For two years, I walked the lower yard track at San Quentin State Prison, watching construction crews tear down an old furniture factory to build a $239 million Scandinavian-styled learning center. They have now removed the fence blocking the incarcerated population’s view of the new facility. Last week marked the opening of the building, only for incarcerated people who have designated programming inside.
Gov. Gavin Newsom was back at San Quentin a few weeks ago for handshakes, photographs, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony to memorialize these next step towards “normalization” — one of the four pillars of his so-called “California Model” of reform that re-named the prison I live in as the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. This is what normalization means to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR): Instead of sending people back to their communities, the state is spending millions on new buildings, and accessibility for incarcerated people is unclear at best.
Read the full opinion from Steve Brooks at Truthout here.
