Thanh Tran left of California’s San Quentin state jail on 11 May 2022 after 10 years behind bars. One month later on, he got on an aircraft and flew 5,000 miles away– to Oslo Norway.
While in jail, Tran co-founded and co-hosted a podcast called Uncuffed, and in among his very first sections taped as a totally free individual, he visited the centers of Norway, understood for having considerably much better conditions and less limiting policies than seen in the United States jail system. He instantly saw the intense colors, guards playing video games with homeowners, absence of jail uniforms and the substantial areas for corrective programs.
“It was astonishing to see officers getting in touch with incarcerated individuals and treating them like people,” remembered Tran, who likewise spoke at the Prison Radio International Conference while in Norway.
Recently, the guv of California, Gavin Newsom, revealed he would be turning Tran’s previous jail, the earliest in the state, into the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, concentrated on education, training and re-entry, and designed in part after the Scandinavian system. It would be a significant modification for the 170-year-old San Francisco Bay Area jail complex, which houses 4,000 individuals, is house to the nation’s biggest death row and has a long history of human rights offenses, consisting of current scandals including systemic medical disregard, guard misbehavior, overcrowding and holding cell and abuse claims. It’s likewise understood for its arts programs, college collaborations and paper.
The Guardian consulted with Tran and James King– both are previous San Quentin citizens who are now promotes with the Oakland, California-based non-profit Ella Baker Center for Human Rights– about life inside the jail, Norway’s system and the challenges Newsom might experience. This discussion has actually been modified and condensed for clearness.
Can you discuss the principle behind Norway’s jails?
Thanh Tran: You can summarize the Norway design with 2 words: returning next-door neighbors. The expectation is this individual will be getting home one day, so what kind of next-door neighbor do you desire returning? My group went to the Bastoy jail island, Halden jail and Oslo jail, and what I discovered most impactful was the culture in between correctional officers and incarcerated individuals. Officers require 2 years of training in social work, and they stated they take these tasks to assist individuals. They share a lens of social work and care: how do we assist individuals restore? I saw officers grilling with incarcerated individuals, doing a marathon race with them, working out with them, hanging out, playing cards, simply having a discussion. That was so effective.
How does the Norwegian environment compare with the California department of corrections and rehab (CDCR)?
Tran: It’s entirely various. At the very first CDCR jail I went to, a lot of officers would not even call me by my surname, which I currently discovered dehumanizing. They ‘d simply call me “prisoner”, “man” or “You there, come here!” San Quentin was a little much better, however still the guards are trained not to get in touch with individuals: do not inform incarcerated individuals your given name, keep a range. They fear overfamiliarity. When you see a put behind bars individual as a daddy, a sibling, somebody’s kid, somebody’s mom, it ends up being harder for the officers to Mace them, lock them in the cell every night, struck them with a baton. California officers’ relationship with incarcerated individuals is a totally adversarial one, whereas Norway has to do with constructing relationships.
James King: Let me explain the San Quentin cell: it’s roughly 4ft by 8-9ft long, homes 2 bunks, a toilet and a sink. An average-sized individual can stand in the middle and touch both walls. You share the area with another individual, and it’s so little that a person individual needs to get on their bunk in order for the other individual to move through the cell. The cells do not have doors, however bars. You’re awfully restricted with absolutely no personal privacy. You hear every discussion in the structure. It’s loud and disorderly, throughout the day, every day. The style and culture is everything about the effectiveness of running the organization; institutional requirements exceed whatever. Personnel can and will force individuals to operate at the dining hall or wash meals or tidy tables if the organization requires it. Numerous individuals need to share approximately 15 phones. Individuals can wait in line for over an hour for 15-minute calls. And the procedure of doing in-person check outs is incredibly difficult. There is a shortage of consultations. And after that the going to space guidelines state you can quickly hug upon arrival and when leaving, and you can get a disciplinary review if the hug is “too long” or a kiss is considered “improper”. This is all antithetical to developing a humane living environment.
How does the CDCR’s physical environment compare with Norway’s jails?
