Ana Zamora (3:09)

I think how we grow up can really shape our views. Early on about crime, criminal justice, all those things. Can you describe what messages you got growing up about right and wrong, about crime and punishment? And how did that plant the seed in you to point you in a direction to pursue a career in criminal justice?

Jeannie Woodford (3:33)

Well, I was raised. My father was from Italy. I was raised as a Catholic. So you get a lot of teaching about right and wrong from the Catholic Church.

Ana Zamora (3:42)

So I know about that.

Jeannie Woodford (3:43)

Yes, That's. That's a foundation. But in addition to that, my dad had a lot of friends he called his paisanos, and they would come to the house, and I was a very shy little girl, so I would often be under the table just listening to them talk. And they would often talk about their experience at San Quentin, because several of them had ended up in San Quentin during prohibition. So I had an understanding that our laws are very hard to understand sometimes, that we really needed to look at the criminal justice system not as everybody who's committed a crime, but what they were in prison for and what we needed to do to change sometimes policy or to help individuals who are within our prison system.

Ana Zamora (4:37)

Wow. I love the image of little Jeannie Woodford under the table.

Ana Zamora (4:44)

Thank you for sharing that. So I also read, and I know, because I know you a little bit, that you originally wanted to be a youth counselor. So how did you end up at San Quentin State Prison instead, right out.

Jeannie Woodford (4:59)

Of college In California, Prop 13 passed, which limited the amount of money that the government could charge for property taxes. So as a result of that, many of the youth programs that existed at that time just went away. So I'm in college thinking, well, what am I going to do now? And then they sent some recruiters to Sonoma State University, and they talked to us about working in the prison system. And their idea at that time was that they wanted all correctional officers to have college degrees and that we were going to become more like social workers. And I thought, what an interesting time to enter the criminal justice system with that goal in mind. So I went to work at San Quentin two weeks after graduating from Sonoma State University and realized that they were very far away from that goal and still have not met it today.

Ana Zamora (5:57)

I'd love to hear more about that experience. I mean, San Quentin State Prison has such a reputation in California and across the country. Really? Can you paint a picture for me about what those early days at San Quentin was like? And are there any stories that really stick out to you from that time?

Jeannie Woodford (6:21)

So when I started at San Quentin State Prison, it was before the change in all the laws, you know, at that point in time, life crimes were seven to life.

Jeannie Woodford (6:32)

And the U.S. supreme Court had overturned the death penalty in California, finding it to be unconstitutional at that point. And so when I went to San Quentin, there were a lot of former death row inmates walking the general population. And I think that had a long term impact to me because I came to understand that these former death row inmates were just like every other individual serving time. Many of them held some very responsible inmate jobs within the prison. They would be the clerks and many of them writing reports for correctional officers who couldn't write those kinds of things. So that's what I walked into. It also looked like a college campus because San Quentin had a lot of educational programs. And so there were inmates walking around with books. And I thought, wow, this is pretty easy job. And then it very quickly changed. When the laws changed to 25 July, the Bel Ponty was reinstituted. All of those get tough on crime. We ended up receiving hundreds of inmates, primarily from Southern California. Very young people, some 16 and 17 year old kids who were coming to prison, looking at a term of 25 to life for a life crime. They saw no hope. They thought their life was over. And so within six months, the violence at that prison was out of control. There were gunshots every day. There were whistles being blown. We were running around like crazy. People really trying to address the stabbings, the murder of inmates by other inmates. Just. It was really horrific.

Jeannie Woodford (8:16)

In fact, I left the prison many times in tears, like, what am I doing here? And what's going on with this system?

Ana Zamora (8:25)

Hey, Ana, here, you've been hearing the word inmate a lot in this interview, and I want to be up front. This isn't a word I love. When I talk about people who are incarcerated, I like to say just that. People rather than use words like inmate or conviction. But I also know that sometimes we'll hear words that are used a lot out in the world and are super common in corrections. So you'll hear this term throughout this conversation, even though we believe in seeing the whole person, not just their label. Okay, let's get back to the interview. You went from being a young person right out of college, you know, entering into San Quentin at. At a time when, to your point, it looked more like a college campus. And then through your career, you saw this massive sh where prisons became very violent and dangerous. Despite that massive shift, you worked your way up through the ranks. I did. And you busted through all the ceilings to become the first woman to serve as warden. Of San quentin state prison and run it.

