San Quentin, in the words of Johnny Cash’s song that immortalized the prison just off the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge crossing the North San Francisco Bay, is a “living hell.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to make the place a tad more heavenly.

To be clear, San Quentin hasn’t exactly been a model place to be.

Lawsuits over the years have zeroed in on inadequate medical care, dismal conditions, and — ready for this one — deaths of inmates that could have been avoided.

It sounds just like the concerns that law-abiding residents in places like Fresno and Oakland have without killing, robbing, torturing, or raping someone or flaunting the rules of society as defined by laws with a boldness that literally takes victims’ breath away for good.

If you are cynical about the current state of California’s justice system, you might point out that the reforms these days are fairly one-sided.

As Newsom works mightily to establish an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for a governor closing down the most prisons in an eight-year term, he has chosen to go after the low-hanging fruit.

San Quentin hasn’t lived up to its reputation of being the place where California tosses its hardcore murderers for years. It is why level-headed state leaders long ago created Pelican Bay in Crescent City. It was built to house “the worst of the worst.” It featured what was referred to as “a prison inside a prison.” It was a deadly place. But it changed. It changed with reforms.

What Newsom has in mind for San Quentin is based on a Scandinavian model. It emphasizes the learning of measured self-reliance with inmates even cooking their own food.

Critics refer it is as changing prison into an Ikea.  It’s a swipe at the modern-style Scandinavian furniture that has been employed elsewhere likely because it is less lethal than other furniture and still be durable and “inviting.”

That’s not necessarily implying misunderstood prisoners are capable of killing with furniture but why take chances?

Even states like North Dakota — clearly as red as California is blue — are trying the Scandinavian model. It is aimed at reducing recidivism which is what we all want, right? But it is being done without rethinking the rules of engagement with society that gets you sent — or not sent — to prison in the first place.

The choice of San Quentin for such a reform is questionable at best for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, it has a massive list of $1.6 billion in noted deficiencies that need to be addressed. A much smaller deficiency list coupled with its age that isn’t nearly as old as San Quentin, got Deuel Vocational Institution (DVI) shuttered in rural Tracy in September of 2021.

It is why one would think the governor would have been better off pumping the $20 million to jump start the Scandinavia reform model at either Chuckawalla Valley State Prison or the California City Correctional Facility. Both are being closed.

Why keep San Quentin up and running when it clearly has the bigger maintenance issues? The answer is simple. State law mandates male prisoners on condemned status be housed at San Quentin that also contains the state’s only execution chambers.

But Newsom has made it clear no one in California will be executed when he is governor. As such, he can ill afford the optics of creating a new Death Row at another prison.

The optics that he is hoping to create may run along the line that the model, if it works, will have rehabilitated some of the state’s most hardcore offenders even though the participating inmates never punched a ticket for Death Row.

It is tough to get warm and fuzzy feelings about Newsom’s latest effort as he keeps closing down prisons and releasing inmates early to dump back into communities.

It’s an odd path to take given Newsom correctly points out that the current system is failing miserably and is simply turning inmates back on the street to do more crime.

Newsom is right about the need for reform. The problem is what he is doing is knowingly reducing the amount of time that an inmate who isn’t being reformed stays in state prison and away from destroying the lives of more law-abiding citizens by being released early.

If you concede the system is making walking time bombs out of inmates then what are you doing releasing them earlier back into society?

To make the entire gig work that blames imprisonment for increasing crime — which at the end of the day is the bottom-line of the reform movement’s banner they wave to gain support — also means rethinking the “middle” of the criminal justice system as well.

First, a low-level example as being defined by the wanton and anti-social behavior that is expanding that isn’t in the same league as murder, hardcore armed robbery and such.

The example hails from Fresno County. Earlier this year, 38-year-old Keith Castain made national news by allegedly driving a stolen car to the police station to pick up his personal property. That in itself is bad enough. But what makes him the poster child for the need to reform the reforms made over the years to reduce the potential for someone to end up in the slammer for felonies that aren’t hardcore is the fact he racked up nearly three dozen charges and 10 arrests in 30 days. That’s 18 felony charges and 15 misdemeanors. The cases involve six stolen cars, DUI, drugs, vandalism and fraud.

Now for a more lethal example: Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price sent an email to family members of 1-year-old Jasper Wu who died in the crossfire of a gang shootout on Interstate 880 in 2021 that her office was looking at ways to punish the gang members charged in their son’s death without sending them to prison.

Apparently allowing the scales of justice to weigh in on victims isn’t nearly as important these days as making sure they are tipped in favor of convicted criminals.

At the end of the day, what Newsom is proposing to do at San Quentin makes sense for many although clearly not all inmates.

It needs to be pursued.

But Newsom also needs to concurrently address issues that deteriorate confidence in California’s criminal justice system and threaten to eventually have the pendulum swing back to what it was before.

The aim needs to be the middle ground.

Reducing serious crime to “hand slaps” is on the opposite end of the spectrum of what we had before which was throwing someone in prison for 20 years on the third theft offense even if it involved stealing a loaf of bread.

San Quentin, or any prison, for that matter, shouldn’t be a living hell for the sake of being a living hell.

But then neither should the lives of law-abiding people in Fresno, Oakland or anywhere else in California due to the criminal justice system reforms that simply make the consequences less daunting for criminals.

 This column is the opinion of Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Courier or 209 Multimedia.