you will find yourself stuck in a cramped cell with a stranger. He hung the beageet to create a parallel of privacy between the bed and the toilet. Any little thing can explode into a source of conflict and angst – body odor, snatches, lights.
Every second becomes a test to avoid confrontation or conflict. Without immediate help from the authorities, fear and anxiety warm inside you. Day by day, your mental health deteriorates.
“You don’t have to know how big that person is, or what their crime is,” said Steven Warren, an intern at San Quentin Rehtin Rehabilitation Center. “You weren’t told anything about that when you were put in the cell with them.
“I don’t know if this person is more likely to kill me in my sleep or commit an act of violence against me because they feel some kind of way.”
Some California policymakers and prison officials believe it’s time to rethink these dangerous housing situations. They argue that offering high occupancy cells would be in the best interests of prison residents and public safety.
That’s possible because California’s incarcerated population continues to decline — from a peak of more than 173,000 in 2006 to 90,000 today. A few jerseys were closed, while a change in temper and amnesty helped free thousands of people.
Under Gov. Jerry Brown and now Gov. Gavin Newlom, regeneration and replication opportunities remain a growing area of focus,. The San Quentin Rehabilitation Center is at the forefront of the debate, with a “recovered” housing unit made up of single-person cells and systems for replicating facilities for outgoing deaths. A prison spokeswoman said it was “working” to make individual cells available to all inmates by spring 2026.
A bill advanced in the California Legislature this year that aims to establish solitary confinement units in more prisons. The estimate didn’t make it into the story, but it’s expected to return in 2026.
“We want people to have the opportunity to return to our community, and we want them to do so in a healthy way,” said San Francisco Dist. Atty. Broke Jenkins, who helped write the law.
“You can’t do that when you’re in a place that’s causing chaos and stress – or you can’t sleep, you’re coping, you can’t get upset because you’re sleeping with one eye open.”
Conversations Spark Spark
Jenkins visited San Quentin several times over the past two years and spoke with Warren and others. Most importantly, he listened.
“One of the conversations we’ve had within a number of residents was the style in which he’s very comfortable with all the issues that come with sharing a cell,” Jenkins said.
He reached out to Asseblom Damon Connolly, Demontation representing San Rafael. Together, they wrote the bill that proposes to establish residential cell housing programs in four California prisons.
“To be able to do well with the rehabilitation programs,” says the text of the Bill. “Prisoners should be able to sleep without fear of physical harm.”
Concolly said the single-cell housing units also promote safe work environments for corrections officers and staff. “It is compatible, in my opinion, with the big goals that the governor and many of us have driven away.”
The state prison union agrees with Connolly and Jenkin.
California Officials Reform of California Administrative Procedures assn. In general, New York’s emphasis on rehabilitation of inmates has continued, and community mobilization has begun to close the prison.
The 24,500-member union is a player at the Capitol, where it has given $7 million to the State since 2015, according to RealtThers Digital Development database. It also kicked in $1.75 million to help Newloom Defeat the 2021 Recall Campaign against him, and another $1 million to the New Health Ballot measure.
“The threat of violence and dissension of shared cells … tasters conflict between funds, need to intervene in the risk, increase the risk that exists within this institution for all concerned,” the California agreements for the management of other systems of Califormia assem. says in the link support manual.
Warren recalled the 2021 scene of their violence that he will never forget.
“A young man beat an old man in the gym maybe four or five cells down from me,” he said. “It was crazy. After it was all said and done, there was a lot of discussion about how these two people shouldn’t have been with anyone else, but (Officers) didn’t fully address mental health issues.”
A new era of self-exclusion
Older prisons, such as San Quentin and Folsom, were originally designed to house one person per cell. In response to mass incarceration and overcrowding in the 1990s and 2000s, the Department of Corrections threw beds into spaces never intended for housing. They had people sleeping in the gym, on the sidewalks, and even on the stairs.
And they moved and packed more beds in almost every single cell.
Decades of prison rights finally forced the system to address the issue of housing people at 200% design capacity. Two class action lawsuits, Coleman vs. New Newlom and Plata vs. New news, led to the reduction of the Federal and authorized reduction in 137% capacity.
Current housing rates stand at nearly 120% capacity, combined for all 31 state prisons.
Newloom is under some pressure to close many of them. His administration is closing that closing a single prison saves about $150 million a year, and is the only reliable way to deliver corrections. He has closed four prisons so far – with one more closure in the works.
Other advocacy groups and foreclosed borrowers are opposed to Connolly and Jenkins’ bill to provide more single-family homes. Known as the prison doctor, these groups want to see as many prisons as possible. They believe that providing more cell units soon could disrupt that agenda.
Kenti Porter, a resident inmate of Ironwood State Prison, submitted a letter to the Legislature through the Abolitionist group Start Justice, which referred to excessive bed closures or strengthening the existing prison infrastructure. “
It is strongly emphasized that this Bill does not attempt to legislate any prison closure decisions.
“The goal here is not to keep prisons open to be closed or to reopen closed prisons,” he said. “I completely understand the intent to reduce incarceration that goes hand in hand with the governor’s intent to close some prisons. This is not something specific.”
Jenkins said the prisons are getting closer to achieving a prison decline.
“Closed prisons are symbolic,” he said. “I don’t think it represents real care for people who are incarcerated right now. I think we have to think about the conditions they’re in and not a symbolic gesture.”
Humility Good manners
Highway blockades with possible paroles and the possibility of re-incarceration When officers find Contrabland such as narcotics, weapons or cell phones in custody, they are often issued a disciplinary report holding residents responsible for intrusion.
“Writing can be given to you based on the fact that those households were involved in certain activities,” said Warren. “You have to pay jointly for what the Man has done because, here, he is guilty until he is innocent – and most of the time, they tend to find us guilty.”
Disciplinary disruptions remain part of an incarcerated person’s permanent record and affect their chances of peace or panic. An error or improvement can be documented, but those reports never go away completely.
Jenkins asked the administration of San Quentin to provide money for the amount of writing that took place inside the donner, its only “acquired” unit for citizens who exhibit disciplinary behavior.
“San Quentin had over 3,000 write-ins last year, and of those three, I believe seven out of the Drove,” Jenkins said. “What you see is that it works. It works because it allows the correctional officers who work in that unit to be able to put more pressure on themselves because they are made sure that these inmates are honest and behave well.”
Erick Maciel lives in Donner and has been there since its inception as a living unit he received in 2023. He said it was the first and only time he had been arrested in more than eight years of imprisonment.
“Donner feels like I’m in Sarle,” said Maciel. “It’s the closest thing to feeling free in prison because we don’t feel pressured by correctional officers or anything like that. It’s very important, because now I can focus on myself.”
Staying in Donner requires easy to defend discipline, so maciel and others in the unit acted accordingly.
“I’m afraid of the consequences,” he said of the possibility of writing and losing his one-cell awards. “I’m very mindful that I always follow the rules – because I’m grateful for where I am.”
Joe Garcia writes calmly.
