The inmates serving death sentences at San Quentin State Prison will be moved elsewhere in the California penitentiary system, Gov. Newsom’s office announced, and it will be renamed the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.
The inmates serving death sentences at San Quentin State Prison will be moved elsewhere in the California penitentiary system, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced, and it will be renamed the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.
Full details of the plan were not immediately made public, though officials said the facility would concentrate on "education, rehabilitation and breaking cycles of crime." Newsom was expected to share more during his visit, the second stop on a four-day policy tour that he’s doing in lieu of a traditional State of the State address this year.
At the overhauled San Quentin, vocational training programs would set people up to land good-paying jobs as plumbers, electricians or truck drivers after they’re released, Newsom told the Los Angeles Times.A group made up public safety experts, crime victims and formerly incarcerated people will advise the state on the transformation. Newsom is allocating $20 million to launch the plan.
Meanwhile Taina Vargas, executive director of Initiate Justice Action, an advocacy group based in Los Angeles, said she is pleased the state is moving toward rehabilitating incarcerated people but more drastic changes are needed to transform the criminal justice system that imprisons so many people. But Californians have also supported easing certain criminal penalties in an attempt to reduce mass incarceration as part of a more recent movement away from tough-on-crime policies that once dominated the state.
The prison has housed high-profile criminals such as cult leader Charles Manson, convicted murderers and serial killers, and was the site of violent uprisings in the 1960s and 1970s.
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