Gavin Newsom: Convert San Quentin into World's Best 'Reentry Facilities'

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) told Jon Stewart on the latest episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart — titled “America’s Incarceration Epidemic” — that he intends to convert San Quentin State Prison in California to one of the world’s best “reentry facilities.”

“We’re shutting down San Quentin as we know it,” Newsom stated during a segment produced at the prison. He emphasized, “San Quentin — as a prison, as we know it  — will cease to exist in 2025. This thing is shut down as we know it, and I’m converting it to one of the world’s — I hope — preeminent reentry facilities.”

Newsom said “deep programming” is being used on inmates to ensure their successful rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

The governor said, “We have 500 volunteers here with a thousand of the 3,200 prisoners here that are in deep programming — 80 different programs — and we could take it 10x in terms of scaling. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Californians must “reimagine” the criminal justice system, Newsom held:

You just have to reform, I think, a consciousness with the public, it begins with a public. They’ve been conveying fear and anger and it’s manifested in terms of recidivism rates that don’t have to persist and exist, and so we have to completely reimagine to integrate the outside and the inside in a much more strategic way. 

We’ve got to look at reentry with a much longer runway and not just dump someone out there on the bus, with a couple bucks, going right back to the neighborhood where it all started and all of a sudden within 14 minutes they may be back in the old past patterns and got to make sure that happens before you’re released and have real programming so there’s a real handout.

That’s not easy, but it’s absolutely achievable. This is not that complex.

“We’re in the homecoming business,” Newsom added.

Stewart praised Newsom’s stated intentions. He said, “You’re talking about changing this from a factory into something more human, but you can’t treat them as humans when they live in this alien, dehumanizing factory environment. This system isn’t built to cherish each individual and get them to see their own worth.”

Newsom’s office recently declared that San Quentin State Prison would undergo a “historic transformation,” including being renamed to “San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.”

During a group discussion segment hosted by Jon Stewart, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner framed the U.S. criminal justice system as weaponized against black and brown people.

“Even at the level of the laws we pass, the entire system has been oriented towards arresting, incarcerating, and destroying the futures of broke people, black people, and brown people,” he claimed.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.