Every Christmas, network TV airs the black-and-white classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart. There is a memorable scene where George Bailey (Stewart) is offered a job by Mr. Potter, the town’s most wealthy (and greedy) resident. Bailey asks for time to think it over, and as he gets up to leave, he shakes Potter’s hand. In that instant, as Bailey stares in disgust at the hand he had just offered Potter, he suddenly experiences an epiphany. He wipes his hand on his trousers and tells Potter that he doesn’t need time to think; the answer is “No!” It was as if that handshake allowed him to read Potter’s mind, and he knows all he needs to know.
On the last Saturday of September, I experienced a George Bailey moment. The Secretary of the California Department of Corrections was on this yard that Saturday morning, there to celebrate the inauguration of the Prison Seminary Program, a multi-year curriculum of bible study & training with graduates earning the equivalent of a bible college degree, the first such program in the state. As a reporter for the local prison newspaper, my job was to interview the secretary. Dressed in khaki shorts and a black short-sleeve shirt, he could have been easily mistaken as someone attending a neighborhood weekend barbecue. In fact, the seminary celebration included a hotdog barbecue and motorcycle showing, compliments of Soldiers for Christ, a Christian-based organization that ministers to prisoners and others. The secretary couldn’t have been more accommodating, agreeing to an impromptu interview in the shade of a handball court amid throngs of prisoners milling about. He patiently answered questions, some more thoroughly than others.
One area of particular attention was the implementation of the new California Model, a humanistic penology method based on the Scandinavian prison system. It is a controversial and profound carceral system designed to reduce violence, stress, and recidivism. It is a worthwhile and thoughtful approach to incarceration meant to treat prisoners more humanely and upend the old ‘us versus them’ custody mentality and culture. The secretary visited Norway in 2021 with a contingent that included members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), victims’ rights group members, former prisoners, and others. It is an effort at penal reform led by AMEND from the University of California San Francisco and includes other countries and states. California Governor Gavin Newsom announced this state’s intended transformation to the new model based on the Scandinavian system in March 2023.
The secretary has been vocal about the transition and said the new model won’t require any new funding. It is a matter of maximizing funds the department has already allocated to the department — $14.5 billion in the current budget. The secretary was pleased to point out that the department has twelve thousand incarcerated students in college programs, and more classes are being added. A few days earlier, he attended the ten-year anniversary celebration of community colleges within the DOC, now in one hundred prisons and jails. Noting the abundance of elderly and handicapped prisoners on the yard, he pointed out that the department is expanding facilities designed for ADA (Americans with Disabilities) care. He was pleased to share that parole grants have increased from 4% twenty years ago to 24% now. When confronted with the fact that many of the elderly and handicapped prisoners in the yard have been incarcerated for thirty, forty years, or more, and have attended many, if not all, of the rehab groups available, and we wondered if there are any discussions or considerations on releasing some of these long-termers, the secretary faltered. Upon repeated questioning, he admitted that no plans are being discussed or in place to reduce the overall prison population, which currently hovers at around 92,000.
Another area of contention was the fact that the CCPOA, through affiliated victims’ rights groups and Political Action Committees, routinely pursues legislation to increase sentencing and support mass incarceration. At the same time, the governor’s office and the DOC appear to promote programs such as the new California Model, which seems to contradict the CCPOA’s efforts. As the conversation shifted from forward-thinking carceral philosophy and feel-good platitudes to tough-on-crime political lobbying and the troubling specter of mass incarceration, the secretary began looking around, perhaps for some friendly face to dislodge him from uncomfortable topics. Understandably, mass incarceration is anything but comforting. Sensing his unease and understanding that it takes more than a single person to change a system that took hundreds of years to develop through race and class stratification, inequity, bigotry, and elitism, we shook hands and weaved our way through the crowd, headed our opposite ways.
Later, as I munched on the complimentary barbecue hotdog provided through the generosity of outside missionaries, I contemplated on the interview, on the celebration and meaning and purpose behind the event, its relation to the new California Model, mass incarceration, and the synchronous events which had transpired to enable current circumstances. And I thought about that handshake at the end of the interview, considering the secretary’s words and meaning, precisely when he said, “There is no target for population reduction,” and the point about the department having expanded ADA capabilities. This was my George Bailey moment. In an instant flash of insight, I realized that while it is politically expedient to have the secretary of corrections proclaim support for positive programming, one can’t help but be chilled by the cold realization of a much more pragmatic intent and motivation of the Department of Corrections and its leader.
In short, what’s the purpose and mission of the DOC? It is, quite simply, the survival and perpetuation of the Department of Corrections, appeasing their union members (the most powerful union and political action force in the state), and validating the need for prisons and the $14.5 billion budget to fund mass incarceration in California. We get hot dogs and motorcycles if we are good prisoners and program well and don’t cause trouble. Let’s come to the light from the dark side, cross over from the violence, drugs, and gangs of the general population to a programming, “non-designated” facility (formerly known as Sensitive Needs Yards or Protective Custody). We get college and bible school. If we buy into the public relations narrative of the California Model, a system designed to benefit custody staff as much and more so than prisoners, we will earn favors and certificates and ribbons. But let’s not get crazy and start talking about sentence or population reduction or decarceration. I, and the other 92,000 California incarcerated, are enmeshed within a carnival side-show public relations campaign designed on a political realism philosophy of “appearing” to have moral intent and ethical consideration while perpetuating the worst human rights violations this country has engaged in since reformation. They served bottled water with the hot dogs on Saturday maybe to wash down the bad taste of being fed pro-prison propaganda.
Many of us appear to be hypnotized by the soothing words of the California Model, allowing us to sleepwalk through our twilight world of denial and acceptance while turning a blind eye to the harsh realities we face in a system designed to fail most of those it proclaims to benefit. In the end, it is up to all of us as a community to rally to the aid of one another, just as the citizens of Bedford Falls finally rallied to help George Bailey in his most desperate time of need.
