To someone living outside the dank walls of California's San Quentin Prison, the changes might seem small. A sergeant greets a prisoner with “good morning” rather than barking an order. Guards start calling the prisoners “residents.” They shake hands, exchange jokes. The toilet paper locker gets replenished when it’s empty. The men don’t have to ask. At the state's oldest and most infamous state prison, a monumental shift is underway through an experiment dubbed the California Model, an effort Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in March 2023 to reimagine prison life, starting at San Quentin, reports the Los Angeles Times. The changes are modeled after prison operations in Norway and other Scandinavian countries, where incarceration is considered less a tool for punishment than an opportunity for recovery and rehabilitation. Newsom envisions a prison system that doesn’t just confine lawbreakers but prepares them for reintegrating into communities after their release. That means expanding job training and substance-use treatment, but also replacing a prison culture built on hierarchy and fear with opportunities for connection and normalized social interactions.
The San Quentin prison opened in 1852. It will take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to fully implement the California Model at San Quentin. Whether there’s support for expanding the approach across the state’s 32 prisons hinges on what plays out over the next few years. In some ways, San Quentin was the easiest place to start. Perched on some of the most expensive real estate in California, the Marin County location affords connections with a host of progressive Bay Area research and legal aid groups eager for reform work. The prison also encompasses the extremes of corporal punishment: Until recently, it housed the state’s death row for men, a grim unit of concrete and iron, where narrow cells are stacked five stories high. There, some of the state’s most brutal sociopaths and serial killers have lived out their days in what is effectively solitary confinement.
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