San Quentin
April 17, 2009
Judge signs off on San Quentin improvements
A federal judge has ended nearly three decades of supervision over conditions on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison after authorities made court-ordered improvements ranging from giving inmates more legal help and exercise time to getting rid of rodents and bird droppings.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco filed an order Tuesday closing a case that began in 1979 when a group of condemned prisoners sued the state. Court monitoring started in October 1980 when state officials agreed to a settlement known as a consent decree…
LINK - SFGate.com
December 15, 2008
Opinion: “San Quentin wrong for new death row”
For the last several years, Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater, has pushed to move California's Death Row somewhere less expensive than San Quentin Prison in Marin County. His idea has gotten little support, but the response could be different this legislative session with the state mired in money woes.
Denham already has introduced Senate Bill 28, which would require the decommissioning and sale of the San Quentin property…
LINK - ModBee.com (The Modesto Bee)
July 1, 2008
Inmates’ Threat: No Segregation, No Peace
When an inmate who is not black enters Will Williams' cell for the first time at San Quentin State Prison in Northern California, one of the last forms of legalized segregation will come to an end.
In a case that went as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, California's prisons must begin racially integrating their cells this month. Integration goes against an unwritten code of conduct among San Quentin inmates, which says they must never communicate with other races.
Inmates and guards admit they are nervous about the changes because so much of the violence inside the walls of the prison, which sits on the rocky shore of the San Francisco Bay, is caused by racial tensions…
LINK - ABCNews.GO.com
April 1, 2008
Retired C.O. O’Connor Runs for Position in Iowa
Michael O'Connor of Keokuk, a Republican, has announced he is running for the Lee County Board of Supervisors from the Fifth District […]
While in college he began working as a correctional officer for the State of California. Upon graduation he transferred to San Quentin State Prison and attended Golden Gate University Law School in San Francisco. He then moved to a community correctional center, then to the Parole Division in San Francisco as a parole agent where he worked until retiring as a field supervisor in 2001 […]
O'Connor chairs the Police Subcommittee on the city council and just completed contract negotiations with the police union. He is a lifelong union member and is a member of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association where he served a job steward before retiring…
LINK - DailyGate.com
March 14, 2008
Suit alleges San Quentin inmate died due to poor medical care
The mother of a San Quentin State Prison inmate has filed suit alleging that her son died in 2006 because he received inadequate care for his diabetes. "I can't get over the feeling that my son was essentially murdered by the prison system," said Christine Goodwin of Modesto.
Her son, Scott Fitzgerald, who was in custody at San Quentin due to a parole violation following a battery conviction, died Sept. 12, 2006, after being taken by ambulance to Marin General Hospital. Fitzgerald was 34 when he died.
The suit pending in U.S. District Court in San Francisco names San Quentin Warden Robert Ayers, other prison personnel and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as defendants.
LINK - MarinIJ.com (Marin Independent Journal)
February 29, 2008
Feature Article: The Prison-Industrial Complex
Correctional officials see danger in prison overcrowding. Others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars—the majority of them nonviolent offenders—mean jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for profiteers.
In the hills east of Sacramento, California, Folsom State Prison stands beside a man-made lake, surrounded by granite walls built by inmate laborers. The gun towers have peaked roofs and Gothic stonework that give the prison the appearance of a medieval fortress, ominous and forbidding. For more than a century Folsom and San Quentin were the end of the line in California's penal system; they were the state's only maximum-security penitentiaries. During the early 1980s, as California's inmate population began to climb, Folsom became dangerously overcrowded. Fights between inmates ended in stabbings six or seven times a week. The poor sight lines within the old cellblocks put correctional officers at enormous risk. From 1984 to 1994 California built eight new maximum-security (Level 4) facilities. The bullet holes in the ceilings of Folsom's cellblocks, left by warning shots, are the last traces of the prison's violent years.
LINK - TheAtlantic.com
October 2, 2007
Special Review: CDCR Release of Inmate Scott Thomas
A series of mistakes, oversights, and failures to follow California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation policy resulted in California State Prison, San Quentin staff [confidential text removed]* improperly releasing inmate Scott Thomas on parole on May 18, 2007. The day after San Quentin staff released Thomas on parole, he allegedly entered a San Francisco bakery and stabbed a 15-year-old girl and a man who came to her aid. The Office of the Inspector General cannot determine if Thomas would have ultimately committed a similar act upon his release even if San Quentin staff had acted appropriately in all instances during Thomas's period of incarceration and release. However, [confidential text removed] and closer parole supervision may have had an impact on Thomas's actions--including his alleged decision to assault two people with a knife--after he paroled.
July 1, 2007
CDCR San Quentin and CCPOA (mileage reimbursement)
STATE OF CALIFORNIA, CDCR San Quentin
and
CALIFORNIA CORRECTIONAL PEACE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION
Re: Chapter President Release Time
March 1, 2004
Plans to Build a New Condemned-Inmate Complex at CSP-San Quentin
From the Introduction section of the Auditor's report:
All men sentenced to death in California are sent to San Quentin to fulfill their sentence. Today, the department uses three different facilities at San Quentin to house the more than 600 male condemned inmates of whom it has custody, as Table 1 on the following page indicates. Each condemned inmate has his own cell within these facilities. (See Figure 2 on page 9 for an aerial view of San Quentin.) The original death row facility, located atop San Quentin's North Block facility, built in 1934, occupies the building's entire sixth floor. The department refers to this facility as North Segregation. The facility can house 68 condemned inmates and as of January 2004 was filled to capacity. The department houses only its most cooperative grade A condemned inmates in North Segregation because its design provides the most freedom of movement within the three facilities' housing and exercise areas. These inmates have access to an exercise yard on the building's roof.
