Riverside County State correctional facilities, which house around 3,000 inmates, are scheduled to continue closing the recent wave of prison closures in fall of 2026, the California Department of Corrections announced Monday.
The department said the state’s falling prison population and multi-million dollar cost cuts were motivating factors for the closure.
Noco Prison is a Level 2 medium security correctional facility that houses 2,766 felony prisoners. According to the department, around 1,200 workers are staffed at the prison.
According to the CDCR, the infringers are not expected to be released early due to the closure and will be moved to existing facilities instead.
The department said it would attempt to move facility employees to other sites and other jobs across the state. However, if there were layoffs, they were not announced in the release.
The call to the spokesman for the revision was not returned immediately.
The state is expected to save $150 million a year from the closure.
Will Matthews, a spokesman for Californian Safety and Justice, advocacy group for nonprofit crime victims, said he hopes the state will redirect some of its savings to “create safety at the community level.”
“Looking at how crime has declined over the past decade, it was an effort to balance criminal justice with programs that help reduce crime and prevent harm,” Matthews said. “That includes housing assistance programs, drug treatment and vocational training.
A July report from the Los Angeles Police Department found that murders in the city of Los Angeles are projected to reach lows in 60 years. Killings have also fallen in Los Angeles County.
According to the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, all crimes (15.5%) including arson (5.8%), robbery (13.9%), assault (1.8%) and crimes (15.5%) including motor vehicle theft (15.5%) have all seen drops statewide.
The decline in crime rates stated that prison populations are low, according to the CDCR.
The department said the prison population of the 30 prisons is about 91,000, almost half of the 173,000 people who were incarcerated in 2006.
Matthews said the passing of criminal justice reform measures, such as Proposition 57 in 2016, partially promoted the drop.
The CDCR noted that other reforms, such as Congressional Bill 109, which shifted some prison populations from states to county facilities, have also helped reduce the prison population.
“Tinish Hollins, executive director of Californians for safety and justice, said:
Norco’s closure continues the recent trend of closing correctional facilities, with facilities closing in Tracy in 2021, Susanville in 2023 and Blythe this year. In total, the CDCR said it recently deactivated 11 facilities and two other facilities, along with 42 housing units across 11 prisons.
The future of Norco’s facilities (formerly a resort) remains a mystery.
CDCR said it would implement a “warm shutdown” process that will maintain the properties while being reused or ready to be sold.
Norco City Council did not publish a comment on the facility’s closure and said it was unsure how the closure would affect the community.
The CDCR said in its release that “states will support affected communities and workforces with economic resilience plans,” but did not provide details.
One of the priorities of the city council’s adopted legislative platform is to advocate adaptive reuse of previous Norconian Hotel and Resort properties.
“The City of Noco hopes that one day this historic gem will return to its former glory as a resort and become an economic factor for the region,” the city council wrote in a statement to the Times.
The correctional facility first opened in 1928 as the Lake Norconian Club, a luxury hotel.
During World War II, it was reused at Naval Hospitals before the federal government donated medical buildings in 1962 for use as drug centers. In the 1980s, it took its current form as a correctional facility.
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