San Quentin Prison

“ My last two years in San Quentin were very gloomy and depressing. Ed Morrell, by one of the wildest freaks of chance, was taken out of solitary and made head trusty of the whole prison. This was Al Hutchins’ old job, and it carried a graft of three thousand dollars a year. To my misfortune, Jake Oppenheimer, who had rotted in solitary for so many years, turned sour on the world, on everything. For eight months he refused to talk even to me.
In prison, news will travel. Give it time and it will reach dungeon and solitary cell. ”

“ In time, he was tried and sentenced to ten years in San Quentin Prison. On December 9th, Sheriff Tomás Sanchez started to take the prisoner north, and at Wilmington boarded the little steamer Cricket to go out to the Senator, which was ready to sail. A goodly number of other passengers also boarded the tugboat, though nothing in particular was thought of the circumstance; but once out in the harbor, a group of Vigilantes, indignant at the light sentence imposed, seized the culprit at a prearranged signal, threw a noose about his neck and, in a jiffy, hung him to the flagstaff. ”

“ York State. A spectacular and effective campaign is now being waged in New York City against dope-vendors.
More than seven hundred prisoners out of 2000 at San Quentin prison have been taking correspondence courses given by the University of California. Spanish is a favorite language to be studied.
At Sing Sing the new warden has started out well. He has given to the inmates Saturday afternoon for recreation, and has introduced base ball and other sports. If it works successfully the inmates will have a recreation hour daily, at the close of the day’s work. ”

“ I am now forty-four years old. I have spent the eight intervening years in the California State Prison of San Quentin. Five of these years I spent in the dark. Solitary confinement, they call it. Men who endure it, call it living death. But through these five years of death-in-life I managed to attain freedom such as few men have ever known. Closest-confined of prisoners, not only did I range the world, but I ranged time. They who immured me for petty years gave to me, all unwittingly, the largess of centuries. Truly, thanks to Ed Morrell, I have had five years of star-roving. ”

“ The sentence given in this case could only have been satisfied by imprisonment in the state prison at San Quentin for the period of time mentioned in the sentence. This is not the case of an arbitrary detention in jail, without excuse or justification, after sentence to imprisonment in a state prison. If in such case the defendant were helpless, the question might arise whether the time of such improper detention in jail should not be counted, as to that extent, a satisfaction of the sentence. ”

“ The prison accommodations are extremely cramped, and large quantities of brick should be used in needed extensions. Many small industries could be carried on here, if permitted, for water carriage to and from San Francisco is very cheap. Heavy manufactures requiring expensive steam power are not justified here.
The abandonment of the large State improvements at San Quentin seems contrary to the dictates of economy. Equally unwise is the suggestion that it be made a prison to which only the most dangerous classes of criminals should be sent. ”

“ How small a thing may sometimes all unforeseen lead to momentous results! How often a little turn of the tide which some of us call chance and others Providence, opens up to us new channels that carry us into unexpected futures! It was a letter from some of the prisoners in San Quentin, California, asking me to visit them during my stay in San Francisco that first led my steps over the threshold of a state prison. ”

“ According to the evidence of the wardens, no full graduate of any American university has ever been an inmate of either prison. The so-called college men were men who had spent some time at a college of one kind or another. So-called professors appear among the convicts, but I have been unable to discover that any professor in an institution of standing has been at either San Quentin or Folsom since its establishment. ”

“ It happened that one of the San Francisco newspapers (seeking, as every newspaper and as every commercial enterprise seeks, a market that will enable it to realize a profit) , tried to interest the radical portion of the working class in prison reform. As a result, union labor possessing an important political significance at the time, the time-serving politicians at Sacramento appointed a senatorial committe of investigation of the state prisons.
This State Senate committee investigated (pardon my italicized sneer) San Quentin. Never was there so model an institution of detention. ”

“ Warden Aull, of Folsom Prison, in discussing the subject in 1896, said that for nine years the improvements there have employed the convicts, but now some new scheme must be devised. "The convicts must be kept at work. Every consideration of discipline, economy, reformation, and health demands this." But he believes that it will not pay the State to make shoes, blankets, clothing, brooms, tinware, etc. (as has been suggested at various times) for the eight thousand inmates of our State institutions. There are over two thousand convicts at Folsom and San Quentin. ”

“ I am Darrell Standing. They are going to take me out and hang me pretty soon. In the meantime I say my say, and write in these pages of the other times and places.
After my sentence, I came to spend the rest of my “natural life” in the prison of San Quentin. I proved incorrigible. An incorrigible is a terrible human being—at least such is the connotation of “incorrigible” in prison psychology. I became an incorrigible because I abhorred waste motion. The prison, like all prisons, was a scandal and an affront of waste motion. They put me in the jute-mill. ”

“ I have seldom seen one with a fever change more for the time. Soon his insanity took a boisterous turn by night, keeping the other prisoners all awake, which induced them for a time to confine him to the solitary during these hours, and keep him in his cell by day. But his howls so disturbed the prison family, that they next resorted to keeping him in the shop by night, lying upon his back, his feet chained together, with a post between them.
Thus, they continued for a season, but finally, the governor sent him to the insane asylum. ”

“ He was purposing to prosecute the warden for damages.
Thus, while they have smiles and words of suavity for some, they can deal freely in such abuse to those who doubt their highest perfection. Now, if they would treat me and others thus, what would they do to the prisoners? One will say, "They were irritated towards you, for you had told the Governor and Council about the prison management." That was no doubt the fact. And they will become irritated with the prisoners also, who are helplessly in their power, where they can treat them as they please. ”

