Newsom’s California prison reform is all smoke and mirrors

Black women constantly have to prove with hard evidence that we’ve been abused. For people who are abused in prison, it’s twice as difficult to get justice. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s vaunted prison reform, the so-called “California Model”—established to replicate more humane, rehabilitation-focused Norwegian prisons in places like the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) where I’m incarcerated—was supposed to change all that. But, instead of reform, all this has done is give Black women’s ugly realities a nice cosmetic cover-up.

In April 2022, tired of being harassed, stalked, and at one point sexually harassed by another incarcerated person in prison, I raised a verbal complaint to a lieutenant in the Investigative Services Unit. He refused to address my complaint, and it didn’t matter that I had proof.

The lieutenant advised me to file a 602 grievance form, even after I informed him that the “catch-all” 602 process was inappropriate for my especially grievous situation. Still, I followed his instructions, doing everything CCWF has taught me to do to protect myself from being abused by a man. 

The next day, one of the captains at the prison sent me to a medical appointment, even though there was nothing wrong with me. When I arrived at the clinic, the nurse mumbled something about “Ad Seg placement.” I didn’t get it until one of my peers started panicking. Ad Seg is solitary confinement.

Another lieutenant told me I was being placed in “protective custody” under the captain’s orders. To make matters worse, I couldn’t even confront the captain because he was making these orders from the comfort of his home. Head down, arms crossed, a sergeant assured me, “I don’t want to do this, but you know how this goes.” I actually didn’t know how this went. He then escorted me to a three-by-five by eight-foot space—the notorious cage.

I was imprisoned in that cage for eight long, crippling hours. I felt all the oxygen leave my body. Suffocating, I struggled to keep myself from going into a panic attack. All I knew to do was go down on one knee and ride it out. I started praying. It was like the cage had its own atmospheric altitude—the straighter I stood, the harder it was to breathe. I stayed kneeling and praying for endless hours before I could stand up without panicking or passing out.

Next, I was taken to a small bathroom, stripped naked, and searched. I was dressed in special solitary garb, shackled with waist chains, and escorted by a small patrol to confinement. Upon my arrival, I was shocked by screams from caged shadows, top to bottom tiers, “TJ, what are you doing in here? Oh my God, they are locking up IAC [Inmate Advisory Council] from the Honor Dorm!”

Eight days in Ad Seg felt like months because my 14-year-old daughter never knew where I was. In those eight days, I was only allowed one day of outdoor recreation and two showers, which doubled as holding cages for three hours at a time. Every time I was escorted in Ad Seg, I was re-shackled. I had no Bible, no radio, no support. 

When it was time to speak for myself in a hearing to determine if I would serve the up to 120 days the captain wanted me to serve, the warden refused to allow me to read from a written statement that prison staff and policy encourage us to write. When I was finally released, I was locked in another shower for three hours while staff raided my cell and stole my legal documents, mail, and property. My TV got wet and shorted out. I struggled to get reimbursed for the personal property that the staff stole. I provided receipts that staff made copies of to resolve the 602 I was forced to file, but right at the finish line, the 602 was arbitrarily rejected. 

Experiences like these have shown me that Newsom’s “California Model” is nothing but smoke and mirrors. It claims to be built on a pillar of “dynamic security”—one that promotes “positive relationships between staff and incarcerated people” and prioritizes respect, empathy, and meaningful engagement. Would you call the retaliation I faced for raising a verbal complaint about harassment “respectful” or “empathetic”? 

Everyone I spoke with later agreed that the retaliation I suffered from the captain was off the rails. A volunteer from California Coalition for Women Prisoners recently asked a soft-spoken peer of mine about her thoughts on Newsom’s prison reform, stating the only new thing they’d seen was the “signage out front.”  

Banging rolled-up literature against her palm, my peer retorted, “What is the California Model?! I mean, really, what is it? I’ve seen the prisons in Norway. They don’t look like this. The incarcerated have their own apartments there. If you’re going to copy Norway, copy that!”  

Nodding, I added, “The California Model is surface-level cosmetics—like that new sign up in front of building 511.” 

Another one of my peer’s eyes lit up in agreement. “Oh yeah, I’ve seen a few murals painted. That’s supposed to be the California Model?” 

We all understood. Nothing substantive had changed for us. As the formerly incarcerated activist Emile Suotonye DeWeaver said, Newsom isn’t looking for real progress with his prison reform plan—he just needs something that looks the part. For example, while curated media stunts for the California Model showed prison guards playing pickleball with those incarcerated at San Quentin, other guards at the facility protested the announced reform and imposed harsher lockdowns on those behind bars.  

“We are not witnessing the brave action required to confront the correctional culture and incentive structure that protects and perpetuates the status quo,” DeWeaver wrote. “Rather, [we’re witnessing] the aspirations of a governor who wants to build a presidential brand by playing the middle—nodding to California’s progressive values while giving a $20 billion ransom to the correctional unions that hold so much political sway in our state.”

I am approaching 13 years in the plantation’s slammer, or prison. I’m an esteemed CCWF veteran. I haven’t seen anything change besides signage, murals, and prison officials scrambling around for TV networks and other visitors to create the illusion that some groundbreaking prison rehabilitation is going on. 

This lack of real change can be seen starkly in those like the captain who abuse their power. Though he may give the false appearance of professionalism, he’s not objective when it comes to me. Everything’s personal. It aggravates him that I won’t submit to my lot as a silent surrogate. 

When the captain evicted me from the Honor Dorm after eight years of setting an excellent example, my fellow Black women were outraged. They pointed out the captain’s profuse bigotry. I had been nominated to run for Black IAC representative, and one peer bowed out because she knew I would serve well. I won in a landslide victory. 

One peer snapped her fingers. “TJ was gone like that! Who wants to speak up when the IAC is treated like that?”

Several women complained about how the captain purposely pits us against each other and uses the Honor Dorm as leverage, offering empty power or residency in exchange for false confidential complaints against people he wanted to move out of the dorm. His victims ranged from couples he wanted to separate to those he wanted out of his way—in my case, that meant closing me off in solitary.

California is supposedly a state that stands tallest in the fight for justice. However, my peers helped me see how fighting for my rights got me snap-of-the-fingers perp-walked, issued a since-dismissed falsified Rules Violation Report, removed from a total of three IAC positions, evicted from two honor dorms, moved yard to yard four times, placed in the most dangerous bunk in prison three times, removed from my job in education I filed a grievance to secure, and got my record put in jeopardy despite being a model inmate for over a decade. 

This is what I told volunteers at The People in Blue—a group of incarcerated and free-world volunteers working on ideas on how to improve upon Newsom’s “California Model” we were left out of creating. If the model can’t work for a parole-ready Black woman with my accolades, it’s a bad plan. 

I’m a Black, domestic-violence-surviving woman and former prison politician with over 20,000 signatures on change.org for commutation. I’m currently serving a double life sentence. In Norway, the maximum penalty is 21 years of imprisonment, and only a small percentage of those incarcerated actually serve more than 14. I’m exactly who the governor professes he wants to help. Instead, we are witnessing nothing more than a “high-cost vanity project”—one that cares more about upholding the status quo than providing actual rehabilitation.

The Right to Write (R2W) project is an editorial initiative where Prism works with incarcerated writers to share their reporting and perspectives across our verticals and coverage areas. Learn more about R2W and how to pitch here.

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