A DIVERSE GROUP of organizations working toward prison reform came together for a discussion about building coalitions, power, and aligning messaging to help transform California prisons.
The criminal justice reform nonprofits Smart Justice California and Whole Consulting collaborated to plan a Fall Summit that took place Nov. 12-13 at the Embassy Suites in Sacramento.
Guests included Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Oakland), Chesa Boudin (former San Francisco district attorney and executive director of Berkeley Law and Justice Center), Sarah Larson (assistant secretary for legislative affairs for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation), the group Amend at UCSF that focuses on public health in prisons, and many others.
The guests also included formerly incarcerated leader Ken Hartman of Transformative Programming Works, a coalition of community-based organizations working in prison. Hartman served 38 years on a sentence of life without the possibility of parole before being commuted by former Gov. Jerry Brown.
“We always get together at these things thinking that we’re going to do something that has never happened before,” Hartman said. “But everything (that is progress) has happened before. These things (progressive reforms) are not revolutionary. We just retreat and then we come back, and we retreat, and we come back.”
Building a statewide reform alliance
According to Smart Justice California and Whole Consulting — the two organizers of the summit — the purpose of this meeting was to develop a shared vision for changing California prisons and to bring together movement leaders and stakeholders to define this vision, commit to collective action, and demonstrate community leadership.
This new push for a collaborative reform effort grew out a coalition of organizations that came together around the time of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement on March 17, 2023, that he would be transforming San Quentin State Prison into a rehabilitation center and creating a new “California model” that focuses on humanizing the way people are incarcerated in the state.
“This is about getting serious about addressing the issue of crime and violence in our state, by doing things differently and acknowledging, as was said by many speakers, with humility, that we have failed for too long,” Newsom said in 2023.
After that day, the governor commissioned a group of prison administrators, community leaders, prison volunteers, and formerly incarcerated individuals to act as his advisory council to write a report on how to reform San Quentin. It resulted in the release of the Reimagining San Quentin report in January 2024.
The governor also proposed building what is now a $239 million Nordic-style education center, set to open in the spring of 2026. But even as construction is ongoing, there is a growing concern that the California model reform effort is stalling.
Hartman brought this up at an earlier prison reform event hosted in September by The Last Mile, an organization that teaches coding skills to incarcerated people.
“There is a different wind blowing now, we have to be careful what we do,” he said. “We have to be at the forefront of the California model. We have to prove every day that it works.”
Hugo Gonzalez of Success Stories Program, which delivers transformative programs to youth and adults who have caused serious harm, introduced the first panel discussion about why participants were at the event.
It included Hartman, Anne Irwin, the founder and director of Smart Justice California, who has been pushing the CDCR and the state Legislature to move away from a brutal prison system to one of humanity, and Assemblymember Bonta, who has helped champion at least one prison reform bill (Assembly Bill 1104) since she took office in 2021. AB 1104 clarified in the state’s penal code that the purpose of incarceration is rehabilitation.
“There is a different wind blowing now, we have to be careful what we do. We have to be at the forefront of the California model. We have to prove every day that it works.”
Ken Hartman of Transformative Programming Works
In the second panel session, Boudin shared the story of his parents’ incarceration and how it led him down the road to becoming the district attorney of San Francisco. The former DA pointed out that although prison seems more humane and prisoners have more rights now, there are more people in prison today than when prisons were less humane.
“The alignment is off,” he said. The current California prison population in custody is 90,615, per a recent report issued by the CDCR’s Division of Correctional Policy Research and Internal Oversight.
Larson from the CDCR talked about the California model and how it has lost a lot of support from correctional staff over time. One problem discussed is that the model was poorly defined. However, she said the hope is to keep pushing the model forward.
Lived experience shifts the conversation
Sponsors for The People In Blue, an organization focused on helping change the culture in California prisons, were also in attendance. A proposal created by TPIB was shared with CDCR, highlighting decades of lived carceral experience by the group’s membership.
One of the core ideas expressed at the event was the willingness of outside organizations to be guided by the lives and needs of those impacted by incarceration.
System-impacted leaders and community members shared their actionable goals. Chris Johnson, executive director of Success Stories Program, told the crowd that while the groups work to uncage people, they also need to provide relief for people inside.
He talked about focusing on healing over harm and building community networks. He also said everyone should acknowledge that prisons are inherently dangerous places.
Tina-Marie Silva of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners gave firsthand accounts of underutilized resources in CDCR. “Fill the empty rooms,” she said, pointing out that all of the empty spaces in prisons that could have rehabilitation and vocations to promote healing are instead sitting empty.
Crime survivor Sonja Spencer shared her story to highlight the importance of incarcerated individuals having a broader community connection and how it aids in healing. Spencer was the victim of a home invasion robbery and kidnapping of her baby. A high-speed car crash resulted in the death of her child.
But she agreed to have victim-offender dialogues with two of the offenders. Spencer said these dialogues aided in healing and led Spencer to find she had something in common with one of the assailants. They both had endured abuse and came from underserved communities.
“Society looks at it as easy to separate us. How do you deal with it if we are the same?” she asked.
Kelly Savage-Rodriguez and Phil Melendez are formerly incarcerated persons who argue that mass warehousing is not the solution. Savage-Rodriguez was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 1998 for a murder she did not commit. Her sentence was commuted by Brown, the former governor, in 2017.
Today she is the Drop LWOP Coordinator for CCWP, where she advocates to get the over 5,000 incarcerated people determinant sentences rather than life terms without the possibility of parole.
Melendez was also released in 2017, after almost 20 years in prison. He works with Smart Justice California, advocating for prison and sentencing reform. Both held a discussion about promoting dignity by ending extreme sentencing and focusing on getting more people resentenced as a necessary vision for transforming California prisons.
Daryl Norcott, director of strategy and innovation at Amend at UCSF, highlighted their collaborative work with CDCR to engage with some of the most underserved populations living in isolated prison spaces and helping to train staff to be more humane in dealing with individuals who present as behavioral problems.
Voices from inside the walls
The next day, participants left the hotel for California State Prison, Solano. The goal was to build authentic connections between legislators, advocates, CDCR and some of the incarcerated community.
The team went on a guided tour of housing units and program spaces, including a Delancey Street Foundation program and CDCR’s Division of Rehabilitative Programs building.
After the tour, James King, who is the director of programs for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, moderated a panel of incarcerated individuals, who talked about decarceration, strategies for culture change and access to programming.
The four incarcerated panelists were serving long-term life sentences. Each talked about what keeps them hopeful and why they choose to participate in rehabilitation programs.
After the panel discussions, participants were treated to a catered lunch from Delancey Street restaurant in the prison and enjoyed small circle conversations.
Some of the incarcerated individuals discussed the need to change laws around criminal enhancements and there were discussions about the need for CDCR to make more resentencing recommendations.
“I heard CDCR is considering plans for lowering the prison population and creating more single cells in the prisons. They also plan to change some rules around overfamiliarity,” said King. “Hopefully that happens. Meanwhile our plan is to continue elevating the voices of the people inside to help bring about change.”
At the end of the event, participants were asked to submit a commitment card to continue with the shared vision of changing California prisons.
Melendez with Smart Justice California said, “The Fall Summit was a great step at convening the most comprehensive group of stakeholders and we’re very hopeful at the outcomes. We’ll be looking to convene again with attendees who have expressed an interest in continuing the conversation about how to reform the system and create more public safety.”
Steve Brooks is a former California Local News Fellow working with Bay City News Foundation, reporting from inside San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. He is currently working on a Social Change fellowship with Columbia University. See more of his work at Inside/Out on Local News Matters.