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What does it mean to be smart on crime? Jeanne Woodford, former warden at San Quentin State prison, has been a longtime advocate for rehabilitation. In our conversation, she offers a new vision of what prisons could look like, from removing prison cells to providing opportunities for incarcerated people to garden, take college courses, and even play chess with correctional officers.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Jeanne Woodford, Ana Zamora

Ana Zamora  01:36

Welcome to When It Clicked. I’m your host. Ana Zamora, founder and CEO of The Just Trust, an organization fighting for a criminal justice system that works better for all of us. In this series, I’m talking to people from all walks of life to ask why they’re working to transform our justice system. We may come to this issue for very different reasons, but ultimately, we all want the same thing, to create safety and opportunities for all. Some of my guests have made mistakes in the past and have been to prison. Some have a family member who has been to prison like I do, and others are driven by human rights, racial justice, faith or economics, whatever their reason, all are welcome at this table today, we’re talking to Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin State Prison, and the first woman to hold the job. I gotta tell you, this conversation is really special to me, because Jeanne  and I go way back, and she’s someone I deeply admire. We’ve been in the trenches together working to end the death penalty even before criminal justice reform became a popular movement. In our conversation, Jeanne opens up about what it was like being a warden at California’s most infamous and antiquated prison. She talks about her job of overseeing death row at a time when rehabilitation, something she deeply believed in, was on the rise. Plus, she talks about something that I think gets lost in a lot of conversations about reform, how true accountability and rehabilitation actually make our communities safer. All right, let’s get into my conversation with Jeanne. I think how we grow up can really shape our views early on about crime, criminal justice, all those things. Can you describe what messages you got growing up about right and wrong about crime and punishment, and how did that plant the seed in you to point you in a direction to pursue a career in criminal justice?

 

Jeanne Woodford  03:52

Well, I was raised my father was from Italy. I was raised as a Catholic, so you get a lot of teaching about right and wrong from the Catholic Church, so I know about that. Yes, that’s a foundation. But in addition to that, my dad had a lot of friends. He called his paisanos, and they would come to the house, and I was a very shy little girl, so I would often be under the table just listening to them talk. And they would often talk about their experience at San Quentin, because several of them had ended up in San Quentin during Prohibition. So I had an understanding that that our laws are very hard to understand sometimes, that we really needed to look at the criminal justice system, not as everybody who’s committed a crime, but what they were in prison for, and what we needed to do to change, sometimes policy or to help individuals who are within our prison system.

 

Ana Zamora  04:55

Wow, I love the image of little Jeanne Woodford under the table. Okay, thank you for sharing that. So I also read, and I know, because I know you a little bit that you originally wanted to be a youth counselor. So how did you end up at San Quentin State Prison instead, right out of college.

 

Jeanne Woodford  05:19

In California, prop 13 passed, which limited the amount of money that that the government could charge for property taxes. So as a result of that, many of the youth programs that exist at that time just went away. So I’m in college thinking, Well, what am I going to do now? And then they sent some recruiters to Sonoma State University, and they talked to us about working in the prison system, and their idea at that time was that they wanted all correctional officers to have college degrees and that we were going to become more like social workers. And I thought, what an interesting time to enter the criminal justice system with that goal in mind. So I went to work at San Quentin two weeks after graduating from Sonoma State University, and realized that they were very far away from that goal and still have not met it today.

 

Ana Zamora  06:16

I’d love to hear more about that experience. I mean, San Quentin State Prison has such a reputation in California and across the country, really, can you paint a picture for me about what those early days at San Quentin was like, and are there any stories that really stick out to you from that time?

 

Jeanne Woodford  06:39

So when I started at San Quentin State Prison, it was before the change in all the laws. At that point in time, life. Crimes were seven to life, and the US Supreme Court had overturned the death penalty in California, finding it to be unconstitutional at that point. And so when I went to San Quentin, there were a lot of former death row inmates walking the general population, and I think that had a long term impact on me, because I came to understand that these former death row inmates were just like every other individual serving time. Many of them held some very responsible inmate jobs within the prison, they would be the clerks, and many of them writing reports for correctional officers who couldn’t write those kinds of things. So that’s what I walked into. It also looked like a college campus, because San Quentin had a lot of educational programs, and so there were inmates walking around with books. And I thought, wow, this is pretty easy job, and then it very quickly changed. When the laws changed to 25 to life was reinstituted, all of those get tough on crime. We ended up receiving hundreds of inmates, primarily from Southern California, very young people, some 16 and 17 year old kids who were coming to prison looking at a term of 25 to life for a life crime, they saw no hope. They thought their life was over. And so within six months, the violence at that prison was out of control. There were gunshots every day. There were whistles being blown. We were running around like crazy, people really trying to to address the stabbings, the murder of inmates by other inmates. Just it was really horrific. In fact, I, you know, left the prison many times in tears, like, what am I doing here? And what was going on with with this system.

