California’s Opportunity: Closing Prisons and Reinvesting in Higher Education

California stands at a rare intersection of fiscal responsibility, public safety, and generational opportunity. Decades-long declines in crime, arrests, and incarceration, driven primarily by broad societal and generational changes rather than increased imprisonment, have fundamentally altered the state’s correctional needs. Simultaneously, the cost of higher education has risen dramatically as public investment has failed to keep pace with enrollment growth and inflation, shifting the financial burden onto students and families.

California’s prison system was built for a scale of incarceration that no longer exists. Since its 2007 peak, the state’s prison population has fallen by nearly 50 percent, returning to levels which have not been seen since the early 1980s. Official projections from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) indicate continued declines through at least 2028 (CDCR, 2024). These trends reflect structural and generational shifts in behavior, demographics, technology, and social norms that are unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future (CDCR, 2024).

Yet, California continues to operate and fund a prison infrastructure designed for a much larger incarcerated population. The state now maintains 19,000 excess prison beds, equivalent to five fully staffed facilities, at enormous ongoing cost (LAO, 2023; LAO 2024). Each prison costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually to operate. Maintaining surplus capacity diverts billions of general-fund dollars from higher-return public investments, particularly education.

Report Recommendations:

• Close six to eight state prisons by 2028, prioritizing high-vacancy, high-cost, and structurally obsolete facilities;
• Establish a Prison Savings Reinvestment Fund to capture and protect savings generated by prison closures and continued population declines; and
• Redirect up to $1.5 billion annually into the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and California Community Colleges (CCC) systems to reduce tuition, expand accessibility, improve quality and lower student debt.

The evidence is clear: the historic decline in crime cannot be explained primarily by increased imprisonment or policing intensity. Crime has fallen across states and nations with widely varying criminal justice policies, incarceration rates, and enforcement strategies (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2014; Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Long-term reductions began in the early 1990s and accelerated as younger cohorts became less likely.

This is a fundamental policy mismatch. California is overinvesting in correctional capacity that it no longer needs while underinvesting in educational opportunity that it urgently requires. Closing unneeded prisons and reinvesting the savings in higher education would simultaneously maintain public safety, reduce recurring expenditures, expand college access, increase lifetime earnings and tax revenues, and advance equity by shifting resources from punitive systems to institutions that expand opportunity. to commit a crime than any generation in modern recorded history (Zimring, 2007; DOJ, 2023). Arrest rates among youth and young adults, the strongest predictors of future prison admissions, have declined by 80 – 90% (Kids​Da​ta​.org, 2023). These generational shifts ensure that prison populations will continue to fall irrespective of policy changes.

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