The California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) in Norco, California will close in October 2026, according to an Aug. 4 statement released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The CDCR’s statement cited lower incarceration rates and the state’s cost-saving efforts as the reasons behind the prison’s closure.
The closure brings uncertainty for the future of Pitzer College’s Inside-Out program and the accelerated bachelor’s program for incarcerated students.
Pitzer’s Inside-Out program and its accompanying bachelor’s degree program both run through the Claremont Colleges’ Justice Education Center, currently only operating in the Norco CRC. The B.A. Pathway program allows incarcerated individuals to pursue an accelerated degree over the course of three semesters, according to Romarilyn Ralston, the senior director of the Justice Education Center.
The Inside-Out model was developed by a professor at Temple University, but Pitzer is the first college to develop an Inside-Out curriculum that grants a BA for incarcerated students. However, the prison’s closure means that 11 incarcerated students currently pursuing their BA will not have the summer to finish their degree.
“It’s going to be a challenge to get folks graduated by May,” Ralston said. “But if [incarcerated students] are up for the challenge, and they said that they were, we can do it.”
5C “outside” students are no longer allowed to enter the CRC due to decreases in security staffing as the prison begins to deactivate. Pomona College professor Erin Runions, who teaches an Inside-Out course called “Prison, Punishment, and Redemption,” has begun hosting the class on Zoom from the prison every other week, alternating between virtual and in-person instruction. Ralston said the virtual modality will likely continue until the prison closes for good.
Sasha Matthews PO ’26, a student in Runions’ course, said that being on Zoom makes it a lot harder to connect on an interpersonal level with the “inside” students.
While the Inside-Out program currently only exists at the Norco CRC, Ralston said the Justice Education Center is hoping to launch additional Inside-Out and B.A. programs at a women’s prison and two other men’s prisons in the spring. The B.A. program will be on pause until the center is able to launch another one.
“There are lots of [prisons] interested in bachelor’s programs, college courses,” Ralston said. “So I believe we’ll be able to successfully relaunch at other prisons and provide a type of quality education that is recognized not only by CDCR, but by those who know about the Claremont Colleges.”
In her six years teaching the Inside-Out program, Runions said the main benefits of the program were the connections formed between “inside” and “outside” students that contributed to changes in perspective about the prison industrial complex.
“There’s a lot of investment in learning, and that’s partly spurred on by this inside out relationship because everybody wants to be on their best learning behavior for everybody else,” Runions said.
Despite the uncertainty for the Inside-Out program, Ralston, Runions and many within the prison see the closure of the CRC as a good thing. But Runions and Ralston said the closure came as a surprise.
“All of the chaos, the confusion, the movement that happens to people, the job loss, the families that live in this area now concerned with where their loved ones are going to be transferred to … it becomes an issue,” Ralston said. “But at the same time, it’s something to celebrate. The savings to the state and the taxpayer are incredible, and we hope that money is reinvested in communities.”
“ But at the same time, it’s something to celebrate. The savings to the state and the taxpayer are incredible, and we hope that money is reinvested in communities. ”
Runions said that there were some prison abolitionist concerns about the Inside-Out program regarding support for the prison’s existence.
“Education is always non-reformist,” Runions said. “But we certainly don’t want it to be propping up prisons. So in that sense, I think it’s great that [the Inside-Out program] hasn’t prevented the prison from closing.”
Rachel Gonzales, whose husband Richard is currently incarcerated at CRC, said she couldn’t be more relieved and thankful that the prison is closing. In a statement shared with TSL, Mrs. Gonzales detailed neglect and corruption within the prison that her husband and her family had experienced.
“The closure of CRC is far more than the end of a building — it marks a profound step toward justice, healing and the long-overdue change our system so desperately needs,” Mrs. Gonzales wrote. “When demolition day comes, it will be deeply personal for me and my family.”
In a statement shared with TSL, Richard Gonzales also celebrated the closure of the prison, but said the largest protest of the closure from inside the prison has been from the many incarcerated people involved with higher education, as well as the CDCR staff.
“We should not lose sight of the historical context that prisons symbolize in our country, one that keeps the imbalanced power structure in place and that has terrorized generations of families of minority descent simultaneously,” Mr. Gonzales wrote. “We should listen to the protests and find participants to carry on with the transformative and restorative justice education programs that so many incarcerated people yearn for wherever they are going to be transferred.”
According to Ralston, the CRC has long been on a short list of prisons that are dangerous or beyond remodeling, and that abolitionists have been advocating for Governor Gavin Newsom to close. In her statement, Mrs. Gonzales wrote that the incarcerated were crammed into overcrowded spaces, denied basic sanitation, left without proper medical or mental health care, and that their well-being was constantly at risk.
“This facility was never built to be a prison, yet it has been forced to function as one while the building itself is falling apart,” Mrs. Gonzales wrote. “These conditions are not isolated incidents or unfortunate oversights; these are systemic failures that dehumanize our loved ones and rob them of their dignity, their health, and their hope. We, as a community, are demanding change.”
Ralston said that the closure of the CRC was not the end of the Justice Education Center or its programs.
“As we continue to buy higher education and education programs for incarcerated people, we will continue to work towards our North Star, which is abolition and justice,” Ralston said. “I think that’s what abolition is all about. It’s about dismantling systems of oppression while we build those things in our community, for our people that help them to thrive and have good lives and sustainability.”
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