 

Ana Zamora  08:43

Hey, Anna, here you’ve been hearing the word inmate a lot in this interview, and I want to be upfront. This isn’t a word I love. When I talk about people who are incarcerated, I like to say just that people rather than use words like inmate or convict. But I also know that sometimes we’ll hear words that are used a lot out in the world and are super common in corrections. So you’ll hear this term throughout this conversation, even though we believe in seeing the whole person, not just their label. Okay, let’s get back to the interview. You went from being a young person right out of college, you know, entering into San Quentin at at a time when, to your point, it looked more like a college campus. And then through your career, you saw this massive shift where prisons became very violent and dangerous. Despite that massive shift, you worked your way up through the ranks, and you busted through all the ceilings to become the first woman to serve as warden of San Quentin State Prison and run it. I’m curious. You know, do you think that your opinion? Approach to running this prison was different than your predecessors. I think a lot of people have a stereotype about prison wardens as being punishing and cold, but I know that wasn’t your approach. Tell me a little bit about how you approach the job.

 

Jeanne Woodford  10:18

So I would tell my staff that our job was not to judge, and you have to lead by example. So when I walked through the prison, I would say, Good morning, gentlemen, referring to the inmates, right? I always spoke to them with dignity and respect. If I saw an inmate who looked like they were depressed or sad, I would go over and talk to them and find out what’s going on. And when I found inmates who looked like they were lost and needed someone to support them. I would go to my older inmates, or the inmates that I trust, and say, I really need you to take care of this young guy over here who’s just not adjusting well. And I also defined public safety very broadly, and I knew that what we did inside the prison, it affected people in Oakland, California. It affected people in San Francisco. It affected people in all their communities. So if we treated people with dignity and respect, I think that allowed them to hold their heads up higher when they were talking to their children or their wife or their mother or whoever. And you know, I’ll tell you that as the warden, I would have moms call me, call my office and want to talk to their son, and I made sure that happened, and I had rules about if an inmate writes to you, you have you have 10 days to respond to them. I had those kinds of rules. I also had a little notes that said thank you from the warden, and if I saw somebody doing something good, whether it was an inmate or a staff member, I wrote them a thank you note. And when I would walk around the prison, I would see those thank you notes hanging on the wall of inmate cells, and it just.

 

Ana Zamora  11:42

A source of pride.

 

Jeanne Woodford  11:43

Yeah, it was a source of pride.

 

Ana Zamora  11:46

It’s powerful. The wardens of our correctional institutions across the country are incredibly important jobs, and I want to talk a little bit more in a bit about rehabilitation and public safety and the nexus there, because I know you have a lot to say about that, but first I want to talk about accountability, because that’s also a topic that I think is really misunderstood. What do you think true accountability looks like in a correctional setting?

 

Jeanne Woodford  12:15

So let me start with an example. I started this success dorm at San Quentin, and it was a 200 man dorm. And to go into the success dorm, the inmates had to agree to three things. They had to agree to work on their own parole plan. They had to agree to participate in three self help groups a week, and they had to agree to do community service within the prison system, and that could be picking up papers on the yard, or, you know, volunteering to make toys for children during Christmas, or work on the bicycle program we had, or whatever, but they had to agree to give back in some way. To me, that’s accountability. You know, you need to take responsibility for what you did. Figure out what you’re going to do going forward by creating a successful parole plan, and you need to make sure that you are acknowledging that you need to contribute to society in some way. I also think that being involved in victims programs where you understand and realize what your actions have done to people is important. We started a small program at San Quentin, which has now grown throughout the state. I don’t know what punishment really does for anybody, or retribution. I don’t know how that makes our society safer or makes anyone whole, or makes it just honestly sends us down the wrong road. I think.

 

Ana Zamora  13:44

Yeah, and yet, I think the notion of accountability and punishment are often viewed as the same thing. And I think what you’re helping us to understand is that true accountability really has nothing to do with punishment. It has to do with all of these other things, giving back, realizing and recognizing and owning the harm that you caused, etc. Thank you.

