Punishing Through Bureaucracy

In April 2025 my correctional counselor called me into his office with what sounded like good news. After reviewing my case factors, he said, I would likely be transferred to a Level II, low-security prison. After eighteen years in a maximum-security lockup and seven more in a medium-security prison, it felt like the long-promised reward for doing everything the system said would earn me a second chance.

I had done the work. I’d stayed disciplinary-free. I completed every self-help and educational program I could get my hands on. I changed my belief system, walking away from the criminal culture that once shaped my disregard for human life—the mindset that had led to my conviction for first-degree murder. I maintained my sobriety for twenty-five years. I hadn’t committed an in-custody act of violence in fourteen. I had earned two associate’s degrees. I’d married a beautiful woman. I had created and taught self-help groups for over a decade. Through the United Black Family Scholarship Foundation, I tried every day to make amends to my victims and my community in the only ways still available to me.

So, yes: by every rule they gave us, a transfer to a lower-security, programming-focused prison seemed not only reasonable but earned. Hopefully, I thought, it would be my last stop before freedom.

A month later, the truth arrived. My counselor informed me that I had been “endorsed” to California State Prison, Sacramento (CSP-SAC)—that is, I would be transferred to what had recently been designated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) as a Level II Non-Designated Programming Facility yard.

Immediately, I protested.

I knew CSP-SAC all too well. I had already spent eleven years there. It is a maximum-security prison with a national reputation for violence. Now I was being sent back there in the name of “rehabilitation.”

That was the moment I realized this policy—the Non-Designated Programming Facility, or NDPF—was not an avenue for creating more opportunities for self-improvement and making facilities more peaceful, as it has been billed. Rather, it was punishment in disguise.

NDPF, quietly rolled out by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in 2018, is an administrative policy few outside the prison gates have ever heard of. Fewer still understand its consequences. Nonetheless, it has reshaped prison life for tens of thousands of incarcerated people in California.

On paper, the idea seems simple enough. CDCR announced it would merge general population (GP) prisoners with those from Sensitive Needs Yards (SNY)—two groups traditionally kept separate because of safety concerns—into the same facilities, producing what those of us on the inside call a “50/50 yard.” People assigned as SNY are often prison snitches who have violated the so-called convict code and thus are in danger of retribution. SNY also includes sex offenders, law enforcement officers sentenced to prison, and people with high-profile cases.

CDCR administrators justified merging these populations by saying it was a way to increase access to programming and make more efficient use of available bed space caused by prison closures and reduced populations in maximum-security units. For those of us sent to NDPF facilities, prison administrators argued that we would benefit from the placement. To a parole board or resentencing court, it might be seen as demonstrating that we have distanced ourselves from a gang or criminal lifestyle.

But from inside these walls, I can tell you the truth looks very different. Far from creating opportunities for growth, the NDPF experiment has become a machinery of deception—a policy that punishes those who strive to rehabilitate, fuels violence, and undermines public safety far beyond prison fences.

CSP-SAC’s NDPF operates like a split personality: a facility advertised as rehabilitative, yet functioning in practice as a maximum-security control unit. B Facility, where I am assigned, formerly an entirely max-security wing, is now divided between high-security and so-called “programming” units (that is, lower-security units in which people are meant to be able to move about freely during the day to attend classes, groups, and other programs). But the promised reforms—expanded educational access, meaningful rehabilitative opportunities, and enhanced privileges—simply do not exist.

Beyond the addition of staff body-worn cameras and one or two minor activities, nothing about the facility has improved since my time in maximum security here eleven years ago. There are no in-person college programs, no confidential mental health counseling, no hobby crafts, and no privileges that distinguish NDPF from traditional lockdown conditions. Instead, chronic staff shortages routinely cause yard time to be cancelled, while correctional officers—exhausted by constant violence, sixteen-hour shifts, and poor leadership—work in a state of hypervigilance and burnout. The result is an environment built not for rehabilitation but for control, isolation, and survivalism.

Since my transfer, I have been forced to relive the trauma of the eleven years I previously survived in this institution. CSP-SAC has long been defined by racial violence, stabbings, suicides, overdoses, and the ever-present threat of assault rifles trained by guards on our bodies. That history does not disappear simply because the department labels a unit “NDPF.”

That was clear upon my return here. I quickly noted the depression, anxiety, and fear on each man’s face. I soon learned what they feared. With each new arrival comes the threat of being assaulted. Shortly after my arrival, several active gang members were inserted into the program. Within hours, they had marked their prey and attacked. Guards know that many GP and SNY prisoners, purposely kept separate up until that point, will “take off” (assault each other) the minute they cross paths in the same facility. Despite knowing this, the guards stand by, wait for the assault to occur, and only then intervene.

I would later learn through word of mouth that these opportunistic assaults were occurring in NDPF units statewide. It is another form of state-sponsored torture, the guards using prison politics as a means to inflict harm and retribution.

