by W. Wisely
Jose Ramon Garcia, 42, was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for soliciting Pelican Bay prisoners to assault alleged child molesters. The former prison guard's April sentencing in Del Norte County Superior Court came amid widening state and federal investigations into civil rights violations ...
By W. Wisely
Agroup of prison guards at the California Institute for Men, in Chino, call themselves SPONGE, an acronym for the "Society for the Prevention of Niggers Getting Everything." In Wasco prison, a guard wears a sheet over his head while working a cellblock. In Folsom, a swastika is ...
by W. Wisely
It's going to be duck-hunting season," said one of the Corcoran prison guards who staged fights between prisoners in rival gangs just before Preston Tate was shot and killed according to Department of Corrections reports. Now eight Corcoran guards, including a lieutenant and two sergeants, are under ...
Hepatitis C, a potentially deadly strain of liver disease, is spreading out of control through the California prison system. Blood tests conducted on 4,764 incoming prisoners for a three month period in 1994 showed that 41 percent were infected with the disease. Unlike some other forms of hepatitis, there is ...
by W. Wisely
On January 2, 1998, Gregory Harding, Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Corrections, issued an Administrative Bulletin announcing the end of weightlifting in the free world's largest prison system.
The weightlifting ban includes prisons, Community Correctional Facilities, and camps. According to the bulletin, "[e]ffective February ...
by W. Wisely
On August 11, 1997, almost 400 prisoners in California's New Folsom prison staged a one-day work strike to protest continuing elimination of privileges and programs. Six members of the Men's Advisory Committee were placed in administrative segregation, suspected of leading the strike.
"The [prisoners] were rather frustrated ...
by W. Wisely
Each year, the California Department of Corrections asks the Legislature for an ever-increasing piece of the state's tax pie based in part on claims that violence in the prison system is increasing. The truth is, violent incidents inside have been steadily declining the past decade, the legacy ...
Continuing the agenda of the prison guards union, the California Department of Corrections issued a notice of changes to prison administrative regulations governing appeals of conditions of confinement by prisoners. The changes include doubling the time limits prison staff have to respond to administrative appeals, limiting the number of appeals ...
After a scandal in which guards boiled a mentally ill prisoner alive, California's most notorious prison is once more the target of an investigation into abuse and excessive force. Pelican Bay prison guards are accused of setting up prisoners convicted of sex offenses against minors for assault. One guard faces ...
The young Hispanic woman, juggling a squirming infant under each arm, began to cry as she read the notice posted on the wall of the visitor processing building at Lancaster prison. For months prisoner rights advocates had been warning visitors, trying to organize resistance, but few believed it would ever ...