 

Ana Zamora  15:34

You and I have been in the trenches together. We have poured our blood sweat and tears into ending executions in the United States, and I think it’s important that we talk a little bit about that. I want to move on to other topics, but I think our listeners will be really curious about how you went from running a prison and overseeing executions in California to becoming one of the most powerful and important voices against the death penalty. Can you just tell us a little bit about that transformation?

 

Jeanne Woodford  16:18

Well, I never was in favor of the death penalty at all, but I also knew that my job was to carry out the law. And so, you know, I would tell myself, would you really want someone working at San Quentin who was happy to carry out an execution? And I can tell you, some of my peers think that’s their attitude. But you know, many of them have never worked with death row inmates. I worked with death row inmates from the former death row inmates when I first started, and then as Death Row grew, I knew all those inmates and talked to them and and so I knew who was facing the death penalty. I also knew from reading central files from inmates who didn’t receive the death penalty. The difference in crimes were often non existent. You know, right? You got the death penalty if you if you committed your crime in LA and you didn’t get it if you committed your crime in San Francisco, exactly. So, you know, the death penalty just from a practical standpoint, or from a criminal justice standpoint, or from a safety standpoint, made absolutely no sense. So you’re morally against the death penalty, and then realizing it’s just a failed policy. And then, of course, being involved in four executions, which is a very difficult thing to do, is it was unbelievable. I mean, the four individuals that I was involved with in their execution were older inmates. They pose no harm. One had volunteered to be executed, stopping his appeals. You know, I from the moment you get that death warrant, I describe this to people. You get that death warrant 30 to 60 days prior to the execution, and every day you wake up saying, in 60 days, I’m going to be killing someone. Oh, in 30 days, I’m going to be killing someone. And during that time period, you’re planning for this execution, you’re meeting with the inmate, you’re you’re trying to make sure that, in the case of Mr. Massey, who volunteered to be executed, that he still wanted to continue. You know, I said to him, probably more times than I can count. You know, today would be a good day to call this off. You’re in control. And of course, he would just look at me and say, No, warden, I’m ready. And so it’s just hard to understand why we believe that the death penalty is is necessary in this country when we have very secure prisons, and these inmates pose no greater risk inside the prison system than any other inmate, and it’s just time to end it.

 

Ana Zamora  18:56

That’s right. Oh, heavy topic, heavy well, I just want to say thank you for your immense leadership and sacrifice that I know you have made in our in our work to end executions in the United States. I do want to shift now back to rehabilitation, because you are an expert and an advocate for many criminal justice reform related issues, and rehabilitation is one of the areas where I feel like you have had a massive impact. You know, look at something really simple. We saw the R come back to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation thanks to your leadership as Under Secretary of the Department of Corrections during the Schwarzenegger administration in California. Can you talk to me about why you fought so hard for greater rehabilitation in California prisons, and what happened as a result?

 

Jeanne Woodford  19:58

Well, I fought hard for me. Meditation, because I believe that’s true, public safety and luck, fortunately, I was at San Quentin in my last year as warden. There, I had 3000 volunteers coming into that prison. Wow, right? A year, 3000 people a year were coming in, and they were doing programs like meditation, yoga, the gardening program, our college program with all volunteer professors, and I was able to see the change in inmates, as I said. I started there in 1978 so many of the inmates that I knew in 1978 who many of them who came in under the 25 to life, who came in and were incredibly violent, primarily due to our overcrowding and the horrible conditions they were in, they would end up transferring back to San Quentin years later, and participating in these programs, and I got to see the growth in them. And you know, they would share with me that their children were doing well, or particularly my inmates in the college program, if I walked into the visiting room and they were sitting there talking to their kids, they were solving algebra problems in the visiting room, and they had something to share with their kids, and it always made me feel so proud of them, and the fact that they were able and chose to take advantage of programs that we were providing in San Quentin.

 

Ana Zamora  21:21

That’s amazing. So you’re talking a lot about education, but is there and lots of rehabilitation programs, yoga, meditation, I know there was a baseball team. Is there a particular program that you felt had the biggest impact on folks inside the prison?

 

Jeanne Woodford  21:39

Oh, I think absolutely is the college program.Yeah, I think that the inmates who participated in the college program. I, I would sometimes just go down and watch a class, and you could, like, it was almost like you saw the light bulb come on. It would just be like.

 

Ana Zamora  21:54

Oh, wow. Like that transformative moment.