Ana Zamora (9:37)

I'm curious.

Ana Zamora (9:39)

Do you think that your approach to running this prison was different than your predecessors? I think a lot of people have a stereotype about prison wardens as being punishing and cold, But I know that wasn't your approach. Tell me a little bit about how you approach the job.

Jeannie Woodford (9:59)

So I would tell my staff that our job was not to judge, and you have to lead by example. So when I walk through the prison, I would say, good morning, gentlemen, Referring to the inmates. Right. I always spoke to them with dignity and respect. If I saw an inmate who looked like they were depressed or sad, I would go over and talk to them and find out what was going on. And when I found inmates who looked like they were lost and needed someone to support them, I would go to my older inmates or the inmates that I trusted and say, I really need you to take care of this young guy over here who's just not adjusting well. And I also defined public safety very broadly, and I knew that what we did inside the prison, it affected people in Oakland, California. It affected people in San Francisco. It affected people in all their communities. So if we treated people with dignity and respect, I think that allowed them to hold their heads up higher when they were talking to their children or their wife or their mother or whoever. And, you know, I'll tell you that as the warden, I would have moms call me, call my office, and want to talk to their son. And I made sure that happened. And I had rules about, if an inmate writes to you, you have. You have 10 days to respond to them. I had those kinds of rules. I also had a little note for that said thank you from the warden. And if I saw somebody doing something good, whether it was an inmate or a staff member, I wrote them a thank you note. And when I would walk around the prison, I would see those thank you notes hanging on the wall of inmate cells. And it just made me.

Ana Zamora (11:23)

It was a source of pride.

Jeannie Woodford (11:25)

Yeah, it was a source of pride.

Ana Zamora (11:27)

It's powerful. The wardens of our correctional institutions across the country are incredibly important jobs. And I want to talk a little bit more in a bit about rehabilitation and public safety and the nexus there, Because I know you have a lot to about that. But first, I want to talk about accountability, because that's also a topic that I think is really misunderstood. What do you think true accountability looks like in a correctional setting?

Jeannie Woodford (11:57)

So let me start with an example. I started this success dorm at San Quentin, and It was a 200 man dorm and to go into the success dorm, the inmates had to agree to three things. They had to agree to work on their own parole plan. They had to agree to participate in three self help groups a week. And they had to agree to do community service within the prison system. And that could be picking up papers on the yard or, you know, volunteering to make toys for children during Christmas or work on the bicycle program we had or whatever. But they had to agree to give back in some way. To me, that's accountability. You know, you need to take responsibility for what you did to figure out what you're going to do going forward by creating a successful parole plan. And you need to make sure that you are acknowledging that you need to contribute to society in some way. I also think that being involved in victims programs where you understand and realize what your actions have done to people is important. We started a small program at San Quentin which is now grown throughout the state. I don't know what punishment really does for anybody or retribution. I don't know how that makes our society safer or makes anyone whole or makes. It just honestly.

Jeannie Woodford (13:24)

Sends us down the wrong road, I think.

Ana Zamora (13:26)

Yeah. And yet I think the notion of accountability and punishment are often viewed as the same thing. And I think what you're helping us to understand is that true accountability really has nothing to do with punishment. It has to do with all of these other things back realizing and recognizing and owning the harm that you caused, etc. Etc. Thank you.

Ana Zamora (14:04)

At the Just Trust, we're working to make sure the United States becomes a global leader in justice and public safety innovation, not just a leader in our incarceration rates. There's so much opportunity to move us from a system of punishment for the sake of punishment to one that actually centers prevention, safety, accountability, rehabilitation and healing. Right now, that means powering innovative programs and policies that significantly improve our institutions and make our neighborhoods safer. But we can't do this alone. Your support helps us continue to push for meaningful change in this moment. Together, we can build a justice system that works for everyone. Visit thejustrust.org donate to join us in this mission today.