“ Hence, the shock I felt at the virtual request of the warden for me to join in the falsehood course, by telling the prisoners that Henry Stewart, when removed to the insane asylum, was taken out to be tried for attempts to murder his overseer.—Then, again, there were the assertions I repeatedly heard the warden make to prison visitors, on passing through the cook-room. "We give the prisoners good food and enough of it. We purchase the best of articles the market affords, and have the food well prepared." ”

“ By rule, no friend is allowed to see a prisoner except in presence of the warden or a subordinate that he may hear whatever is said. The time allowed for a visit is usually short, and the parties, of course, wish to make the most of every moment. But no little complaint was made, that, when the interview was in the warden's presence, he would engross much of the time in recounting his exploits in prison management, the disorders he found, the corrections he had made, how they would deceive his predecessor, but could not deceive him, and the like. ”

“ Many air castles the poor fellow thus built, but to see them fall. The prison fare and general management was now highly unfavorable to his proclivities, tending constantly to make them worse. Men repeatedly told me that the officers would severely beat him, and that he was sadly abused. One day, in a freak of insanity or anger, he struck his over [Pg 130] seer to the floor with a bed-post, coming within a hair's breadth of ending his life, and was aiming a second blow, which a fellow prisoner arrested, and thus saved the overseer. ”

“ The House of Correction stands in a unique relation to the state prison, and while it may, under circumstances and in the discretion of a condemning court, be a place of imprisonment for offenders that might be committed to the state prison, yet always it is kept distinct from the state prison. It does not, therefore, make its use as a place of confinement for other offenses a penitentiary, with its attachment of infamy. Its purpose is reformation, instruction in conduct, and diversion from a criminal career. To make it, therefore, a penitentiary, would defeat the purpose of its creation. ”

“ But, in the opinion of our best minds, the true course to pursue is, to admit judicious ladies, those of character and influence, to help in labors of reform.
"Motives of safety required the cell clearing." This was the pretended reason, but could not have been the real one, according to the warden's own words. One day, in passing along the cells with company, he remarked, "Gentlemen, vigilance, vigilance, is the only safety here! Lock me in one of those cells, and I would walk out in half an hour. There is no safety in this prison but in the watchfulness of the guard." ”

“ But his greatest vexation came because of opposition, from certain ones without, to what he felt assured was for the best good of the institution, and from the misrepresentations of those opposed to all prison reform and improvement, who think it an outrage to the State to treat a prisoner better than a brute. He says one complained of him thus: "You give the prisoners too good fare, and make things too comfortable for them, on account of which they will wish to return. ”

“ When I commenced my labors at the institution, it was about emerging from an experience which had brought no little opposition to the warden from some in the city, especially in the line of his reform moves.
He took the prison in '65, the inmates, numbering seventy, being let on a contract of forty cents per day; the bedding extremely limited; the cells swarming with those pestiferous attendants on sleeping hours, every crevice between the stones and bricks affording a safe resort; the food for the inmates insufficient for prison demands. ”

“ We filed into the “pen,” to join the other prisoners, and wait for the “black maria” to carry us to prison.
We are all taken to the District Jail, where we are put through the regular catechism: “Were you ever in prison before?—Age—birthplace—father—mother—religion and what not?” We are then locked up,—two to a cell. What will happen next?
The sleek jailer, whose attempt to be cordial provokes a certain distrust, comes to our corridor to “turn us over” to our next keeper-the warden of Occoquan. We learn that the workhouse is not situated in the District of Columbia but in Virginia. ”

“ On entering, I found him in prison, not at work, but confined to his cell according to our present law, that, when one is condemned to execution, he shall be confined in the State Prison one year, at the end of which the sentence shall be carried out, unless receiving a reprieve or commutation.
By law also, the criminal has the right to choose his own spiritual adviser, and, much to my relief, I found that Pike had arranged with my predecessor about this before he left. Still I volunteered to the doomed man all the aid in my power, for which he appeared highly grateful. ”

“ True, we each had our notions on prison reform, he thinking that attempts in that direction are useless, that, when one has fallen into prison we can not reform him, that punishment is the great mission of the prison, and thus on; I, supposing that reform is practicable, that we should faithfully use all available means for it, and make it the paramount object of imprisoning. On the question of prison order we were exactly alike in sentiment,—perfect order, strict discipline,—though, perhaps, varying as to the ultimate results, he securing that as a deterrent to crime ”

“ It is decided that the attack upon the management of the penitentiary is to be initiated from the 'outside." A released prisoner is to inform the press of the abuses, graft, and immorality rampant in Riverside. The public will demand an investigation. ”

“ And, so far as I had the opportunity of observation, the same strictness was observed in all other departments of the prison.
True, one escaped, but from no lack of internal watchfulness or order. His time had almost expired, he having been a faithful, obedient, well-disposed prisoner. The warden set him at work doing chores about the stable and outer yard, not supposing that he would leave for so short a period, and thereby forfeit his commutation and render himself liable to be returned at any time through life. ”

“ Do not understand me as charging them with intentionally and deliberately murdering their victim, for this I do not, but that he fell a sacrifice to a system of prison management that they were intent on establishing; a system under which the officers are to be the sole judges of the prisoners' needs, use them as they may choose, put them in whatever condition they may see fit, and they in turn not allowed to utter a word, nor give the slightest expression of feeling any more than the dumb, driven ox. If they die, "it is of no account ”