In September 2022, Sacramento Superior Court found in Villarreal v. Allison that CDCR’s rollout of NDPF amounted to an illegal “underground regulation” under California’s Administrative Procedure Act, because it was applied before being properly adopted. In plain terms, CDCR broke its own rules to force this policy through. The court, however, did not make a ruling on the actual substance of the policy, nor did it require CDCR to disentangle NDPF yards. It simply said that CDCR couldn’t transfer anyone else to NDPF facilities until it fixed the administrative issues with the policy’s rollout. It also declined to grant the request of the petitioner, Ismael Villarreal, that he be transferred out of an NDPF because he feared he would be a victim of violence.

Later the same year, CDCR “finalized” the policy, thus allowing them to continue implementing it. So the machine rolls on. And we pay the price.

For decades, prison systems have sold incarcerated people on the idea that good behavior leads to progress: Stay disciplinary-free, participate in programs, avoid violence, and eventually you’ll earn your way down to a Level II, low-security prison with more freedoms and opportunities. NDPF flips this logic upside down. I worked for years to lower my classification points. But instead of transfer to a minimum-security prison, I was rerouted into a maximum-security warehouse disguised as a lower-security prison.

In most Level II facilities, serious violence is rare, allowing for consistent programming and movement. Prisoners can walk freely to the yard, canteen, classrooms, and library without constant lockdowns, strip searches, or disruptions. The population largely consists of short-term prisoners—people with a few months or years remaining on their sentence—creating an environment where education, peer mentorship, and pro-social behavior can flourish. In-person college courses are common, often led by professors who facilitate actual classroom discussion. Some institutions even offer access to bachelor’s programs. Family relationships are supported through frequent extended family visits, holiday banquets, and the ability to share real food brought in by loved ones.

None of this exists at CSP-SAC. The programs, privileges, and rehabilitative structures that define a genuine Level II experience are entirely absent. Instead, prisoners at CSP-SAC endure the conditions of a maximum-security control unit while being told they are part of a “programming facility.” The discrepancy is more than an inconvenience—it is a fundamental barrier to rehabilitation, hope, and public safety.

It is a cruel catch-22: work your way down, only to end back where you started some two decades ago. This is more than a bureaucratic shuffle. To me, it is the difference between hope and despair, between having a chance to prepare for release and being locked in perpetual survival mode.

Preparing for a parole board hearing, for example, is an intensive process that demands far more than completing a checklist of programs. It requires a deep inventory of one’s core beliefs, value system, and psychological development. A person must be able to articulate the life of crime with honesty and nuance—identifying the causative, contributing, and underlying factors that led to developing a conscious disregard for the lives or property of others. This is difficult work under the best conditions. CSP-SAC entirely lacks the infrastructure—classroom space, trained facilitators, community sponsors, and program continuity—necessary to cultivate a true culture of introspection, accountability, and change.

CSP-SAC was never designed for rehabilitation; it was built for punishment and isolation. That legacy still defines the institution today. Since my transfer, I’ve witnessed numerous lifers struggle to access even the most basic tools required to adequately prepare for their parole hearings. Staff and prisoners alike recognize the paradox: the very environment that demands transformation provides almost none of the resources needed to achieve it.

The effect is felt not only by the prisoners. For the correctional officers who work and live in these spaces, their quality of life deteriorates into a constant state of crisis and survival. Addiction, divorce, domestic violence, and declining mental health become routine—wounds that spread far beyond the prison walls and devastate the families connected to us. As a result, tensions between staff and prisoners run dangerously high, producing a cycle of staff-on-prisoner, prisoner-on-staff, and prisoner-on-prisoner violence, disrespect, and mutual dehumanization. In this environment, vices flourish and integrity erodes. Suicide attempts are routine. Not long ago, a correctional officer took his own life after being consumed by the very corruption he was forced to navigate. This doesn’t just undermine rehabilitation—it reinforces the toxic prison culture that the state claims to be dismantling via NDPF.

Tragically, the majority of us here—including the large percentage who will return to society in a matter of years—are being denied meaningful education, job training, or reintegration preparation as a result of this bad policy. Instead, we are warehoused in volatile environments where violence simmers daily.

When men and women are released from such conditions, they return not rehabilitated but traumatized. They go home carrying the violence and bitterness of years wasted in a false “programming” yard. That is not rehabilitation. That is state-manufactured recidivism.

In other words, NDPF is not just bad prison policy. It is a public-safety hazard. The deception here guarantees that California communities will inherit the chaos sown inside.

_{Image: Rob Oo (licensed under CC)}

Contributors

Ivan Kilgore Ivan Kilgore is an incarcerated author and the founder of the United Black Family Scholarship Foundation, dedicated to transforming communities impacted by poverty and racism.

Topics

• Institutions & Practices

Tags

• california
• conditions of confinement
• incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors