The audio recording of this story [more complete than the transcript below] is a must-listen:
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html? action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=92296114&m=92301377
One wonders if being in prison here is still better than being in prison in a place like Iran or China. This systematic violation of the human rights of hundreds of thousands in California and millions nationwide, most of them there for victimless crimes and parole violations, should surely be among the Libertarian Party's very top issues.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
San Quentin's Gym Becomes One Massive Cell
by Laura Sullivan
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92296114
Photo: http://www.npr.org/templates/common/image_enlargement.php? imageResId=92296167
Photo credit: Laura Sullivan/NPR
Caption: More than 360 inmates live in what was once a basketball gymnasium at San Quentin. The prison no longer has room for them — or for basketball
and rehabilitative programs.
All Things Considered, July 7, 2008 · From the moment you walk through
the metal doors of what was once San Quentin's gymnasium, all you can
see are men and bunk beds. Packed together from front wall to back,
more than 360 inmates live here because there's no room anywhere else.
A lone correctional officer, Michael McClain, sits on a riser in the
middle of the gym, about 6 feet off the floor. Below, the conversations are
loud and tense.
"It can get ugly. It can go at any moment, just at the drop of a
hat," he says, watching the floor.
The gym is not the only room packed in this way. Officials at San
Quentin, located in upscale Marin County, less than an hour from San
Francisco, have set up beds in every available indoor space except the chapel.
Sending inmates to other California prisons isn't an option. In just
the past 10 years, the state's already high prison population doubled. Now all
of California's prisons are at twice or three times their capacity. And
California is not alone: More than 30 states nationwide now house more inmates
than their prisons were built for.
Cramming all these inmates into aging facilities has had clear results at San
Quentin: an increase in violence, filth, racial tensions and the likelihood
that inmates will keep coming back. At the same time, prison officials say
they have no room for the programs that help inmates stay out — meaning that
overcrowding has led to even more overcrowding.
Up on the riser, McClain sits in an old metal chair and watches the men as
they socialize, sleep and use the "bathroom." It's too much of a security
problem to build an actual restroom, so the inmates use open toilets along
one of the walls.
Most of these men spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the gym.
With no personal space or safety zone if a fight breaks out, it's a giant
game of survivor.
Racial Segregation
If you ask McClain if the room is segregated by race, he will tell you there
are no problems like that here. But peering down below, it's apparent that
all forms of interaction are organized along racial lines. The inmates don't
hesitate to say the same.
"It's nothing but racism," says inmate Lee Haggerty, who has been in the gym
since January on a firearms charge. "Look how we live here: The showers are
divided, the toilets — one for black, one for whites."
To survive, one must adhere to a certain set of rules, he explains: You can't
walk into another race's area. You don't share sinks with someone of a different
color. Only an inmate barber of your own race can cut your hair. You don't share
food.
Sociologists would call this behavior "herding" — grouping together in the face
of danger. With more than a dozen racial or ethnic groups living in the gym, the
divisions can get complicated.
"For anyone to say this is not a frightening type of experience [is wrong]," says
Manual Metcalf, an inmate from Monterey, Calif. "Just being around a whole bunch
of people that, like rats, you put so many of them together and take away all
their resources and they start turning on each other."
Metcalf offers to show me his bunk. Instead of taking the direct route, though,
we walk all the way around the gym. That's another rule: You never walk between
bunks. Here, if someone's standing next to your bed, you're in trouble.
Living Like 'Animals'
Metcalf arrives at a Spartan bunk draped with white towels. His broad shoulders
nearly reach from his bunk to the next.
"Man, we don't have a foot and a half between bunks," he laments, his voice rising.
"Look at this. You're supposed to have so many cubic feet, but this is not it. We
have barely a foot and half on each side of the bunk — where you can breathe in
another person's mouth."
The rafters above are covered in dust. There is a fan, but it doesn't look like it's
spun in years. The paint on the moldy, windowless walls is chipping. Every 20 feet,
there's a rat trap the size of a shoebox.
Just as Metcalf is about to show me his locker, a deafening alarm blares. Inmates drop
to their knees. In the entire gym, I am the only person still standing.
An inmate tells me I would be safer if I also was on the floor, but the officer on
the riser motions for me to stay up.
The alarm means there's a problem somewhere in this prison, but it's not here in the
gym. Each officer carries a personal alarm that sounds systemwide. Somewhere, one of
them has felt threatened enough to trigger it. The rule is hands and knees on the floor.
If you don't obey, it's up to the tower guard to decide whether or not to shoot you.
More than 5,000 men across this vast prison wait on the ground.
An inmate huddled by his bed makes a motion toward my microphone.
"Would you want to live here?" he asks.
Parole Violations
For the most part, the men in the gym are here not because of some violent crime, but
because they violated their parole.
Take, for example, John White. He finished serving his original 16-month sentence for
auto theft more than six years ago. And yet, here he is.
"Constant parole violations," he explains.
Parole violations are extremely expensive. This year, the state will cut back the
education budget to supplement the $8 billion prison budget, bloated in large part
because of parole violations.
"I am a screw-up," White says. "I don't comply very well with the policies. I did pretty
good for a minute. I stayed out for four months once."
To someone outside the system, parole may seem easy: Show up to appointments, don't
drive on a suspended license, tell your parole officer if you move, don't do drugs. As
I spend the morning talking with the men in the gym, however, it becomes clear why
sticking to parole can be tricky: Their lives are chaos. They have complicated
relationships, little education, few life skills and usually nowhere to live.
Being in the gym doesn't help them figure any of that out, White says.
"We just sit around in here like this, like we are right now," he says. "It's very
tedious, it's nerve-wracking and stressful. The lights stay on until 12:30 at night,
and they turn them back on at 5:30 in the morning. And it's like this all the time.
