The People in Blue
meet with members of
governor’s advisory panel
for roundtable discussion
On June 9, The People In Blue, a dozen San Quentin residents dressed in the blue clothing of incarcerated Californians, formed a circle in San Quentin’s Protestant Chapel. The group of 12—of which I am a member—represents a contingent of incarcerated people who want our voices to be part of the Governor’s plan to transform San Quentin State Prison into the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.
The group met with members of the advisory team working on transforming San Quentin into a rehabilitation center styled after the Norwegian prison model, which prioritizes the health and wellness of incarcerated people.
Present at the meeting were SQ Warden Ron Broomfield, the prison’s Chief Executive Officer Rhonda Litt, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Alison Pachynski and formerly incarcerated person Jesse Vasquez.
The ensuing conversation lasted two hours, ending just before the first town hall meeting, where officials discussed plans for San Quentin’s transformation with the greater prison population.
The People In Blue is a name intended to symbolize all of the incarcerated stakeholders who wish to have a voice in the transformation, for not only the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, but also the proposed California Model as a whole.
The purpose of the group is to make its best effort to examine and compile the concerns of the many incarcerated in California’s prison system, and then to present and advocate for those concerns with one collective voice. Together, the diverse group of twelve has over 200 years of lived carceral experience. Many are lifers, who stand to gain or lose the most from a San Quentin and system-wide transformation. Our plan is to work with the Inmate Advisory Council and the administration to ensure that all segments of the population have a voice in the process.
At the meeting, the incarcerated group laid out 10 suggestions about what change is possible right now for San Quentin as well as the entire California prison system. One of our most pressing concerns is the fate of the lifer population with respect to San Quentin Rehabilitation Center and the California Model.
Many lifers have served 25, 30, and sometimes more than 40 years. It is they who have been most impacted by the traumatizing effects of the state’s justice system.
Yes, they are “violent offenders.” And it is this group, the violent offenders in California, who have been making change inside the system. It is they who, when finally given an opportunity to return to society, return as changed people. The evidence is in their rate of recidivism. It is the lowest rate of any group of returning citizens.
Facing the prospect of never going home, lifers are the people most invested in the prison community. They are the ones who live in the prison the longest, and both attend and create effective rehabilitative programs.
When the governor made his historic announcement about transforming San Quentin, he talked a lot about the programs at the prison that are successful, in large part due to the efforts of violent offenders serving life sentences. These programs include San Quentin’s media center, the San Quentin News, Ear Hustle, The Last Mile’s Coding 7370 program, and Mount Tamalpais College. Much of the success of each of these programs is attributable to the efforts of the lifer population.
It is one of the great ironies of prison reform history in California, that the group with the lowest rate of recidivism is the group consistently banned from participating in the benefits of reforms. Lifers are under the greatest threat of being removed from the envisioned San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, because legislators and prison officials traditionally do not define them as “low risk offenders.”
Violent offenders have been carved out of every reform effort since CDCR decided to re-house lower-level offenders in county jails, a move also known as “realignment,” in 2011. Likewise, they were carved out of Propositions 36, 47 and 57, the COVID-19 releases, Penal Code Section 1170, the recall of sentencing reforms, and so on. These reforms have favored younger, lower-level offenders with higher rates of recidivism.
As the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center is yet undefined, the elephant in the room is: what is going to happen to violent offenders and the lifers?
The mass exodus from Death Row may be a sign of what is to come. Designers of the new system will expel those who have committed the most serious crimes and are doing the most serious time if they do not meet the definition of a “low risk offender.”
I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong. But I have never witnessed a team of experts, comprised of these who have never served a day in prison, create a workable rehabilitative model of health and wellness.
I do not see that changing with the governor’s new plan, unless his team listens to our voices and includes all segments of the population in their reform efforts.
Incarcerated people have never before had the opportunity to participate constructively in discussions formulating ideas for prison reform. The People in Blue feels that it is imperative for the voices of the mostly black and brown people, steadily aging in California’s cages, to have their voices heard at last.