Podcast Promos (Various Hosts) (14:54)

Hello, I'm Gretchen Rubin. And I'm Lori Gottlieb. We're two friends, one a happiness researcher and the other a therapist. And we are here to tackle the problems of everyday life with all of you, from big issues to small. We'll share advice and fresh perspectives and we'll also highlight responses from you, our listeners to the questions we discuss. Whether it's that pet peeve that's been bugging you for years. A tricky dilemma or just something you've always wondered about? We'll talk it through the since you asked podcast from Lemonada media premieres on September 23rd. Wherever you get your podcasts.

Ana Zamora (15:28)

You and I have been in the trenches together. We have, we have poured our blood, sweat and tears into ending executions in the United States.

Ana Zamora (15:43)

And I think it's important that we talk a little bit about that. I want to move on to other topics, but I think our listeners will be really curious about how you went from running a prison and overseeing executions in California to becoming one of the most powerful and important voices of against the death penalty. Can you just tell us a little bit about that transformation?

Jeannie Woodford (16:13)

Well, I never was in favor of the death penalty at all, but I also knew that my job was to carry out the law. And so I would tell myself, would you really want someone working at San Quentin who was happy to carry out an execution? And I can tell you some of my peers think that's their attitude. But you know, many of them have never worked with death row inmates. I worked with death row inmates from the former death row inmates when I first started, and then as death row grew, I knew all those inmates and talked to them and so I knew who was facing the death penalty. I also knew from reading central files from inmates who didn't receive the death penalty, the difference in crimes were often non existent. You got the death penalty if you committed your crime in la and you didn't get it if you committed your crime in San Francisco. Exactly. So the death penalty, just from a practical standpoint or from a criminal justice standpoint or from a safety standpoint, made absolutely no sense. So morally against the death penalty and then realizing it's just a failed policy, and then of course, being involved in four executions, which is a very difficult thing to do.

Jeannie Woodford (17:31)

You know, Unbelievable. I mean, the four individuals that I was involved with in their execution were older inmates. They posed no harm. One had volunteered to be executed, stopping his appeals. You know, I from the moment you get that death warrant, I describe this to people. You get that death warrant 30 to 60 days prior to the execution. And every day you wake up saying, In 60 days I'm going to be killing someone. Oh, in 30 days I'm going to be killing someone. And during that time period you're planning for this execution, you're meeting with the inmate, you're, you're trying to make sure that in the case of Mr. Massey, who volunteered to be executed, that he still wanted to continue. You know, I said to him, probably more times than I can count, you know, today would be a good day to call this off. You're in control. And of course, he would just look at me and say, no, warden, I'm ready.

Jeannie Woodford (18:28)

And so.

Jeannie Woodford (18:30)

It'S just hard to understand why we believe that the death penalty is necessary in this country when we have very secure prisons and these inmates pose no greater risk inside the prison system than any other inmates. It's just time to end it.

Ana Zamora (18:51)

That's right. Heavy topic. Yes, heavy. Well, I just want to say thank you for your immense leadership and sacrifice that I know you have made.

Ana Zamora (19:03)

In our work to end executions in the United States. I do want to shift now back to rehabilitation because you are an expert and an advocate for many criminal justice reform related issues. And rehabilitation is one of the areas where I feel like you have had a massive impact. You know, look at something really simple. We saw the R come back to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation thanks to your leadership as undersecretary of the Department of Corrections during the Schwarzenegger administration in California. Can you talk to me about why you fought so hard for greater rehabilitation in California prisons and what happened as a result?

Jeannie Woodford (19:53)

Well, I fought hard for rehabilitation because I believe that's true public safety and luck. Fortunately, I was at San Quentin and my last year's warden there, I had 3,000 volunteers coming into that prison.

Ana Zamora (20:05)

Wow.

