Posts Tagged: San Quentin
Recent News
Scores of California’s condemned prison inmates are being removed from their cells on San Quentin’s death row and sent to eight high-security lockups in the state’s sprawling penal system. The transfers follow an executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom halting executions in California. The governor also has vowed to remodel San Quentin’s death row, where executions have been conducted for generations.
Opinion
OPINION: Fifteen years into a 41 years-to-life sentence, I arrived at San Quentin — the home of Death Row. I immediately noticed the difference between the treatment of condemned people and of general population people, like myself. Anytime condemned people left their cell they were shackled at the waist and feet. As they moved through the corridors and walkways, all general population people were told to face the wall.
News
The head of the California Prison Industry Authority, an internationally known agency that trains inmates for such diverse occupations as carpentry, deep-sea diving, computer coding and farming, is retiring after more than a decade on the job.
News
As the judge climbed the watchtower stairs in Pelican Bay prison, he heard muffled gunshots below. When he reached the top, he looked into the prison yard and saw bodies lying in the dirt. One was his law clerk, spreadeagled on the ground in his suit, alongside dozens of inmates. Guards stood over them, guns aimed. “My clerk was thinking he’s gonna die and this is his last day on earth,” Judge Thelton Henderson recalled.
Analysis
ANALYSIS: What if, instead of building prisons in remote locations, we put them near cities, accessible to family members and to the resources — educational, vocational, therapeutic, recreational, cultural — that are scarce in most prison towns?
A view of San Quentin State Prison in Marin County with Mt. Tamalpais in the background. (Photo: Ameer Muscard-Afcari, via Shutterstock)
