By Stephen Hobbs
The Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday celebrated the opening of a new $239 million education and learning center at San Quentin, the prison on the shores of San Francisco Bay, in a room packed with supporters.
The sparkling complex is a key part of Newsom’s effort to change the reputation of California’s oldest prison — which once had the nickname of the “Bastille by the Bay” — and the state’s correctional system overall, to be one more focused on rehabilitation and education.
“Tens of thousands of people every single year are being released from the system,” he said. “Are they coming back broken? Are they coming back better? Are they coming back more enlivened, more capable?”
The four new buildings look more like those found on a college campus than a prison and include a cafe, library, classrooms and a technology center. Their opening could represent a major shift from the prison’s past.
It used to house California’s death row and was the site of over 400 executions. And it is in line with the governor’s “California Model.” Drawing on lessons from trips to Norway, prison officials are emphasizing more relationship-building among staff and other changes, including improving bedding and furniture to be more comfortable and attractive for inmates.
That said, the governor wasn’t starting from scratch when he changed the prison’s name in 2023 to the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center and announced the plans for the new complex.
Inmates had produced an award-winning podcast, kept up a newspaper and hosted visits and games with representatives of professional sports teams well before then.
Eric Allen , 32, who works for the newspaper and as an anchor on a video program called Criminal Justice News , has been incarcerated at the prison for about two and a half years.
“It was really interesting to see someone invest that in incarcerated people,” he said of the new buildings.
Reforming aspects of incarceration
Getting to this moment wasn’t guaranteed. Newsom had to overcome criticism from legislators who didn’t initially want to provide the money he requested to fund the project, as well as from others who wanted to spread the money used for the complex across the state system.
Newsom acknowledged that pushback and said it would have “felt like nothing” to distribute the hundreds of millions of dollars in that way.
“We needed to be smash-mouth,” he said. “We needed to do something bold and big.”
State Sen. Roger Niello, R- Fair Oaks , said he would much rather see that money used to support the implementation of Proposition 36, which voters passed in 2024 to strengthen penalties for retail and drug crimes.
“Given the tight budget that we have, every dollar that is spent on one thing cannot be spent on something else,” he said Friday.
The final price included demolition, design and construction, said Diana Crofts-Pelayo , a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office.
The governor eventually secured more than $380 million for the project, but an advisory committee led by former Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg recommended reducing the overall cost.
“What is justice?” Steinberg said in a speech during the ceremony. “When people commit a crime, accountability is appropriate. At the same time, no human being who serves time should ever be forgotten or forsaken.”
Newsom, who is in his final year as governor, waxed about how the new complex represented a major mindset shift. Before the center was built, prison officials also demolished a wall that had separated parts of the prison since the 1850s.
“We needed to break down, yes, the physical wall, but we also needed to break down the mindset,” he said, “that frankly had put us in this box.”
What challenges might correctional staff face when implementing a rehabilitation-focused model like the California Model?
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