Jeannie Woodford (20:06)

Right? A year. 3,000 people a year were coming in, and they were doing programs like meditation, yoga, the gardening program, our college program with all volunteer professors. And I was able to see the change in inmates. As I said, I started there in 1978. So many of the inmates that I knew in 1978, who. Many of them who came in under the 25 to life, who came in and were incredibly violent, primarily due to our overcrowding and the horrible conditions they were in. They would end up transferring back to San Quentin years later and participating in these programs. And I got to see the growth in them. And, you know, they would share with me that their children were doing well, or particularly my inmates in the college program. If I walked into the visiting room and they were sitting there talking to their kids, they were solving algebra problems in the visiting room, and they had something to share with their kids. And it always made me feel so proud of them. And the fact that they were able to and chose to take advantage of programs that we were providing at San Quentin, that's amazing.

Ana Zamora (21:18)

So you're talking a lot about education, but is there and lots of rehabilitation programs. Yoga, meditation. I know there was a baseball team. Is there a particular program that you felt had the biggest impact on folks inside the prison?

Jeannie Woodford (21:34)

Oh, I think absolutely. Is the college program. I. Yeah, I think that the inmates who participated in the college program, I. I would sometimes just go down and watch a class, and you could like, it was almost like you saw the light bulb come on. It would just be like, oh, wow.

Ana Zamora (21:49)

Like that transformative moment.

Jeannie Woodford (21:51)

Yeah, yeah. And the professors would talk to me about that. They would say, we love teaching here because they appreciate it so much. My second most favorite program was probably the gardening program. I mean, inmates just really found a place where they could just go and get away from it. And I'll tell you the difference between San Quentin and other prisons is we really had places for people to hide at San Quentin. I mean, we had a huge law library. We had the Catholic chapel, the Protestant chapel, the interfaith chapel. There were just. There's just nooks and crannies where people could stay out of the. Whatever was going on in the prison and just be themselves. You don't have that at other prisons. I mean, they really.

Ana Zamora (22:37)

It's just constant, Just constant.

Jeannie Woodford (22:39)

You're constant, hyper, vigilant. So I think it's not only the programs we had at San Quentin, but it was the environment where people. Other prisons don't have trees and fish ponds that inmates built without me knowing about it. You know, there's those kinds of things that people put in place that. That you could find a place to be quiet, to have a quiet moment. That's right.

Ana Zamora (23:04)

It's important. I mean, it's important to every person. All of us need quiet moments. Another thing, another piece of the puzzle. I think, and I want to hear what you think about this is whether it's in California or across the country, we are sending people to prison very far away from their families and from their communities and whatever support network they have.

Ana Zamora (23:30)

Talk about how cutting people off from their loved ones and their community makes the rehabilitation process harder. And are there specific examples that come to mind early on?

Jeannie Woodford (23:42)

When we were receiving the 25 to lifers from Los Angeles and San Diego during that era, those poor kids, and most of them were young, were being sent up to San Quentin where their families absolutely could not visit them. Phone calls were incredibly expensive, so they couldn't stay connected that way.

Jeannie Woodford (24:01)

And their families simply weren't going to write to them. It just wasn't in the culture of people we were receiving. For the most part, you know, not only were they facing 25 to life? But they're facing the isolation from people that they know and love. So it's incredibly important to keep people in their communities or keep them in the area where they will have to parole to and help build connections between that person and the community that they'll be entering. Yeah, and we were able to do that at San Quentin, you know, later we were able to enhance those connections through programs like our Veterans program. We would bring in the Veterans Administration to work with inmates who would be paroling to the Bay Area and programs like that. Church groups would come in and agree to pick up inmates at the gate and help them with where they would stay their first night out or their second night out until they could get on their feet. And those are just having those connections and letting individuals know that someone cares about them is incredibly important for their success on parole.

Ana Zamora (25:18)

We want to hear when it clicked for you. When did you start paying attention to the justice system? Maybe you were a victim of a crime and didn't get the help you needed. Maybe you also had a loved one who went to jail or prison. Maybe you learned about it through your faith community. Send us a voice recording on your phone. You can share your name or not, where you live and a little about the moment when the justice system came into focus for you. Reach us@infohejusttrust.org.