And we have no program at all here."
The Rehabilitation Paradox
This is the paradox: Because there are so many inmates at San Quentin, officials say
there's no space for the programs that could keep them out. Officials used to offer
counseling, job skills and drug treatment programs — in the gym, for example. Now
there isn't any room.
Seventy percent of California's inmates return to prison within three years. That
number is only likely to rise, given the current circumstances.
"Now they send you back to prison for nothing," says inmate Devrek Irvin. He spent
four years in prison for threatening his wife on the phone. He never received any
counseling or training. A couple of months after he was released, he failed a drug
test. Now he's back.
"What am I supposed to do out [there]?" he asks. "I just did four years. What am
I supposed to do? People have drug problems, then why send them back to prison
for eight months for a violation, when they're not getting any help for that?"
As I talk with dozens of inmates, they all described the same emotions: fear,
stress and boredom. They say it's difficult to explain to people on the outside
how you could feel all three at the same time. The longer I stay in the gym,
the clearer it is that the room is operating under an uneasy truce along racial
lines. And soon enough, I see one group's leader crossing the gym to find out
what I'm doing.
Racial Order And Tube Socks
Chris Ruffino, a tall man flanked on both sides by inmates, introduces himself.
"I happen to speak for a lot of the whites in here, OK?" he says.
He seems to see himself as a benevolent leader.
"You know, when there's a problem they come to me, and I go to someone else, and we
try to alleviate all racial tension here," he says, looking over at the men with him.
"And we have a pretty good program here, wouldn't you guys say?"
The others nod in agreement, but Ruffino says there's only so much he can do.
His biggest problem right now is tube socks. To save money, prison officials have
cut back. None of these inmates seemed to care about the actual socks — most weren't
even wearing any — but it's become something else to fight over.
While Ruffino and I stand there talking, another group has gathered to listen. When
Ruffino says inmates are bunked by race, and suggests maybe they shouldn't be, this
is too much for another leader in the room, Antoine Moore, an African-American inmate.
"Don't start that, don't start that," Moore tells Ruffino. "That's pretty much
initiating racial tension. I know I would sleep better knowing I had a black bunkie
rather than a white bunkie."
Ruffino nods and offers, "That's true. If there was tension, I would want to make sure
I had one of my people below me or above me."
Clearly they know each other, but even as they agree, they stand with their arms crossed.
"If me and him have a disagreement, it would go to hell," Moore says. "To alleviate all
that, we keep the racial segregation."
"That's true," Ruffino acknowledges. "That's sad, but true."
The pair also agrees that right now the problem really isn't between their black and
white groups, it's between Latinos from Northern and Southern California.
If a prisonwide war erupts between the two groups, as they suspect it might, everyone
in the gym will have to choose sides, they explain. Quarters are too close not to get
involved.
Balancing Tensions
Down in a trailer next to the prison yard, Sgt. Lee Collier is responsible for making
sure new inmates have a place to sleep. Each day is like a game of chess, he says.
Putting an inmate of one race into a bunk means moving other inmates elsewhere.
Today, he's struggling to place two newcomers — "northern dropouts," he calls them.
"They were associated with the northern [California] Hispanics and now no longer are
they running with them. So we have to take them out of general population, because the
northern Hispanics would want to hurt them."
The number of inmates who, like these two men, have to bunk in separate protective
areas has grown into the thousands in California. It's a direct result of the violence
that has grown like a weed throughout California's prisons.
Officials here say if these two men were put in general population, they would probably
be killed. So they, and thousands like them, have to sleep — and more importantly,
eat — away from other inmates. Most inmates are assaulted or attacked in the dining
hall, making meals one of the most dangerous aspects of prison life, officials say.
Falling Behind On Upkeep
With overcrowding, it gets harder for prison officials to take care of the basics.
Crumbling walls, broken lights and filth are standard.
"That's human feces," says inmate Mike Johnson, pointing to his wall. Johnson has been
here for five months on a DUI charge. He says in all that time, the feces has never
been cleaned off.
"They'll clean down there on the bottom where the (officers) stay," he says, "but up
here, we're just a number."
Johnson's 4-foot-wide cell was built for one man. Now it holds two. With such crowded
conditions, it's harder to prevent violence.
Perpetuating The Cycle
Asked if he worries that the current conditions will keep inmates coming back, San
Quentin's warden, Robert Ayers, says, "I don't worry about it — it's true. It's a reality."
The Legislature, even the governor know it, too, he says. But in the 1980s and
'90s, politicians wanted to be tough on crime — and tough on parole violators.
Efforts in recent years to shorten sentences and overhaul parole have fallen flat.
"Most wardens across the state will tell you, reduce the population and give them
the resources to initiate programs out there, and they will be able to have some
impact," he says. But requests for more money for programs are rejected again and
again.
There is no money, he says. "The state is now 16 billion in the red, and things
we thought we were going to have a year ago are now off the plate. The first
priority is to keep the convicted felon in prison for the prescribed amount of
time, as safely as you can."
That's getting harder as inmates come back, again and again, to increasingly
crowded prisons.
Other Photos:
Cells constructed for one inmate now hold two across San Quentin.
http://media.npr.org/programs/day/features/2008/jun/quentine.jpg
Manual Metcalf from Monterey, Calif., points to the locker he shares
with his bunkmate. It's the only personal space he has. Trash, white
towels and underwear are everywhere in the gym.
http://media.npr.org/programs/day/features/2008/jun/quentinb200.jpg
Two inmates in San Quentin's gymnasium pass the time with a guitar.
There are no programs or activities. Except for two meals in the
cafeteria, most inmates spend all day, every day locked in the gym.
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