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By the time Gov. Gavin Newsom leaves office, California will have five fewer state prisons than when he came into power.
Some California state lawmakers want to make it six.
They’re pointing to a new analysis that shows the state’s incarcerated population has fallen so dramatically that California can close another prison and still have capacity for the 90,000 or so people presently locked up.
That report prompted blunt questions to California Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Macomber at a budget hearing last week. Lawmakers anticipate tight budgets if not deficits in upcoming years, and the Newsom administration estimates that closing a prison saves about $150 million a year.
Sen. Laura Richardson told Macomber she would prefer to keep prisoners in tight quarters, such as double-person cells, if it meant saving money that could be used to help people in need.
“If had to choose between two inmates who are double-celling, which is allowed and has been done for many, many years, versus being able to provide health care for citizens, people who, not citizens, for people who reside in the state, of California, I would clearly err on that end,” said Richardson, a Democrat representing Inglewood.
The debate is possible because California prisons are holding about 70,000 fewer people than in 2011, when severe overcrowding and judicial orders compelled the Legislature to create a plan that would draw down that number.
Today, the system is under a court order to limit the number of prisoners to 137.5% of its capacity. The Legislative Analyst’s Office last month reported that prisons have space for 98,000 people, meaning the corrections department has about 8,000 more beds than it needs.
“Reducing the number of empty beds in operation by closing an additional prison would allow for significant savings,” the report said.
The analyst’s office recommended that lawmakers reject major infrastructure improvements at prisons that could be shut down. It singled out a prison in Monterey County known as the Correctional Training Facility as one to consider closing in part because it needs costly repairs.
The next prison to close is the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco of Riverside County, which is expected to shut down by October. Previously, the Newsom administration closed prisons in Blythe near the Arizona border, Tracy in San Joaquin County, Susanville in rural Lassen County. The state also ended its contract with a private prison in Kern County, a site now being operated as an immigrant detention center.
The Newsom administration expects to spend $18 billion on prisons next year, a sum essentially flat since 2024. Corrections Secretary Macomber at the budget hearing said the department accounts for about 5.6% of the state budget, down from 10% a decade ago.
Macomber told Sen. Richardson that closing a prison can create challenges for correctional staff and for incarcerated people. For instance, he said each prison gains about 100 inmates each time the state closes a facility, which can cause backlogs in rehabilitation programs.
It also limits space for programming and for initiatives that would give inmates room to prepare for life after prison, such as providing single-person cells.
“The downside of prison closures, it does impact public safety,” Macomber said.
“The folks at that prison that gets closed, the incarcerated, they don’t go home. I move them to other prisons. They go on wait lists for rehab and programming. We add more overcrowding, more double-celling, more challenges.
“If we want to reinvent our system, we need more interaction, more rehab programs for our population,” he said.
