1,100 Prison Jobs Left Susanville. Blythe Lost Its Prison Too, and Says the State Sent Nothing.

California has closed five state prisons since 2019. CalMatters tallied the payrolls, the population losses and the reuse plans in the towns that hosted them — including two in Riverside County.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has closed five California state prisons since taking office in 2019, and the towns that hosted them are still counting what the payrolls were worth. In Susanville, the far Northern California city where the California Correctional Center was deactivated in June 2023, there were 1,100 prison employees before the closure, according to an August 18, 2026 report by CalMatters.

Susanville's population fell from a peak of about 16,000 in 2021, the year the closure was announced, to 14,000 in 2024, the last year of American Community Survey data available, CalMatters reported. Not all of the 1,100 workers left. Some transferred to a nearby prison and some retired in the area. The local elementary school lost 10% of its enrolled students between 2021 and the 2025-2026 school year.

The jobs were well paid by rural standards. Experienced California correctional officers earn $9,650 a month in base pay, CalMatters reported, with health and retirement benefits attached.

What the closures save the state

The Legislature this year passed a budget calling for the state to shut at least one more prison, a move CalMatters attributed to Democratic lawmakers' desire to save roughly $150 million a year per prison by eliminating underused facilities. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation now holds about 90,000 prisoners, down from 170,000 in 2006, and has 8,000 more beds than people in custody. The state auditor estimated that five prisons need repairs costing $2.4 billion, according to CalMatters.

Blythe and Norco: the Riverside County side of the ledger

Chuckwalla Valley State Prison in Blythe, a desert city in Riverside County near the Arizona border, was built in 1987 and closed in 2022 after Newsom ordered the shutdown just before Christmas of that year. Blythe's population of 18,000 in 2022 had fallen to 17,400 by 2024, the last year of Census statistics available, CalMatters found — a 3% drop on top of a slide from a peak of about 20,000 in 2010. A Riverside County civil investigation in June 2022, six months before the closure was announced, found the city could not pay its bills.

Blythe did not sue. City leaders lobbied Sacramento instead, and Mayor Joseph DeConinck told CalMatters it has produced nothing.

"We took these prisons when nobody else wanted them. And we adapted to them because they became a strong economic generator for our area."

Vice Mayor Johnny Rodriguez told CalMatters that state agencies came to a meeting on the site's future and offered only limits: "All the state provided was, what you can't do, what they won't do." Newsom's office referred questions to the corrections department and did not respond to CalMatters' questions about financial promises alleged by Blythe's leadership; a corrections spokesperson did not respond. A second Riverside County prison, in Norco, is scheduled to close in October, per the same report.

Tracy got offers; Susanville got a truck stop idea

The Deuel Vocational Institution near Tracy, in San Joaquin County, was the first site Newsom deactivated. San Joaquin County Supervisor Robert Rickman, who was mayor of Tracy from 2016 to 2020, told CalMatters that agriculture, education and casino interests have inquired about the property, and that staff mostly transferred to the California Health Care Facility in Stockton. "Nobody lost their jobs," he said.

Susanville's finances went the other way. "For the last two years, we've adopted deficit budgets," said Dan Newton, who worked for the city for 20 years and was city manager until resigning for a job in Tehama County government. "We're heading toward insolvency," he told CalMatters. He cited two structural limits: transmission lines that cannot carry heavy industrial load, and a workforce base too small to draw on. Among the largest tax generators now are online sales and fuel taxes, because Susanville has the only gas stations for 20 miles in any direction. A lumber mill employing about 30 people burned down in March. One idea under discussion is a new truck stop.