California State Prison, Corcoran

California State Prison, Corcoran

Escapes

California State Prison at Corcoran has had a near flawless history of escape attempts. An escape in 1993, where a medium-security inmate hid in a laundry truck, was the first escape attempt it experienced since opening in 1988.

Suicides and Deaths

In December of 1998, Canadian inmate Michael van Straaten, 32, was left hanging 18 minutes by his shoe laces and bedsheet before guards finally discovered him. He had wrapped a sock around his neck to prevent ligature marks.

According to the Los Angeles Times, before entering the cell and cutting him down, prison officials waited outside his cell and videotaped Straaten's body until medical staff arrived. After reviewing his file information, which stated that Straaten was positive for HIV and hepatitis C, they entered the cell and found his body still warm. The physician did not try to revive him.

According to State prisons director Cal Terhune, officers had breached prison policy by not sounding the emergency alarm, allegedly because of an implicit rule among officers that sounding an alarm on the first late-night watch is prohibited; this was stimulated by an incident in which an officer twisted his ankle responding to such a late-night alarm. Following Straaten's suicide, this rule was abolished (19 Dec 1998, Associated Press).

The suicide of Straaten followed just one week on the heels of another incident, a violent gang-related inmate-on-inmate beating that took place inside the facility's Security Housing Unit when the Security Housing Unit replaced its control booth operator with an "inexperienced" inmate during a food run. In Straaten's suicide note was a desire to expose the unjust policies and conditions inside Corcoran State Prison, and release him from the "hell of Corcoran" (19 December 1998 Los Angeles Times).

In March of 1994, Ronald Herrera, a 58-year-old dialysis patient, allegedly "kicked and screamed for hours" in his cell without any intervention before he eventually bled to death from an opening in his medical shunt, according to the Los Angeles Times. Herrera's cell window was papered with toilet tissue soaked in blood, the toilet was full of blood, and the floor was slick with what one guard described as "raspberry Kool-Aid."

Corcoran prison guards kept quiet after the incident and refused to disclose details about the death. Every one of the guards who were potential witnesses to the event retained union attorneys who advised them to remain mute about the incident. Nor did union leaders offer to provide any details either. According to the Times, one attorney for the guards said that the inmate's death was most likely a suicide and that prison guards had been "valiant" in their attempts to help, yet the Kings County coroner never ruled the death as a suicide (Los Angeles Times, 5 March 2004).

Lawsuits

In 1998 eight Corcoran prison guards faces federal criminal charges for allegedly abusing inmates and staging prison fights. Controversy erupted over this investigation when it was learned that prison guards' union had given $1million in campaign funds to Governor Pete Wilson and Attorney General Dan Lungren over the course of 9 years. See the department of justice's press release.

Racism even in correctional staff has also been reported in Corcoran. White guards as well as some militaristic Latino guards share shifts on Corcoran's HIV Yard, forcing Black guards into isolation. Consequently, Black guards increasingly share all-black shifts while White guards increasingly share all-white shifts. Some correctional officers carve swastikas into the butts of their rifles, while others socialize with Aryan Brotherhood members and flaunt KKK membership cards. Segregation has resulted in entire institutions, making Wasco, Tehachapi, and High Desert predominantly White, and Lancaster predominantly Black (Parenti 1999).

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