San Quentin Brings in Hollywood, Moves Out California Death Row Prisoners
When the inaugural San Quentin Film Festival wrapped up on October 13, 2024, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) completed a star-studded step in transforming its oldest state prison into the new San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, with Hollywood luminaries like Jerry Seinfeld on hand to award prisoner-made films.
Between February 26 and May 8, 2024, the remodel also forced relocation of 324 condemned prisoners—over half of the state’s Death Row. Another 104 condemned prisoners had already been relocated to await execution in other state lockups, which are notably not open for inspection by invited outsiders.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) insisted that the moves were necessary to comply with Proposition 66, a 2016 voter initiative passed both to speed up the execution process and put condemned prisoners to work to pay restitution to their victims. Newsom declared an execution moratorium in 2019, leaving the other half of the law to be implemented through transfers to prisons closer to work centers than San Quentin.
Meanwhile, the film festival is just one way that CDCR is trying to turn San Quentin into a Scandinavian-style prison focused on rehabilitation. A 156-page report released by Newsom’s San Quentin Transformation Advisory Council in January 2024 called for more changes, like ending double-celling and providing onsite overnight housing for guards to use between shifts.
Nearly 10% of the death row transfers went to California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino; ironically, that was the lockup dubbed a “prison without walls” when constructed in the 1970s for its resemblance to European prisons. Also ironic: The 63 prisoners transferred to CIM reversed a larger migration in May 2020 that was blamed for a COVID-19 outbreak that killed 29 San Quentin prisoners and staffers, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, July 2021, p.34.]
Sources: Bay Area Local News Matters, CalMatters, Los Angeles Times, New York Times