"What I Saw at San Quentin"

The title of this post is the title of this interesting new post at Crime & Consequences by Michael Rushford, President of Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.  The post describes at great length a recent tour of what was California's first prison.  Here are excerpts from the start and end of a fascinating read:

While I have been through some other state prisons, San Quentin was different. It was opened in 1852 as the state's first prison.  It was located on a 432 acre point facing the San Francisco Bay because, at the time, the city was overrun with crime.  Although it's obvious that the prison has been expanded over the years, walking through the main gate into the actual prison compound is like stepping back in time.  The gate itself is original and large enough to accommodate a stagecoach. Inside the compound is a grassy quad flanked by the gate wall, a cell block, a hospital and a building housing several small churches.  In addition to death row, which is isolated from the rest of the prison, roughly 4,500 inmates are housed inside the main prison.

The cell block we saw was identical to those portrayed in the movies: long rows of 5 x 9 foot cells, each with sliding bar doors, a metal toilet, sink, and two bunks, stacked five stories high.  Inmates who are able to get along with their colleagues share cells in the largest cell block.  There is a fairly large building called the adjustment center for inmates, including about 200 condemned murderers who are either too violent or too vulnerable to mix with other inmates.  Richard Allan Davis, for example, lives in the adjustment center because the other inmates hate child killers....

Anyone who believes that murderers in California are living comfortably on death row should take this tour.  It is a miserable existence.  I now understand why we receive letters from death row inmates asking for our help in expediting their executions. Legislators, bleeding hearts and judges who think that they are helping these murderers by preventing executions are hopelessly naive.  Those who think we should improve their living conditions are missing a critical point: these murderers have been sentenced to death for murdering innocent people.  Keeping them alive any longer than necessary to confirm their guilt is an injustice.

Finally, San Quentin is a very old, dilapidated facility sitting on 442 acres of the most valuable real estate in California.  It should be torn down and the property sold off.  Some fraction of the profit should be used to built a modern prison in a less expensive part of California.