San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin State Prison

News

February 2006:

In February, 2006, one inmate who was classified as "psychotic," locked up without any contact with a mental health specialists for 20 days, and was temporaily denied a toilet, bed, or even clothes, eventually gouged out his eyes and went blind. A report that month noted that only 30 of thr 230 inmates in mental health care actually gained entry into their treatment program within the required 24 hour waiting period. Since then and following a class-action lawsuit, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger committed an additional $600 million be spent on new mental health facilities (The San Francisco Chronicle, 28 April 2006).

History

San Quentin State Prison is perhaps one of the most well known in California, possibly because it is oldest, first opening in 1852.

During the period of 1981-1986, famous artist Richard Kamler, who has since won many awards for his achievements, served as an artist-in-residence while competing his "Maximum Security" Series. Photographer Ruth Mogran also explored the carceral setting of San Quentin. In the 1970s Lynn Hershman helped inmates design a mural at San Quentin, which depicted the hill on which the prison stood if the prison were not there. According to Burnham, Hershamn encountered considerable difficulties getting the project past administration and gaining the support of the staff.

San Quentin boasts an eventful history of prison gang incarceration. The Aryan Brotherhood, which began in the mid-1960s out of the Blue Bird Gang, began as a small group of white inmates in San Quentin. George Jackson, writer of Blood in my Eye and Prison Letters, and leader of the "Black Family" who lobbied for prisoner rights in support of the Soledad Brothers and California Prisoners' Union, also stayed at San Quentin.

Jackson even spent time in the prison's old "Adjustment Center" (AC), a euphemistically entitled segregation cell used for isolation, similar to the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of today. Being a hotbed for political or militant prisoners, communists, nationalists, or superior troublemakers, the Adjustment Center became a covert congregation and education area for political advocates, only further increasing the protest and subsequent additional isolation of the center's residents. Conditions were extreme at San Quentin's administrative segregation unit.

Several murderers housed at the Adjustment Center were confined there for a period in excess 4 years. Judge Zirpoli in the 1970s called the Center "dehumanizing" and a "hole" for prisoners. A concrete cell, 23 hours a day in confinement, little furnishings, and constant manacling were mandatory characteristics. It was typical supermax confinement in some of its earliest form. In addition to the segregation unit of the AC, there was a series of "management cells" used for "disciplinary" purposes. The judge went on to say that conditions at the AC "militate against reform and rehabilitation," and are "counterproductive" to reintegration. Prison officials overseeing prisoners at the AC were also criticized as perceiving inmates as overly destructive and in need of more sever incarceration that is actually warranted (Jackson, 95:1983).

The case of Clutchette v Procunier illustrates how inmates challenged the isolation procedures on grounds that they did not follow the guidelines of "due process." The court stated that conditions in the Adjustment Center were synonymous with "isolation," barring inmates from using "all other forms of recreation and entertainment which would help to relieve the monotony of prison life," and preventing inmates from even earning the "meager wages with which they could make minor purchases at the canteen." (Jackson 112:1983).

In addition to these long-standing gangs, San Quentin houses newer gangs such as the Crips, Bloods, Mexican Mafia, Texas Syndicate, Nuestra Familia, and various Asian Tongs.

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