The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation plans to complete the transfer of those on San Quentin’s death row to other prisons around the state by the end of March.
CDCR implemented the pilot transfer program in January 2020. By the time it ended in January 2022, the state had transferred 101 death-sentenced people from San Quentin to various other prisons “with the necessary security level, similar to people serving life without the possibility of parole.” Ten people from the Central California Women’s Facility were sent to alternate housing units at CCWF.
Over the past few weeks, corrections officials have been interviewing those still at San Quentin to determine where they preferred to be sent, offering each four options, two in southern California and two in northern California, indicating they would attempt to accommodate individual preferences. Transfers were ongoing this month, and officials hope to have the process of sending the remainder of the 650 people on death row to “appropriate custody-level prisons” completed by the end of next month.
None of those sentenced to death has been or will be resentenced as a result of the transfers, CDCR stresses. “Transfers of death-sentenced individuals to other prisons allows CDCR to phase out the practice of segregating people on death row based solely on their sentence. This is consistent with CDCR’s move toward a behavior-based system where incarcerated people are housed according to their individual case factors, behavior, and other needs,” the department stated on its website.
The completion of the transfer program means that the 528 single-person cells in East Block, which housed all those sentenced to death except women, will be empty. CDCR says it is considering two options for the vacated space to make it possible for the state to “improve living conditions across San Quentin to house people humanely.” Those options include retrofitting East Block and creating a “mix of improved housing units and appropriate day-use common spaces such as kitchens, study, living room, to promote rehabilitation in the space;” or tearing it down and building “cost-effective, modular housing that meets present-day institutional living standards.”