WATCH: Newsom, others praise $239M learning center at San Quentin

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(The Center Square) – Gov. Gavin Newsom and others, including a survivor of a crime, gathered Friday morning at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center to praise the opening of a $239 million learning center designed to prepare inmates to re-enter society.

The 81,000-square-foot facility consists of three buildings, including a technology and media center with podcast and TV production facilities and reentry center, a hub of classrooms that are operated with universities and a college and features an expanded library, and a community and workforce area that includes a gathering hall, cafe and store. There will be outdoor classrooms with views of the San Francisco Bay, according to the Governor's Office.

The center was funded through a lease revenue bond, and Newsom said it made more sense to spend the money at San Quentin than to spread it out thinly among many prisons. But he said the San Quentin learning center could be a model for other prisons.

“You can be smart as well as tough on crime,” the Democratic governor told reporters as he stood in front of a fence outside the new complex at the state’s oldest prison. “It’s about pragmatism. It’s about dealing with the fundamental fact that 95% of the people in the system will go back to your neighborhoods, and what kind of neighbors do you want them to be?”

"Three years ago, I stood here and promised to turn this symbol of the old system into the crown jewel of a new one," Newsom said. "Today, with the opening of this learning center, we are proving that rehabilitation and public safety go hand in hand — and that hope is a powerful tool for safer communities."

San Quentin was built in 1852, and the San Francisco Bay prison in Marin County is known for its history of inmates such as cult leader Charles Manson, whose followers killed nine people including pregnant movie actress Sharon Tate and coffee heiress Abigail Folger. Other inmates included convicted killer Scott Petersen. It has been part of the storylines in a long list of movies, including two starring Humphrey Bogart, “San Quentin” (1937) and “Dark Passage” (1947).

Newsom, who put a moratorium on the death penalty in 2019 in California, noted San Quentin once had the biggest death row in the western hemisphere with 737 people. In 2022, Newsom ordered the building that contained death row be dismantled.

San Quentin State Prison was renamed the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in 2023 after the passage of Assembly Bill 134. The goal has been to transform the facility into a Norwegian-style facility with vocational training, and officials mentioned visits to Norway during Friday's press conference.

"If you go in our classrooms, you will see signs that say, 'Believe in the process,' " said Chris Redlitz, cofounder of The Last Mile, a nonprofit launched at San Quentin to provide business and technology training. 

Construction of the learning center began 18 months ago on a site near the former death row.

Newsom said the new center shows California can both tackle crime and work to rehabilitate criminals and prepare them for post-prison careers and life.

He pointed to statistics showing that homicides are down 18% in California in 2025 from 2024.

Robberies have fallen 19%, and violent crime is down 12%, Newsom said.

But minutes before Newsom spoke to reporters, a Republican legislator questioned the governor’s priorities in spending $239 million on a prison learning center.

“A prison is supposed to be a prison,” state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, said during a phone interview with The Center Square. “He’s putting money, from my understanding, into grocery stores to ‘normalize the environment.’ His words, not mine.  A prison should be a prison. People go to a prison because they committed a crime. When you commit a crime, you have to pay the consequence for that action."

Too often, Newsom has been more considerate of criminals than victims and victims' rights, Strickland said. He noted the state government’s No. 1 priority is to keep people safe.

Instead of spending $239 million on a learning center, Newsom should be funding enforcement of Proposition 36, the anti-crime measure that voters overwhelmingly passed in 2024, Strickland said.

The measure increases penalties for certain theft and drug charges and includes options for treatments for drug offenders. Strickland has been a critic of what he calls Newsom’s failure to fund enforcement and said he will introduce a bill next week to fund Prop. 36.

At San Quentin on Friday, a survivor of crime praised the opening of the learning center.

“This is a smart investment. It's an investment that will pay off in the future, in perpetuity," said Tinisch Hollins, executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice.

Hollins said giving inmates access to education is how public safety is improved over time. "And they shouldn't have to come to state prison to get it, but I'm glad that it's here."

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told reporters she has spent the last two-and-a-half years in discussions on reforming the criminal justice system.

It’s important to give inmates the resources they lacked in their communities as they “work on themselves,” Jenkins said.

“The new learning center will scale the work that has begun here and provide residents with more tools to advance their individual journeys as they work to become better than when they came in, making us all safer in turn," Jenkins said.