CEN is situated on. Of its housing units, 2 Level IV, 1 Level III, 1 Level III SNY yards all surrounded by an additional electrified fence protected by two razor wire atop chain link fences and 1 Level I yard. Facility also includes a "CTC"."ADSEG" has a maximum occupancy of 175, and a Firehouse that houses 8 Level I inmates actively trained as structural/ wildland firefighters. Centinela Fire Department is part of the institutions rehabilitation program. It provides rigorous and accelerated training meeting state fire certification, equivalent to a volunteer structural/ wildland firefighter. A library facility was established in 2016.
Population and staffing
As of Fiscal Year 2007/2008, CEN had a total of 1,266 staff and an annual institutional operating budget of $161 million. As of December 2008, it had a design capacity of 2,383 but a total institution population of 5,097, for an occupancy rate of 213% percent. As of April 30, 2020, CEN was incarcerating people at 142.3% of its design capacity, with 3,284 occupants.
History
CEN was named after Cerro Centinela, the Spanish name for Mount Signal which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border. The prison opened in October 1993, approximately 22 months after Calipatria State Prison located approximately north. A 1994 statute "require the U.S. attorney general either to agree to compensate a state for incarcerating an illegal immigrant or to take the undocumented criminal into federal custody." In January 1996, the administration of Governor Pete Wilson "tested the law" by asking Immigration and Naturalization Service agents "to take custody of a 25-year-old illegal immigrant serving time in Centinela State Prison for drug offenses"; however, the agents refused. Therefore, in March 1996 Wilson sued the federal government to enforce the 1994 law. As of 1997, CEN was the "most overcrowded prison in the state" as it ran at "259 percent of designed capacity." By 2007, however, Avenal State Prison was the California state prison system's "most overcrowded facility." In August 2006, a quadriplegic inmate died after the air conditioning failed in a van carrying him and another inmate from California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran to CEN. According to a reporter's summary of statements by "the federal official now in control of medical care in the state's prison system," the death was "proof of a broken system"; according to the reporter's summary of statements by representatives of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the death was "a terrible event caused by happenstance."