 

Jeanne Woodford  21:56

Yeah, it was just, and the professors would talk to me about that, they would say, we love teaching here, because they appreciate it so much. My second most favorite program was probably the gardening program. I mean, inmates just really found a place where they could just go and get away from it. And I’ll tell you, the difference between San Quentin and other prisons is we really had places for people to hide at San Quentin. I mean, we had a huge Law Library. We had the Catholic chapel, the Protestant chapel, the Interfaith Chapel. There was just, there’s just nooks and crannies where people could stay out of the whatever was going on in the prison and just be themselves. You don’t have that at other prisons. I mean, they really constant, just constant. You’re constant, hyper vigilant. So I think it’s not only the programs we had at sequin, but it was the environment where people other prisons don’t have trees and fish ponds that inmates built without me knowing about it. You know, there’s those kinds of things that people put in place that you could find a place to be quiet.

 

Ana Zamora  23:07

To have a quiet moment. That’s right, it’s important. I mean, it’s important to every person. All of us need quiet moments. Another thing, another piece of the puzzle, I think, and I want to hear what you think about this is, you know, whether it’s in California or across the country, we are sending people to prison very far away from their families and from their communities and whatever support network they have, right? Can you talk about how cutting people off from their loved ones and their community makes the rehabilitation process harder. And are there specific examples that come to mind.

 

Jeanne Woodford  23:46

Early on, when we were receiving the 25 to lifers from Los Angeles and San Diego during that era, those poor kids, and most of them were young, were being sent up to San Quentin, where their families absolutely could not visit them. Phone calls were incredibly expensive this so they couldn’t stay connected that way, and their families simply weren’t going to write to them. It just wasn’t in the culture of people we were receiving for the most part. You know, not only were they facing 25 to life, but they’re facing the isolation from people that they know and love. So it’s incredibly important to keep people in their communities, or keep them in the area where they will have to parole to and help build connections between that person and the community that they’ll be entering. Yeah, and we were able to do that at San Quentin, you know, later, we were able to enhance those connections through programs like our veterans program, we would bring in the Veterans Administration to work with inmates who would be paroling to the Bay Area, and programs like that, church groups would come in and, you know, agree to pick up inmates at the gate and and help them with their where they would stay their first night out or their second night. Out until they could get on their feet, and those are just having those connections and letting individuals know that someone cares about them is incredibly important for their success on parole.

 

Ana Zamora  25:09

You at the just trust we’re working to make sure the United States becomes a global leader in justice and public safety innovation, not just a leader in our incarceration rates. There’s so much opportunity to move us from a system of punishment for the sake of punishment, to one that actually centers prevention, safety, accountability, rehabilitation and healing. Right now that means powering innovative programs and policies that significantly improve our institutions and make our neighborhoods safer. But we can’t do this alone. Your support helps us continue to push for meaningful change in this moment, together, we can build a justice system that works for everyone. Visit the just trust.org/donate to join us in this mission today. Jeannie, I think that for most of us in the United States when we think of a prison, you know, one image really comes to mind, which is, you know, bars, isolation, dark dank, cells, slop for dinner, violence, which is the reality of many prisons in the United States. But you and I know that there are other models of prisons, different types of correctional settings that exist in the world that actually prioritize rehabilitation and accountability over punishment. I’d love you to help our listeners really see an image of what that kind of correctional setting could look like?

 

Jeanne Woodford  26:56

Certainly, so I haven’t been inside San Quentin for a while, but I understand that it’s headed in that direction. Sadly, it still has cells, but when you walk in there now, I understand that inmates are walking around with their dogs. They’re involved in programs that as an example, they’re sitting down playing chess with a correctional officer. They’re playing basketball with the correctional officers, soccer with correctional officers. So that really is kind of the image of what I think a prison should be about. It really should be where there’s a professional relationship between inmates and staff, and that staff are there helping inmates understand how to utilize their time in a productive way, and I think we need to get rid of cells where we absolutely don’t need them and and to really create much more humane environment for inmates. As an example, many of our inmates who are mentally ill will be sent to some of the mental institutions in California for treatment, and those facilities look like a hospital, and those inmates who are there for mental health treatment managed to do quite well in that environment, because the environment is different. Their behavior is different. So our prisons need to be much smaller than they are. I mean, at one point I had 6200 inmates at San Quentin State Prison, gosh, a prison designed for 3100 inmates. So we need smaller prisons. And you know, the good news is that our perimeter security can now be electric fences that keeps inmates inside the prison, so you don’t need all those bars and wire and all the things that exist in most prisons around the United States.

 

Ana Zamora  28:44

That’s right. Wow. Thank you for sharing that vision. I My hope is that folks listening can start to move away and see what’s possible with prisons in this country. Okay, I want to turn now to something that I think we’re battling in this space, which is there’s a myth out there that if you’re advocating for things like ending the death penalty or more rehabilitative programming in prisons, or just this notion of criminal justice reform, that that means that you’re soft on crime. How would you respond to that?

