As California’s prison population declines, advocates demand fewer investments in prisons and police in the budget.

The 2026–27 California Budget was released earlier this month, outlining a significant overhaul of California's correctional system, driven by decreasing prison populations, notable cost savings from facility closures and increased funding for rehabilitation and reentry programs.

According to the annual report, California’s adult prison population has declined steadily over the past several years, a shift that is reshaping the state’s correctional system and generating billions of dollars in savings.

As inmate numbers have dropped, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has moved away from costly contract prisons. The department ended its final out-of-state contract for housing incarcerated people in June 2019, followed by the termination of its last in-state contract community correctional facility in May 2021. In March 2024, the state took another significant step by ending the lease of the California City Correctional Facility, its last privately owned prison. 

Beyond full closures, CDCR has also shut down individual facilities within existing institutions. Since the 2021–22 fiscal year, facilities have been closed at six men’s prisons, along with the Folsom Women’s Facility at Folsom State Prison. Those changes are projected to save $208.3 million each year.

Advocates, however, argue that the current proposals are insufficient. James King, Director of Programs at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, said in a statement that the proposed budget still allocates $14.2 billion to the CDCR.

“The Ella Baker Center commends the continued investments in rehabilitative programming for incarcerated people. However, the state budget continues to grossly reallocate more funding to policing and prisons, with $14.2 billion to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.” King describes this as a waste of taxpayers’ money, arguing that investing in prisons and policing often continues the harm that the state claims to rehabilitate.

They also noted that the budget lacks new prison closures and does not include plans for decarceration, both of which would significantly address California's $3 billion deficit. Instead, the budget exacerbates the state's economic challenges by allocating $78.5 million to the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, previously the San Quentin State Prison.

Many have suggested that California could achieve significant savings by reducing the CDCR budget and reallocating those funds to programs that support re-entry and rehabilitation, housing, job development, youth initiatives, public health, and violence prevention.

Emilio Zapién, the Director of Communications for Youth Justice Coalition, says that while the budget may be taking steps in the right direction, probation unions are widely viewed by advocates as a central obstacle to shifting toward care-first models and reallocating resources. 

As a result, despite repeated findings by the California Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) that certain facilities—such as Los Padrinos and Sylmar—are unsuitable for youth, young people remain housed there years later. “There is a $4.8 billion settlement for abuse inside these halls, most facilities are unsuitable, and the county board is still funding the probation department at ridiculous rates,” he tells CALÓ News.

Zapién says that as the funding authority has moved from Sacramento to county governments, oversight now falls largely to the BSCC, whose membership is dominated by law enforcement and probation officials and which regulates use-of-force policies, programming, education and health care.

This issue, he claims, is closely tied to larger budgetary and political systems. Anti-incarceration advocates argue that it is essential to consider county priorities as a whole, particularly the ongoing investment in probation and sheriff departments, despite documented cases of abuse and a multibillion-dollar settlement related to youth detention.