By Ivan Villegas
SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) this week said it has proposed regulations making the Condemned Inmate Transfer Program (CITP) permanent.
The program, which redistributes death row prisoners to prisons throughout the state, ran for two years from Jan. 29, 2020, to Jan. 29, 2022 as a pilot program under Prop. 66, which California voters passed in November 2016 as an amendment to California’s Penal Code.
Under Prop. 66, all people sentenced to death are required to work to pay restitution to their victims.
In addition, Prop. 66 increased the restitution deduction from 50 percent to 70 percent for people sentenced to death.
Under the CITP, 101 people sentenced to death at San Quentin State Prison were transferred to designated institutions and 10 people sentenced to death at Central California Women’s Facility were transferred to alternative housing units within the prison.
The proposed regulations submitted by CDCR would not only make the CITP permanent but it would also make it mandatory.
CDCR claims, consistent with its move towards a “behavior-based system where incarcerated people are housed according to their individual case factors…the transfer of death-sentenced people to other prisons would phase out the practice of segregating death-sentenced individuals based exclusively on their sentence.”
CDCR added no individual will be re-sentenced as a result, and “everyone will be housed according to their individual case factors in appropriate custody-level prisons.”
CDCR stated, in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act, it is accepting public comments from Jan. 20 through March 8, and will hold a public hearing on March 8.
