Officials Call for $40-Million Renovation of San Quentin

The state Corrections Department on Monday called for a $40-million dollar renovation of San Quentin Prison to comply with court-ordered improvements in living conditions at the old and dilapidated penitentiary.

Prison officials said that $21 million for improvements at San Quentin already have been authorized by the Legislature, but that the Corrections Department will seek an addition $19.6 million. Gregory Harding, a deputy director of the Corrections Department, said the renovation could be completed in two years. However, he added that because the prison is so old--it was founded in 1852--the improvements would only extend the life of the institution by about 12 years. After that it would have to abandoned and torn down.

The recommendations are among the findings of a long-awaited state study of the prison, which contains California’s gas chamber and about 2,500 convicts, including some of the most dangerous felons in the state. The study, completed by the Corrections Department and CRS Sirrine Inc., a San Francisco-based architectural and engineering firm, was made public at a press conference at the prison Monday.

The prison is operating under two separate court orders, which between them cover every one of San Quentin’s cells.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Weigel issued a permanent injunction in 1984 forbidding the prison from housing inmates two to a cell in its tough high-security units. Weigel’s order also required prison officials to set specific standards for living conditions in the high-security units. He denounced conditions he described as “deplorable filth,” including infestations of rats and cockroaches, leaking toilets and pipes, dim lights, pervasive foul smells and “unrelenting, nerve-racking din.” Weigel also appointed a monitor to oversee conditions in the top-security cells.

The second court order, by Marin County Superior Court Judge Beverly Savitt, ordered the state not to confine inmates in so-called general population cells until conditions were improved. However, the order was stayed while officials prepared the plan to upgrade San Quentin.

Before the court orders, San Quentin housed about 3,600 maximum-security prisoners, and many were housed two to a cell. About 1,000 prisoners have since been transferred to other institutions, including a new prison at Tehachapi. The overcrowding already has been lessened, prison authorities said, and renovations have begun on many cells.

Weigel declined to comment Monday on the report, but Robert Riggs, appointed by Weigel as the prison monitor, called the study encouraging.

“It sounds like the appropriate step on their part,” Riggs said. “I think it can be done for $40 million, if the money is managed properly. The two-year time frame sounds favorable.”

However, Riggs noted that the report was completed more than two months behind schedule.

The renovations under way or needed at the prison, officials said, include major structural improvements, new heating and ventilation systems, new windows in each housing unit and new electrical and plumbing systems. After the renovation, prison officials hope to change the classification of San Quentin to medium security, transferring the most dangerous inmates to other facilities as new maximum-security cells become available.

Even with the renovations, after about 12 years San Quentin will have to be destroyed and replaced, said Rodney Blonien, undersecretary for the state’s Youth and Adult Correctional Agency. But it still is cheaper today, he said, to spend $40 million for renovation than $225 million to build an entirely new 2,500-bed maximum-security prison.

New One Later

Once the prison is razed, a new facility could be rebuilt on the same site or the land could be sold to a private developer and the income used to build a new prison elsewhere, Blonien said.

San Quentin is on 432 acres at the edge of San Francisco Bay in Marin County. The view is excellent, overlooking Paradise Point in Tiburon, with the Bay Bridge and the Oakland skyline in the distance.

There are about 30,000 beds in the state prison system. By the end of the decade the number will be increased to 47,000, said Robert Gore, a Corrections Department spokesman.

After the press conference, reporters were taken on a tour of several cellblocks. In one, inmate James McCartney told a newsman that the elimination of “double-celling” has been a major improvement at San Quentin.

“You’ve got a lot of tension with two people in one of these tiny (48-square-foot) cells,” said McCartney, 33, who is serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for first-degree murder. “You’ve got violence in the cell and the violence can spill into the yard. But single-celling and renovation won’t solve all the problems. There aren’t enough programs here. Inmates are just sitting around and have a lot of time for trouble.”

Folsom prison also is under court order to renovate about 700 cells.