 

Jeanne Woodford  29:22

You know, I hear this argument all the time, and you’re just so soft on crime. You’re a hug, a thug, all that stuff. But, oh yeah, you know that? Yes, I just want to say that. I think that I’m smart on crime. I think that you have to look at public safety just so much more broadly than we do. And do we want to spend money locking people up, or do we want to spend our resources on improving our our neighborhoods and our communities? And I think the wise choice is to improve our neighborhoods, in our communities. And so I absolutely believe in accountability. I believe but I believe it needs to be structured towards a result that improves. Public Safety overall, and I think we have the ability to do that, but not when we create it’s us and them, and I think that’s what’s happened in our criminal justice system. There’s a belief that there’s good people and bad people.

 

Jeanne Woodford  30:15

I think when I, you know, started in my career, if you talked about a prisoner, everybody thought of Charlie Manson. Well, that’s not right, right? I mean, there are many people inside our prison, most people inside our prison, who suffer from drug addiction, mental illness, who are developing disabled and don’t have the resources to take care of themselves. There’s just all these very complicated problems that if we solve those problems and provided the resources needed, that our communities would be safer for all of us.

 

Ana Zamora  30:15

That’s right.

 

Ana Zamora  30:49

And to me, that is the definition of criminal justice reform. It is not soft on crime, to your point, it is actually taking seriously public safety and working to make responsible changes to effectuate better Public Safety and Justice and humanity and dignity.

 

Jeanne Woodford  31:06

Absolutely, we should be implementing evidence based programs and policies.

 

Ana Zamora  31:14

Okay, so after everything you’ve experienced in your life and career, what is a hope that you have for the future of criminal justice in America, especially when it comes down to our prisons? And what’s one myth you’d like to bust right here about the criminal justice system?

 

Jeanne Woodford  31:35

So I the myth I would like to bust? Well, I think that would be that that punishment is the answer. I mean, it’s just really, isn’t we spend millions, probably billions of dollars. Actually, it is billions of dollars. It is on punishment, and it just doesn’t work. We really need to understand what actually impacts people’s behavior, and we need to understand people better. I mean, every inmate that comes into the prison has a different issue. And, you know, defining that and addressing those issues is critically important to future criminal justice reform. I think that what’s happening at San Quentin and turning it into a model of rehabilitation and renaming the prison, I think that gives me hope. But, you know, they need to get rid of the cells and, you know, really build a very humane living environment. You know, sadly, we don’t really have a strategic criminal justice program in California or in any state that I’m aware of, and I would hope that we would get to a point where we sit down and develop that kind of program that says this, this is best practices from around the world. And you know, states use this when you build your next facility, or use this when you think about policy.

 

Ana Zamora  32:56

I have a lot of hope too, Jeanne, that while there are a lot of questions about what this long term, the long term impact of the San Quentin transformation will be. I have a lot of hope that it is starting some important new conversations and explorations. And when that council happens to discuss strategies for prison transformation across the US, I sure hope that you are the chair of it.

 

Jeanne Woodford  33:20

Oh, I would love to do that.

 

Ana Zamora  33:23

Excellent, thank you so much, Jeanne. That was really a great conversation.

 

Jeanne Woodford  33:27

Thank you.

 

Ana Zamora  33:33

Okay, so Jeanne is way too humble to take credit, so I have to say it so much of what’s happening at San Quentin right now builds on the foundation she laid years ago during her time as warden. Her focus on rehabilitation was a revolution. She brought college programs, job training and all sorts of programs that actually prepare people to succeed once they get out. She turned one of the country’s most archaic prisons into one of the most innovative and forward thinking. She literally put the R back into CDCR, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Today, the prison is undergoing a massive transformation, shifting away from punishment alone to focus on skill building and social connection. It’s modeled after prisons in Scandinavia, where incarcerated people often live and work more independently and with minimum security. And it’s the kind of change Jeannie was pushing for decades ago. Now that’s a legacy. Thanks for listening to When It Clicked.  When It Clicked is a production of Lemonada Media and the Just Trust. I’m your host, Ana Zamora, Hannah Boomershine is our producer. Muna Danish is our senior producer. Ivan Kuraev is our audio engineer, with additional engineering support from Johnny Vince Evans. Music is from APM. Jackie Danziger is our VP of partnerships and production. Executive Producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs.  Follow When It Clicked wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.