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Analysts Recommend Closing California’s Soledad Prison
With California’s declining prison population and a growing state budget deficit, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), a nonpartisan agency that provides policy advice to the state lawmakers, has recommended closing the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad.
While the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDRC) is already slated to close one facility this year, the California Correctional Facility in Norco (which could revert to becoming a luxury hotel), the LAO found that closing the Soledad prison would save an additional $150 million each year. The LAO report pinpointed the Soledad prison as a “strong candidate for closure” in large part because of the expected cost of future infrastructure projects to keep the facility in operating condition.
The cost of installing a planned video surveillance system, for example, alone will likely cost $10 million. Across the 25 state prisons in California, the CDCR estimates that it will need $2.5 billion to cover critical maintenance projects in the next ten years. At the same time, the state’s prison population continues to decrease; by 2030, the number of incarcerated people is expected to fall below 85,000, a drop of around 25,000 from 2020.
This decrease is in part due to a number of recent prison closures throughout California. Since 2021, the state has closed the Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe, Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy and the California Correctional Center in Susanville. Taken together, the closures have amounted to an annual $1 billion in savings.
Source: The Sacramento Bee
