The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation issued a statement last week indicating that its final stages of closing San Quentin’s death row, which began earlier this year, will continue through the summer.
CDCR implemented a pilot transfer program in January 2020. By the time it ended in January 2022, the state had transferred 104 death-sentenced people from San Quentin to 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 to alternate housing units at CCWF.
CDCR has now transferred an additional 50-70 or so individuals from San Quentin to prisons as far north as Pelican Bay in Crescent City, to Calipatria Prison in Imperial County. All 20 individuals imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility have been moved to different cells in the general population and will remain there.
CDCR stressed in its statement that the transfer is “Part of our commitment to compliance with voter-approved Proposition 66” (a 2016 initiative), and incarcerated individuals will participate in work programs “to facilitate court-ordered victim restitution.” The statement noted that CDCR is engaged in outreach to “keep registered victims informed about the initial movements of death-sentenced individuals.”
None of the 644 death-sentenced individuals is being resentenced. “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.
Once all transfers have been completed, 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.”