Ana Zamora (25:49)

Is it just me or.

Podcast Promos (Various Hosts) (25:50)

Are things actually really scary right now? In the world of public health, every day brings another confusing headline or yet again, a far fetched claim. Vaccines are somehow up for debate and parents are scrolling TikTok for medical advice. I'm Chelsea Clinton, an advocate, author, investor, teacher, and mom navigating this insane time right alongside you. I hope you'll join me on my new podcast, that Can't Be True, a show that sorts fact from fiction, especially on issues impacting our health. From Limonada Media and the Clinton foundation, that Can't Be True is out October 2nd.

Ana Zamora (26:29)

Jeannie, I think that for most of us in the United States, when we think of a prison, you know, one image really comes to mind, which is, you know, bars, isolation, dark dank cells, slop for dinner, violence, which is the reality of many prisons in the United States. But you and I know that there are other models of prisons, different types of correctional settings that exist in the world that actually prioritize rehabilitation and accountability over punishment. I'd love you to help our listeners really see an image of what that kind of correctional setting could look like.

Jeannie Woodford (27:09)

Certainly. So I haven't been inside San Quentin for a while, But I understand that it's headed in that direction. Sadly, it still has cells, but when you walk in there now, I understand that inmates are walking around with their dogs. They're involved in programs that, as an example, they're sitting down playing chess with a correctional officer, they're playing basketball with the correctional officers, soccer with correctional officers. So that really is kind of the image of what I think a prison should be about. It really should be where there's a professional relationship between inmates and staff, and that staff are there, helping inmates understand how to utilize their time in a productive way.

Jeannie Woodford (27:55)

And I think we need to get rid of cells where we absolutely don't need them and to really create much more humane environment for inmates. As an example, many of our inmates who are mentally ill will be sent to.

Jeannie Woodford (28:12)

Some of the mental institutions in California for treatment. And those facilities look like a hospital. And those inmates who are there for mental health treatment managed to do quite well in that environment, because the environment different, their behavior is different.

Ana Zamora (28:28)

Right.

Jeannie Woodford (28:29)

So our prisons need to be much smaller than they are. I mean, at one point, I had 6,200 inmates at San Quentin State Prison, a prison designed for 3,100 inmates. So we need smaller prisons. And, you know, the. The good news is that our perimeter security is. Can now be electric fences that keeps inmates inside the prison. So you don't need all those bars and wire and all the things that exist at most prisons around the United States.

Ana Zamora (28:57)

That's right. Wow. Thank you for sharing that vision. My hope is that folks listening can start to move away and see what's possible with prisons in this country.

Podcast Promos (Various Hosts) (29:10)

Okay.

Ana Zamora (29:10)

I want to turn now to something that I think we're battling in this space, which is there's a myth out there that if you're advocating for things like ending the death penalty or more rehabilitative programming in prisons or just this notion of criminal justice reform form, that that means that you're soft on crime. How would you respond to that?

Jeannie Woodford (29:35)

You know, I hear this argument all the time. You're just so soft on crime. You're a hug, a thug, all that stuff. But.

Ana Zamora (29:41)

Oh, yeah.

Jeannie Woodford (29:42)

Yes. I just want to say that I think that I'm smart on crime. I think that you have to look at public safety just so much more broadly than we do. And do we want to spend money locking people up, or do we want to spend our resources on improving our. Our neighborhoods and our communities? And I think the wise choice is to improve our neighborhoods and our communities. And so I absolutely believe in accountability, but I believe it needs to be structured towards a result that improves public safety overall. And I think we have the ability to do that, but not when we create. It's us and them. And I think that's what's happening in our criminal justice system. There's a belief that there's good people and bad people. That's right. I think when I, you know, started in my career, if you talked about a prisoner, everybody thought of Charlie Manson. Well, that's not right. Right. I mean, there are many people inside our prison, most people inside our prison who suffer from drug addiction, mental illness, who are developmentally disabled and don't have the resources to take care of themselves. There's just all these very complicated problems that if we solve those problems and provided the resources needed, that our communities would be safer for all of us.

