Amity Foundation CEO Doug Bond Being Named Co-Chair to the San Quentin Transformation Advisory Council
In March, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a historic initiative to transform San Quentin State Prison using the scalable “California Model”, which will emphasize the importance of rehabilitation and education in the process of improving public safety. The push for implementing the “California Model” is intended to take place by 2025. In order to help ensure this can be achieved, Governor Newsom announced the members of the San Quentin Transformation Advisory Council, which includes a variety of criminal justice, public safety, and rehabilitation professionals. The full list of members is below with title and organization:
Scott Budnick, Founder, Anti-Recidivism Coalition
Neil Flood, State Vice President, California Correctional Peace Officers Association
Tinisch Hollins, Executive Director, Californians for Safety and Justice
Katie James, Chief, CDCR’s Office of Victim and Survivor Rights and Services
Terah Lawyer-Harper, Executive Director, Creating Restorative Opportunities and Programs
Kenyatta Leal, Executive Director, Next Chapter Project
Jody Lewen, President, Mount Tamalpais College
Sam Lewis, Executive Director, Anti-Recidivism Coalition
Billie Mizell, Founder, Acting with Compassion and Truth; Chair Emeritus of the Insight Prison Project
Jonathan Moscone, Executive Director, California Arts Council
Dr. Mimi Silbert, President and CEO, Delancey Street
U.S. Marine Corps Major General James Michael Myatt (ret.)
Dr. Alison Pachynski, Chief Medical Executive, San Quentin State Prison
Chris Redlitz, Executive Director, The Last Mile
Michael Romano, Director and Founder, Three Strikes Project at Stanford University
Jesse Vasquez, Executive Director, Pollen Initiative
The council also has 3 co-chairs, including Amity Foundation’s CEO Doug Bond, who will be joined by Dr. Brie Williams and San Quentin Warden Ronald Broomfield. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg will serve as Governor Newsom’s lead advisor to facilitate dialogue between the Council and the Governor’s Office.
The overarching goal of the Advisory Council is to provide recommendations and a plan to bring transformational programmatic, cultural, and physical change to the San Quentin State prison, with the extended goal of establishing San Quentin as a practical, scalable model that can be implemented at other institutions across the state and, hopefully, the nation.
Per the Governor’s office, the “California Model” is a paradigm shift that draws on international best practices to change culture within the state’s prisons. It aims to develop a human-centered culture of healing, positive staff-inmate communication, and improved living and working conditions. In cohesion, these principles will improve public safety, rehabilitation and reentry, as well as outcomes.
The concept follows in the footsteps of the best practices learned from Norway and other similar prison systems that have shown better outcomes in improving public safety than traditional prison models often used throughout the United States. Practical steps have already been taken at several locations throughout California to begin the process. Several of these examples have been listed on the CDCR website, which you can also read about below:
Valley State Prison: Correctional staff are working with the Youth Offender Program participants, who have received intensive training in dynamic security (security based on interpersonal communication and respect) and the importance of creating a more normalized living. Additionally, correctional and health care staff are working with incarcerated people and community leaders to develop an in-prison reentry facility, in which community organizations provide services to people in the last 1-2 years of their sentence to ready them for release.
Salinas Valley State Prison: Correctional staff have developed and are utilizing a “Resource Team” approach, originally developed in Norway, and piloted in various prisons throughout Oregon and Washington. The Resource Team is currently working in the Psychiatric Inpatient Program (PIP) at the prison, where results so far have been positive – including a decrease in violence and assaults on staff and improved occupational health and professional pride.
Central California Women’s Facility: Correctional staff are utilizing the principle of dynamic security to develop a more professional rapport with the population in order to better understand their needs, prevent and reduce grievances, and improve engagement in programming. The goal is for CCWF to ultimately develop an integrated approach across the prison that greatly improves the interactions between staff and incarcerated people, and helps people leave prison with more tools to lead a successful life in the community than they had when they arrived in prison.
California Medical Facility: The prison hospice program approach developed at CMF enables healthcare and correctional staff, as well as incarcerated people in their care, to work as a team as they care for those at the end of life. We are currently developing a three-part training initiative (culture, medial knowledge, and peer caregiver training) that we will bring to other prisons that provide care to people with serious illness.
We look forward to keeping our community updated with more developments from this effort. For additional resources and information, be sure to view the CDCR ANNOUNCEMENT, GOVERNOR’S OFFICE ANNOUNCEMENT, and FAQ SECTION. Additionally, our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and website pages will all be posting updates on the Council’s efforts and achievements.