In 2020, following the tragic murder of George Floyd, there was a moment when it seemed like America, including California, was ready to reform our broken and discriminatory criminal justice system.

In 2024, as California

stands

Parliament returns from vacation, criminal law is once again in the foreground. But now the proverbial pendulum has started to swing and a new era of tough crime appears to be emerging through the cracks of our good intentions.

Proposition 47, which helped lower California’s prison population by changing certain non-regulations

–

violent crimes, from felonies to misdemeanors, are likely to be reversed, if not reversed, this year.

The California Highway Patrol has been called in to stop shoplifting, despite the fact that no one is quite sure how big the problem is.

Medicine

Dealers are facing murder charges as fentanyl overdose deaths continue to rise, a new tactic in a new war on drugs that differs little from the tactics that led to overdoses.

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the incarceration of black and brown people during the crack epidemic of the 1980s, when we insisted we could arrest our way out of poverty and addiction.

It is a troubling reversal of both attitudes and reforms that, as history has proven, will not lead to the safer communities we all want.

But what’s about to happen at San Quentin State Prison has the potential to fundamentally change crime and punishment in the Golden State and beyond.

Because as much as we want to believe that a single law, more police, or harsher punishment can protect us, the truth is that the best way to reduce crime is to prevent it from happening, not with the pounding fist of the punishment. that has dogged us for decades with prisons and jails where more than a third of people return within a few years of their release.

But instead, by helping people find other paths and giving them opportunities to survive in ways that uplift rather than prey on our communities, an approach with proven results in both the U.S. and other countries, where incarceration is killing dozens years ago, embraced rehabilitation not as an option, but as an option. a mandate.

Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he wanted to transform San Quentin, California’s oldest and most famous prison, into a new kind of prison, modeled on the Scandinavian principles of rehabilitation, where the mandate to change lives is written into law.

With his penchant for slogans, he called it the California Model and left the details for later. A long-awaited explanation of what the California model will look like in practice was released Friday, offering both an ideal and a blueprint for what is a radical, subversive and important shift in what it means to be in prison.

“This is a big deal,” Darrell Steinberg told me. He co-chaired the committee that drafted the recommendations and is mayor of Sacramento, a city equally plagued by the drug addiction, mental illness and homelessness that

have

has driven much of the shift in attitudes toward crime. So he knows as well as anyone that voters want results, not experiments.

“This will increase public safety for the obvious reason that if people have the means to succeed from the outside, they will have a better life and be much less likely to commit another crime,” he said.

It’s visionary, he said, but also achievable.

A core part of the transition is changing the role of correctional officers from enforcers and adversaries to participants in rehabilitation, a metamorphosis that the union representing correctional officers supports. Under the plan, officers would take college-level classes on trauma-informed practices and would be expected to interact with the inmates as mentors and guides.

San Quentin itself would also get a makeover, albeit limited by our current economic reality. Cramped cells that currently house two people in 46 square meters, about half the size of a decent bathroom, would be removed to allow single-occupancy space which Steinberg said is the minimum dignity requirement.

Correctional officers would also see an upgrade. Home prices are so high in Marin

district

where San Quentin is located,

That

it is impossible for many to live close enough for a daily service (a two-bedroom averages more than $3,000 per month), forcing them to travel for hours.

That’s why some officers have resorted to “dry camping” in trailers with homeless conditions, without running water, electricity or even sewerage. They cram a week’s worth of work into a few days just to make ends meet. The new plan would give prison staff a campsite with basic amenities and access to showers and safe spaces to relax, perhaps making the job less stressful.

For incarcerated people, the change will mean a coordinated effort to arrange mental health, education, job training and substance abuse treatment services on Day 1 of their sentence. And that there are people who implement and support those plans.

Although that seems simple, that is not happening now. People are largely left to their own devices to navigate an opaque and inefficient system that is so archaic

That

some of it isn’t even automated. Waiting lists are long and information can be difficult to obtain.

If the ideas outlined in the plan survive upcoming budget negotiations (in a year with a large and unexpected deficit), it will mark a culture change at the most notorious prison in the nation’s second-largest state prison system (Texas is the only state with a larger inmate population).

While bringing California’s model from paper to practice will take years, the San Quentin proposal has the potential to be the largest and most meaningful criminal justice reform in decades if we do it right, which Of course, there is always a question as to when it will come to the government.

But it’s a major shift with the potential for real payoff, not the knee-jerk anger and fear of proposals like scrapping Proposition 47, which will only repeat the mistakes of the past.

There will always be predators and there will always be crime. And admittedly, it all sounds touchy and vague, like we’re about to spend a ton of money holding the hands of criminals while they talk about their youth and get their degrees.

And to be honest, that’s part of it, something we shouldn’t ignore.

At its core, the California model is about dignity and compassion, creating policy around the belief that healing is not just for the innocent, and that healing is not gentle.

Fixing people, especially those who are so broken that they can hurt others, is the most difficult task.

But it can be done.

And if California turns San Quentin into a place where that happens, we will all be safer.