“San Quentin is the Silicon Valley of Californian Prisons”: Narratives from the Reinvention of Punishment

• In Event: Reimagining Mass Incarceration

Abstract

In March 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the San Quentin State Prison would become the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, following the “California Model” of Justice. This model aims to 'build safer communities through rehabilitation, education, restorative justice, and reentry". In this paper, I draw from the late Foucault, Fanon, and Queer Theory to offer a critical account of this transformation. I explore how the carceral state, neoliberalism, and therapeutic governance practices converge to provide treatment for prisoners. I argue that these evidence-based programs mainly focus on transforming the prisoner at an individual level, overlooking social and structural inequalities. To foreground an argument about the glorification of individualistic, rationalistic perspectives as part of the underlying ideology of those initiatines, I draw materials from parole hearings, media announcements, reports, and my extended visits to San Quentin as an Educator for a period of 18 months. This research highlights on the ways in which abolitionists’ ideas for a more just future have been engrafted in San Quentin prison’s reformation process and how the goal of social justice has been appropriated by neoliberal discourses around wellness and productivity.

Author

• Elena Vasiliou, University of Warwick