In recent years, California has closed five prisons, with another potentially coming. Each closure saves around $150 million per year, which is significant in a state projected to face an $18 billion deficit next year. But debates about the fiscal impacts of prisons miss the bigger picture issue: California’s continued high crime levels, most of which go unsolved.
No state, no matter how conservative or liberal, can shrink its prison population indefinitely—let alone continue to close facilities—if it fails to reduce its overall crime rates. As long as there is serious crime, which in California there is, there will be a need to imprison people.Therefore, while California legislators continue to ask themselves, “Should we close another prison?” they should instead be posing more forward-thinking questions: “What is driving the Golden State’s 368,000 individual jail bookings each year?” and “Why did so many people commit crimes to begin with, leading to our current prison population?”
Importantly, it is possible to safely reduce the number of people behind bars, and spend less doing so. That starts with keeping people out of the system when possible. This includes alternatives to arrest and “diversion programs,” which have proven track records.
It also means being more thoughtful in distinguishing between dangerous people who need to be locked up before trial versus those who do not pose a public safety threat. And for those already in prison, tools like earned time credits, expanded parole eligibility, and sentence reviews can create pathways to release when it is both safe and smart.
Reducing the number of people currently behind bars through these strategies is a worthwhile goal, and one that California has taken significant steps toward. In fact, the state has decreased its prison population dramatically, down by about 70,000 today compared to 2011.
However, the state’s central failure is not related to the people currently behind bars. It is the fact that the system is not consistently identifying or stopping—let alone deterring—the people who are committing the most serious crimes from doing so in the first place.
Over the past few decades, California has been solving fewer and fewer crimes. As of 2022, only 13.2% of serious crimes like criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny theft, grand theft auto and arson were solved. This means that, in California, no one is held accountable in the vast majority of these cases.
This is a serious problem, and prevents crime rates from falling. The most effective way to deter criminal behavior is increasing the perception that would-be offenders will certainly get caught and sanctioned. Yet in California, that deterrent is all but non-existent for exactly those crimes we are most afraid of, given that the vast majority of California’s prison population is made up of people serving long sentences for serious crimes.
Approximately 82% are convicted of violent crimes (including 52% for homicide or assault, 12% for robbery, and 18% for sex crimes). More than one-third of these individuals are serving life sentences, which costs approximately $127,888 per person each year. The fiscal issue some policymakers are trying to resolve through prison closures would be better addressed by simply preventing these serious crimes from happening in the first place.
Current crime rates also speak to the issue. Crime remains significant in the state—in particular for serious offenses. Although early analysis shows rates are falling, violent crime rates were still almost 10% higher than pre-COVID levels as of 2024, and rates for serious crimes are still higher on average than across the rest of the United States.
The real crisis in California’s criminal justice system ultimately does not lie in prisons. It lies with a lack of effective crime prevention, and thus the inability to lower rates of serious crime. California’s legislators should not just be asking whether to close prisons, for reasons fiscal reasons or otherwise. They should be asking why the system still produces so much crime while solving so little of it, and focusing their policymaking attention there.
Sarah Anderson is the Associate Director for Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties at the R Street Institute