In the amicus brief filed this summer in support of the closure, the incarcerated men said the prison is crumbling. "Throughout this entire litigation, the prisoners inside CCC have been treated either as revenue or as irrelevant," Shakeer Rahman, a Los Angeles-based attorney who filed an amicus brief signed by about 100 men incarcerated at the prison, said in a statement.Īdvocates "see the decision in this case as a decisive victory," the statement said. Moody's decision was celebrated by those who say closing the 59-year-old California Correctional Center - which needs millions of dollars in repairs - is the morally and fiscally responsible thing to do. "The city's primary concern is for CCC employees and their families," Newton said. In a statement Thursday, Susanville City Administrator Dan Newton said the City Council will be briefed by the city attorney and will hold a special meeting as early as Monday to determine the next steps. "And ultimately," he wrote, "the question of the public's satisfaction or lack of it as to all these matters is electoral, not judicial." In his ruling, Moody said that while the trailer bill was legal, it was the kind of legislative maneuver that has "an unpleasant odor about them, to be sure." The bill says the California Correctional Center must close by June 30, 2023. The state began the environmental impact review process in January.īut tucked into this year's budget - which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed June 30 - was a trailer bill that says California law exempts the closure of state prisons and juvenile facilities from review under the state's environmental law. In its lawsuit, Susanville argued that when the state announced the prison's closure, it violated the California Environmental Quality Act because it had not conducted the proper reviews of the shutdown's impact on the town. More than 45% of employment in Susanville is at the California Correctional Center and the adjacent High Desert State Prison, local officials told The Times. The state announced the prison's closure in April 2021, causing widespread panic in long-shrinking Susanville, the only incorporated city in Lassen County. "The wisdom of such legislative or political policies are not and have never been the province of the courts."
"The legislature and the CDCR both have had and have expressed policy reasons for closing prisons: there is a paucity of inmates, and the population of inmates is in continuous decline and the resultant reductions in required staff and physical plant make it fiscally imprudent to continue to maintain all or our expensive prisons," Moody wrote. In a ruling issued Wednesday in Lassen County Superior Court, Visiting Judge Robert F. (Photo by Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times via MCT) (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)īut it has remained open because the town - where local officials say they face economic devastation if they lose more than 1,000 prison jobs - sued the state last year, and a Lassen County judge issued a preliminary injunction halting the closure while the case moved through the court.
The town of Susanville and how they are dealing with the closure of the California Correctional Center, a state prison, that has become their economic lifeline. SUSANVILLE, CA - JUNE 08: California Correctional Center, is a minimum-security state prison, in Northern California on Tuesday, Jin Susanville, CA.
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