Ana Zamora (31:02)

And to me, that is the definition of criminal justice reform. It is not soft on crime, to your point. It is actually taking seriously public safety and working to make responsible changes to effectuate better public safety and justice and humanity and dignity.

Jeannie Woodford (31:19)

Absolutely. We should be implementing evidence based programs and policies.

Ana Zamora (31:27)

Okay, so after everything you've experienced in your life and career, what is a hope that you have for the future of criminal justice in America, especially when it comes down to our prisons? And what's one myth you'd like to bust right here about the criminal justice system?

Jeannie Woodford (31:49)

So the myth I would like to bust, Well, I think that would be that punishment is the answer. I mean, it just really isn't. We spend millions, probably billions of dollars. Actually, it is billions of dollars. It is on punishment, and it just doesn't work. We really need to understand what actually impacts people's behavior. And we need to understand people better. I mean, every inmate that comes into the prison has a different issue. And defining that and addressing those issues is critically important to future criminal justice reform. I think that what's happening at San Quentin and turning it into a model of rehabilitation and renaming the prison, I think that gives me hope. But they need to get rid of the cells and really build a very humane living environment. Sadly, we don't really have a strategic criminal justice program in California or in any state that I'm aware of. And I would hope that we would get to a point where we sit down and develop that kind of program that says this is best practices from around the world and states. Use this when you build your next facility, or use this when you think about policy.

Ana Zamora (33:08)

I have a lot of hope too, Jeanne, that while there are a lot of questions about what this long term, the long term impact of the San Quentin transformation will be. I have a lot of hope that it is starting some important new conversations and explorations and when that council happens to discuss strategies for prison transformation across the U.S. i sure hope that you are the chair of it.

Jeannie Woodford (33:33)

Oh, I would love to do that.

Ana Zamora (33:36)

Excellent. Thank you so much, Jeannie. That was really a great conversation.

Jeannie Woodford (33:40)

Thank you.

Ana Zamora (33:46)

Okay, so Jeannie's way too humble to take credit, so I have to say it. So much of what's happening at San Quentin right now builds on the foundation she laid years ago. During her time as warden, her focus on rehabilitation was a revolution. She brought college programs, job training, and all sorts of programs that actually prepare people to succeed once they get out. She turned one of the country's most archaic prisons into one of the most innovative and forward thinking. She literally put the R back into cdcr, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Today, the prison is undergoing a massive transformation, shifting away from punishment alone to focus on skill building and social connection. It's modeled after prisons in Scandinavia where incarcerated people often live and work more independently and with minimum security. And it's the kind of change Jeannie was pushing for decades ago. Now that's a legacy. Thanks for listening to When It Clicked When It Clicked is a production of Lemonada Media and the Just Trust Trust. I'm your host Ana Zamora. Hannah Boomershein is our producer. Muna Danish is our senior producer. Ivan Korayev is our audio engineer with additional engineering support from Johnny Vince Evans Music is from apm. Jackie Danziger is our VP of Partnerships and production Executive. Producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Whittles Wax. Follow When It Clicked Wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.

Ana Zamora (35:45)

Two films, one powerful Message Our justice system needs a new story. Sing Sing from A24 and Daughters from Simpson street are two new films that shine a light on the cracks in our justice system and the resilience of those impacted by incarceration. And while they are beautiful and entertaining, they're also calls to action. You can watch Daughters now on Netflix and Sing Sing in a theater near you.

Jeannie Woodford (36:14)

Want to listen to your favorite Lemonada shows without the ad ads? Subscribe to Lemonada Premium on Apple Podcasts. You'll get ad free episodes and exclusive bonus content from shows like Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus, Fail Better with David Duchovny, the Sarah Silverman Podcast, and so many more. It's a great way to support the work we do and treat yourself to a smoother, uninterrupted listening experience. Just head to any Lemonada show, feed on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe. Make life suck less with fewer ads with Lemonada Premium.