California bills to reform prisons have mixed record

A review of the state’s database for legislation shows more than 120 bills that explicitly refer to the Department of Corrections have been introduced in the 2023-2024 legislative session, with mixed success.

Among the most recent prison-related bills to successfully pass his desk is Senate Bill 474, which will significantly reduce markups on items sold in prison “canteen” stores.

Known as the “BASIC Act,” the bill from Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, requires items sold in prison commissaries or “canteen” stores be marked up no more than 10% above the price paid to the vendor — a steep cut of current prices that are often 65% over what the vendor charges and can reach  markups up to 200%.

Leslie Soble, senior manager of the Food In Prison Project at Impact Justice, an Oakland-based criminal justice reform organization, said incarcerated people rely on canteens because many prisons don’t serve enough nutritious, appealing food, leading some incarcerated people to resort to desperate measures like stealing or trading sexual favors to get enough to eat.

“The result is increased rates of food and nutrition insecurity in the mainly low-income, BIPOC communities that most incarcerated people come from and return to,” Soble said in a statement. “This is a critical and overlooked health equity issue, with clear solutions.”

Eduardo Dumbrique, who served more than two decades in state prison for a first-degree murder charge in Los Angeles County for which he was later exonerated, said even with three meals provided each day, the food he was served in prison often did not feel adequate.

“It’s not enough,” he said. “If you don’t go to the canteen, you’ll be hungry.”

Becker, in an interview last month, pointed to examples of canteen markups such as toothpaste sold for $6 that would have been less than $2 at Walmart or coffee for $9.05, and toilet paper for $1 per roll.

“These are basic necessities that have egregious markups — we’re talking toothpaste, feminine hygiene products,” Becker said, explaining that if the goal for most incarcerated people is successful reentry back into the world, inflated prices can hurt that effort. “It burdens them with debt and makes reentry harder.”

Plus, he said, inflated prices often hit their family members, who send money to them while incarcerated. In a statement Tuesday, Becker praised the governor’s signature on the bill, which follows the passage of another law he introduced last year that made phone calls free for incarcerated people.

The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which advocated for SB474, estimates that it will save families whose members are incarcerated upward of $16 million annually, beginning when the bill goes into effect Jan. 1.

“This is a huge win, not only for our Californians that are incarcerated but for their families who will be able to put that money into savings for their personal needs and goals,” Carlos Hernandez with the MILPA Collective, an advocacy organization comprised of those affected by the criminal justice system, said in a news release. “Also, I believe it is equally important that our government has demonstrated to historically disenfranchised communities that they are willing and capable of uplifting their values and finding all Californians worthy of human dignity.”

The governor also signed Senate Bill 309, a measure introduced by Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, that aims to ensure that people in state and local prisons or jails can keep their personal religious head coverings or other attire until they are able to buy or access similar items from the facility directly — a provision that had not been guaranteed thus far in California facilities.

Nazeehah Khan, the policy government affairs manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in California, said in a news release that the organization had heard from and represented many Muslim people across the state who had been denied the ability to keep their religious garments or maintain religious grooming practices.

“CAIR-CA found this problem had grown into a pattern birthed from the lack of a statewide, uniform policy and resolved to tackle the issue at its root,” Khan said in the statement. “Religious expression is not only a civil right — but an inherent, human right.”

The law also requires prisons and jails to allow people to maintain their hair or beards for religious reasons.

Other prison-related bills were less successful.