A former California prison employee who was caught inside San Quentin with more than 300 grams of methamphetamine hidden in a hollowed-out peanut-butter jar has been sentenced to 37 months in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced on Monday, November 2.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Northern District of California

Keith Randle, 57, of Vallejo, worked as a janitor at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in Marin County — the prison formerly known as San Quentin State Prison. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston handed down the sentence in federal court in San Francisco.

On top of the prison term, Judge Illston ordered three years of supervised release after Randle leaves custody and ordered him to forfeit $55,210. He is scheduled to begin serving the sentence on January 5, 2027, the Justice Department said.

Caught with a peanut-butter jar painted to look full

According to his plea agreement, the scheme unravelled on August 15, 2024, when Randle was caught inside San Quentin carrying a hollowed-out peanut-butter jar that contained 301 grams of methamphetamine, along with marijuana. The jar had been painted brown and glued shut so it would appear full and unopened, prosecutors said.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, guilty-plea release

In pleading guilty, Randle admitted that, while working as a janitor at the prison, he solicited and accepted bribery payments in exchange for smuggling and distributing contraband to inmates — including methamphetamine, marijuana and tobacco. The admission matters because staff smuggling bypasses every search and scanner a prison runs at its gates: the contraband walks in with an employee.

From a 2025 charge to a guilty plea in May

Randle was charged by information on March 20, 2025, with one count of possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine. He pleaded guilty on May 15, 2026. The charge carried a maximum statutory penalty of 40 years in prison and a $5 million fine under federal drug law, so the 37-month sentence imposed on Monday sits far below the ceiling he faced when he admitted the offence.

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney Craig H. Missakian and FBI Special Agent in Charge Scott R. Schelble. The FBI investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin K. Kleinman prosecuted it, the Justice Department said.

Why contraband inside a prison is a safety story, not just a crime story

San Quentin, which opened in 1852 on a rocky point on San Francisco Bay, is California's oldest prison and houses roughly 3,000 incarcerated men; it was renamed San Quentin Rehabilitation Center as the state recast it as the flagship of its rehabilitation-focused California Model. Drugs inside any prison are not a victimless problem: they create debts, extortion and violence among inmates, endanger the correctional staff who work the same yards, and turn a sentence into an overdose risk for people whose families — including many Punjabi and immigrant families across California — expect them to come home alive.

For readers in the Central Valley and Bay Area with relatives inside California prisons, cases like this are the other side of the contraband debate: every phone call home about drugs on the yard traces back to a supply line, and this week a federal court put a name, a method and a price — $55,210 in forfeited proceeds — on one of those supply lines.

What happens next

Randle remains free until his surrender date of January 5, 2027, when his 37-month term begins. After prison, the three years of supervised release will keep him under federal supervision, and the $55,210 forfeiture stands as part of the judgment. The Justice Department release announced no additional charges against inmates or other employees in connection with Randle's smuggling, and it did not say how long the bribery arrangement ran before the August 2024 seizure ended it.