Editorial: San Quentin’s transformation takes next step with departure of death row inmates

The state’s plans to turn San Quentin prison into a model rehabilitation center means moving death row inmates to other high-security prisons.

Many have already been moved out of the bayfront prison, but the state is accelerating plans to move the last 457 condemned men.

San Quentin’s death row has been in limbo since Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 signed an executive order imposing a moratorium on executions.

The carrying out of California’s death penalty was already mired in a legal stalemate, with the federal court questioning whether the state’s use of lethal injections was cruel and unusual punishment.

The last state-conducted execution was in 2006, when Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was in office.

Most death row inmates have died due to old age or suicide.

The state says that moving death row inmates complies with voter-approved Proposition 66, a 2016 ballot measure that allows for condemned prisoners to be moved from San Quentin and also requires them to work and pay most of their income to victims.

Officials say their goal is to have San Quentin’s death row emptied by July.

Moving them from San Quentin is also expected to save money because there won’t be the need for the number of correctional officers now required to guard condemned inmates when they leave their small cage-like cells.

In recent media interviews with a few inmates, the condemned men said they looked forward to moving to newer quarters and prisons where they can move around and learn skills. With two dozen other prisons ready to take them, in some cases, there is a possibility to be moved closer to those who could visit them, they said.

The relocation of the condemned inmates sets the stage for the conversion of San Quentin into a place designed to rehabilitate lawbreakers and end patterns of recidivism, which are costly to taxpayers and a threat to public safety.

Turning the state’s oldest prison into a model for rehabilitating inmates, helping them steer their lives away from crime, is an ambitious task. It’s going to take more than changing the sign at its gate. It is going to take more than moving death row’s inmates. It is going to take a major shift in attitude, from inmates to correctional officers.

San Quentin, however, has the makings of this shift, with inmates already involved in onsite college courses and vocational programs.

The state is investing $380 million to help make this revisioning work. Some of that money is going to renovations to improve living conditions at the prison.

Moving death row inmates to other high-security prisons certainly is a sign of the state’s commitment to make this change work, to make it a model for the state’s other prisons.

Incarceration comes at a huge price to taxpayers. Recidivism is a threat to public safety.

But providing a better pathway for California’s inmates to turn their lives away from incarceration and crime certainly is worth a try, especially when the current model of our prisons isn’t providing the tools and training they need.

Newsom’s model aims to replicate the success of incarceration programs common in Scandinavian countries. But turning San Quentin from the notorious home of California’s death row to one that focuses on job training, educational opportunities, mental health programs and substance-use help may create a promising pathway for today’s and future inmates to turn their lives around.