How Many More Prisons Can Gavin Newsom Close in California?

At the inmate population’s peak in 2006, California incarcerated 165,000 people in state prisons. Today, after several years of sentencing reforms and a surge of releases tied to COVID-19, California prisons house a little more than 95,000 people. As it stands, California spends more than $15 billion a year on its prison system. With the number of people behind bars continuing to decrease, the Newsom administration is moving to shut down more institutions.

In September 2021, the state closed Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy. The California Correctional Center in Susanville is scheduled to close in June, along with yards at six other prisons. Two other prisons, in Blythe and in California City, are scheduled to close by March 2025.

Even after those shutdowns, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has the space to close five more entire prisons by 2027. Today, the corrections department operates 15,000 empty beds, according to the LAO. That number is expected to reach 20,000 empty beds by 2027.

“Difficult decisions have to be made, but if we don’t make those decisions, the alternative is paying hundreds of millions for prison beds we don’t need to be paying for,” said Caitlin O’Neil, an analyst at the Legislative Analyst’s Office. California now spends about $106,000 each year to keep a person incarcerated for a year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Political support for those expenses has been dropping, particularly among Democrats.

O’Neil is the co-author of a new report that lays out how the state can close up to nine of its 33 prisons and eight yards within operating prisons while still complying with a federal court order that caps the system’s capacity.

You can download and read the report titled "The 2023-24 Budget; The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation" from the Legislative Analyst's Office.