A NEW $239 MILLION Scandinavian-inspired Learning Center has opened its doors inside of San Quentin Rehabilitation Center after a one-day delay due to alleged technical difficulties with an alarm system.
The opening this past week was a bittersweet one for many incarcerated individuals, who were forced to say goodbye to an education annex where they have enjoyed access to rehabilitative programming for decades.
A memo released over the incarcerated population’s Viapath tablets about the Learning Center read, “We are doing a slow opening, which means not all classes and programs will be open yet. The cafe, library, and common areas (indoor and out) will not be accessible at this time.”
This new facility will now be the main focus of rehabilitation, education, and personal development of incarcerated individuals and is supposed to emphasize humanity and help reduce recidivism.
In February, Gov. Gavin Newsom was at the prison for handshakes, photographs and a ribbon-cutting ceremony, where he thanked Warden Chance Andes for getting the Learning Center ready as scheduled.
This new facility will now be the main focus of rehabilitation, education, and personal development of incarcerated individuals and is supposed to emphasize humanity and help reduce recidivism.
“He could have sabotaged this. He could have dragged his feet. He could have said one thing to me and then said something very different to everybody else,” Newsom commented in February.
Since that time, groups that have space already reserved in the new building, education staff, media personnel, and others have been loading office furniture, desks, chairs, tables, computers and printers on trucks and carts.
Incarcerated individuals and group sponsors who do not have space reserved in the new Learning Center were hit with a sudden surprise eviction notice. For more than two weeks, a dozen groups, including a youth offender group called Kid C.A.T., alcoholics and narcotics anonymous, domestic violence prevention, and many others have been sidelined and were waiting to see if and when they receive space in the new facility.
Staffing shortage limits weekend access
The education annex will now be used solely for the Integrated Substance Use Disorder Treatment program, sponsored by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and computer literacy groups that operate Monday through Friday between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Nights and weekends in the education annex will no longer be available because correctional officers will no longer be posted there. This will leave a large portion of rehabilitative real estate unusually vacant.
In March of 2023, Newsom announced his ambitious vision for an enhanced programming facility at San Quentin, while standing inside what was then an old warehouse known as Building 38.
“The 80 programs that are well-established here, we scale up at a whole new level,” the governor said in March 2023.
CDCR allocates 5% of its $14.2 billion budget toward prison rehabilitation programs.
Weeks after the ribbon-cutting, San Quentin’s warden Andes expressed being under pressure from budgetary concerns and efforts to please both the incarcerated population and his staff. He even faces opposition to normalization efforts to make life in prison similar to life in the free world.
“The purpose of this center is to prepare the incarcerated population for successful reentry into the community,” Andes said in February.
But on March 17, the warden gave a guided tour of the Learning Center to some incarcerated individuals in certain rehabilitative groups. He shared that not every idea for this new building is practical at this time.
Prison staff are not ready to share the same restroom areas as the incarcerated population. Some prison staff have expressed concerns about incarcerated individuals freely accessing the cafe and grabbing their own food items for purchase from shelves. It was also made clear during this tour that very few incarcerated individuals will actually get to see a rooftop view of the Bay.
Every door of this new Learning Center must be accessed by a key card. Only prison staff will have access to these key cards and sponsors or volunteers will be required to sit in the rooms at all times that incarcerated individuals access the new space. Grassroots incarcerated groups that have sprung up and flourished for decades may find difficulty finding a place inside the new center.
Limited space in programs
Another problem faced by the population is that this new facility only has a hundred job assignments for a population of 2,500 incarcerated individuals. Even vocations like media, podcasting, and The Last Mile coding program, have limited space, which may only be available to about 10% of San Quentin’s population. There will still be wait lists for programs and some incarcerated individuals may not get to access the Learning Center.
On the first day of the Learning Center, correctional officers set up a white awning as a temporary checkpoint to screen incarcerated individuals entering the new center. They checked to make sure individuals were assigned to a group, they had identification cards and state-issued blue CDCR clothing. Although there are three new multi-plex buildings, only building A was open and only three rehabilitative groups were running programs.
Correctional officers also announced over a PA system, “If you do not have a program in the Learning Center, don’t attempt to access the building.”
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.