Tran: The very first thing I saw in Norway’s maximum-security jail was the colors. There were flowers all over, the walls were intense. It was stunning. I likewise saw the quantity of areas readily available for corrective shows– a substantial wood store, a multimedia area for podcasting and a substantial library with [books in] over 20 various languages. They appreciated incarcerated individuals’s education. The cells were single-person and a minimum of 2 times the size of San Quentin’s. Incarcerated individuals use routine clothing; they do not have to use the CDCR blue attire that states “detainee”, which is so dehumanizing.
What was your preliminary response to Newsom’s statement?
Tran: I was stunned. I was launched in 2015, and at that time the belief amongst personnel was: “Inmates require to keep in mind that they’re prisoners.” I seemed like the culture was really ending up being more stringent, that they wished to revive the “penalty” and the “jail” to San Quentin. There’s a contradiction in between what Newsom is stating they’re attempting to do and what personnel on the ground are stating. When I got to San Quentin in 2018, some called it the “Harvard of jails”, the location to get fixed up. By 2022, I felt like programs were no longer a top priority. I will state I am heartened that Newsom cares and he’s attempting to change the system, understanding how difficult it is to alter things and just how much opposition there is.
King: My sense is individuals in San Quentin are going to be delighted, since it might enhance their lifestyle. If they do not believe release will be an alternative for them, they desire the very best living conditions possible and access to significant activities. They likewise unquestionably would choose to have those chances missing their imprisonment. Jail does not need to be the automobile for these services; they ‘d be far more efficient in neighborhood environments.
It likewise feels extremely enthusiastic, and perhaps even doomed from the beginning. The jail is such an extreme environment, regularly overcrowded and old, with structures over 100 years of ages. It wasn’t created for rehab, for classes, for areas that help with recovery. There’s a location of the jail for adult continuing education, however it can’t accommodate many individuals; there are 4,000 individuals at the jail, so at any provided time San Quentin just has capability to support corrective shows for a portion of its population. And I do not understand if there’s a practical method to have actually individuals trained by CDCR, who are rooted in an extremely prejudiced mode of being towards individuals they are putting behind bars, help with a shift in culture.
Exist other lessons from Norway that relate to California’s strategy?
Tran: I talked to officers and incarcerated individuals in Norway who stated that in the 90s, there was this financial investment into the jails to make them good and train personnel to deal with individuals like people, however then there were budget plan cuts, and Norway as a nation chose they were investing excessive cash on incarcerated individuals. They ended up being brief on personnel to run the jails and carry out the talking points. One put behind bars individual I talked with had desperation in his eyes and stated that there are human rights infractions there, however that nobody speaks about it since Norway is viewed to be the design of progressive jails. That’s the exact same thing we might deal with in California. We can pump a lot of cash into a Norwegian design, however at the end of the day it will still be a jail, and all it takes is a shift in the political wind or a brand-new guv and we go right back to where we began. The genuine service is to decrease the population and get individuals out.
I likewise consider how Norway has this jail island, however it just serves 100 individuals, and there are countless individuals in their system. I am worried that even if the San Quentin improvement ends up working, what about the almost 100,000 other individuals in CDCR? Would California utilize the presence of one great jail to validate the presence of 30 awful ones?
How would you like to see Newsom and California progress?
King: I begin with the property that there’s no gentle method to hold individuals in captivity. It is itself a workout in violence. I think about a self-help program I did, where I had a fantastic facilitator who assisted me get in touch with my feelings and grow and feel seen. It was an hour long. Therefore the other 23 hours of the day would have to do with perpetuating my captivity or fulfilling the requirements of the organization. There’s no chance to completely acknowledge the humankind of an individual who might be serving years in jail. If California is truly interested in recovery and security and altering the lives of individuals who have actually been affected, it has to begin with substantially lowering the quantity of time that individuals invest in jail. And there needs to be a lot more robust options to imprisonment. Since the violence of imprisonment typically does more to destabilize neighborhoods and produce the conditions for so-called criminal activity. My hope is Governor Newsom continues the work of closing jails and offering individuals more chances to reintegrate into society.
Tran: If we progress with jail closures, that’s billions of dollars we’re not investing in jailing individuals– that’s cash we can utilize to purchase our youth so that they never ever need to go to jail in the firs