{"id":191325,"date":"2026-02-24T11:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/191325\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:36:07","slug":"at-san-quentin-newsom-shows-off-the-anti-trump-model-of-public-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/191325\/","title":{"rendered":"At San Quentin, Newsom shows off the anti-Trump model of public safety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A strange quirk at San Quentin state prison<\/a> is that most of those incarcerated behind its towering walls are unable to see the San Francisco Bay that literally laps at the shore a few yards away. <\/p>\n

That changed recently with the completion of new buildings<\/a> \u2014 holding among other accouterments a self-serve kitchen, a library, a cafe and a film studio \u2014 and third-floor classrooms that look out over that beautiful blue expanse, long a symbol of freedom and possibility. <\/p>\n

In the new San Quentin Rehabilitation Center<\/a>, along with learning job skills and earning degrees, incarcerated men can do their own laundry, make their own meals, and interact with guards as mentors and colleagues of sorts, once a taboo kind of relationship in the us-and-them world of incarceration. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to clothes wash? You wash them,\u201d said Gov. Gavin Newsom, debuting the new facilities, including laundry machines, for reporters last week. \u201cYou want to get something to eat. You can do it, whenever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden, it\u2019s like you\u2019re starting to make decisions for yourself,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s called life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen closely, and one can almost hear President Trump\u2019s<\/a> brain exploding with glee and outrage as his favorite Democratic foil<\/a> seemingly coddles criminals. A cafe? C\u2019mon. Bring on the midterms! <\/p>\n

But what Newsom has done inside California\u2019s most notorious prison, once home to the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere, is nothing short of a remarkable shift of thinking, culture and implementation around what it means to take away someone\u2019s freedom \u2014 and eventually give it back. Adapted from European models, it\u2019s a vision of incarceration that is meant to deal with the reality that 95% of people who go to prison are eventually released. That\u2019s more than 30,000 people each year in California alone. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat kind of neighbors do you want them to be?\u201d Newsom asked. \u201cAre they coming back broken<\/a>? Are they coming back better? Are they coming back more enlivened, more capable? Are they coming back into prison over and over?\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to reforming criminals, \u201csuccess looks like more and more people gravitating to their own journey, their own personal reform,\u201d Newsom said, sounding more like a lifestyle influencer than a presidential contender. \u201cIt\u2019s not forced on you, because then it\u2019s fake, man. If it\u2019s coerced, I don\u2019t buy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, coming back better should be the goal \u2014 because better people commit fewer crimes, and that benefits us all. But coming back over and over has become the norm. <\/p>\n

Traditional incarceration, a lock-\u2019em-up and watch-them-suffer approach, has dramatically failed not only our communities and public safety writ large, but also inmates and even those who guard them.<\/p>\n

Incarcerated people come out of prison too often in California (and across the country) with addictions and emotional troubles still firmly in place, and no job or educational skills to help them muddle through a crime-free life. That means they often commit more crimes, create more victims and cycle back into this failed, expensive, tough-on-crime system. <\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s a favorite trope of Trump, and the justification for both his immigration roundups and his deployment of National Guard troops in Democratic cities, that policies such as Newsom\u2019s are weak on crime and have led to the decline of American society. <\/p>\n

This narrative of fear and grievance goes back decades, recycled every election by the so-called law-and-order party because it\u2019s effective \u2014 voters crave safety, especially in a chaotic world. And locking people up seems safe, at least until we let them go again. <\/p>\n

But, as Chance Andes, the warden of San Quentin, pointed out last week, \u201cHumanity is safety,\u201d and treating incarcerated people like, well, people, actually makes them want to behave better. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where the tough-on-crime folks will begin composing their angry emails. Why are we paying for killers to have a view? Why should I care if a rapist has a good book to read? Our budget is bleeding red, why are tax dollars being used for prison lattes? (To be fair, I do not know whether they actually have lattes.) <\/p>\n

But consider this: The prison guards back Newsom. <\/p>\n

\u201cDone right, it improves working conditions for our officers and strengthens public safety,\u201d said Steve Adney, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., the union that represents guards, of the California model, as Newsom calls his vision. <\/p>\n

Faced with high rates of suicide and other ills such as addiction, corrections officers have long been concerned about the stress and violence of their jobs. A few years ago, some union members traveled to Norway to see prisons there. I tagged along. <\/p>\n

The American officers were shocked to see Norwegian prisoners access kitchen knives and power tools, but even more shocked that the guards had built relationships with these criminals that allowed them to do their jobs with far less fear.<\/p>\n

Rather than jailers, these corrections officers were more like social workers or guides to a better way of living. Of course, the corrections officers aren\u2019t dumb. That only works with vetted inmates, such as those at San Quentin, who have proved they want to change. <\/p>\n

But when you have officers and incarcerated people who are able to coexist with respect and maybe a dash of kindness, you get a different outcome for both sides. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we are capable of building this at San Quentin, then we are capable of making the workplace safe for every officer who walks in the gates,\u201d said CCPOA President Neil Flood<\/a>, a startling statement in favor of radical reform from a law enforcement officer. <\/p>\n

But in a moment when most Democrats with ambitions for national office (or even an eye on replacing Newsom) are backing away from criminal justice reform, it would be naive to think the California model won\u2019t be used to bludgeon Newsom in a presidential race, and provide further fuel to the dumpster-fire narrative about the state. <\/p>\n

Soon \u2014 before the midterms \u2014 many expect Congress to move forward on Trump\u2019s expressed desire for a crime bill that would empower police with even greater immunity for wrongdoing, create longer sentences for crimes including those involving drugs and further erode criminal justice reform in the name of public safety.<\/p>\n

Trump is going hard in the opposite direction, toward more punishment, always the easier and more understandable route for voters fed up with crime (even though crime rates have been declining since President Biden was in office). <\/p>\n

The California model is \u201ca political liability in this environment,\u201d said Tinisch Hollins, a victims advocate who worked on the San Quentin transition and heads Californians for Safety and Justice. <\/p>\n

But she retains faith that \u201cthe majority of people don\u2019t believe that shoving everyone into prison is how we resolve the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom deserves credit for standing by that position, when simply backing away and dropping the California model would have been the simpler and safer route \u2014 it\u2019s complicated and messy and oh-so-easy to make it sound dumb.<\/p>\n

I refer you back to the cafe. If construction had been cut at San Quentin, the budget cited as the reason, no one would have noticed and few would have complained. <\/p>\n

Instead, sounding a bit like Trump, Newsom said he \u201cthreatened the hell out of them if they didn\u2019t get it done before I was gone.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not left or right,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is just being smart and pragmatic and you know, I just … I believe people are not the worst thing they\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Politically at least, San Quentin is a legacy for Newsom now, the best or worst thing he\u2019s done on crime, depending on your personal views of second chances. <\/p>\n

But it is undeniably a vision of public safety starkly at odds with Trump, one Newsom will carry into his next political fight \u2014 where it is certain to cause him some pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A strange quirk at San Quentin state prison is that most of those incarcerated behind its towering walls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,89744,723,28439,28469,26087,89743,3290,89742,2322,592,3020,1492,34846,5965],"class_list":{"0":"post-191325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-correction-officer","12":"tag-crime","13":"tag-criminal","14":"tag-guard","15":"tag-incarceration","16":"tag-job-skill","17":"tag-newsom","18":"tag-notorious-prison","19":"tag-officer","20":"tag-people","21":"tag-president-trump","22":"tag-public-safety","23":"tag-san-quentin","24":"tag-vision"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}