Twin City Review

FROM A PRISONER
IN SAN QUENTIN

(Letter Published in the Nation of June 17, 1925)

To the Editor of the Nation:

Sir: I am sending you a short article setting forth a few facts about this prison. If you are interested in such things, and care to publish it, you may rest assured that it is the plain truth, not exaggerated. It might be made tough for me here if it was discovered that I had written this, so I ask that my name be withheld.

This will be sent "underground," and I hope it is not damaged in the process.

San Quentin is California's leading penitentiary. It has fairly sanitary accommodations for 800 prisoners, but contains 2,800 at present. Since the first of January it has had a new warden, a Mr. Smith, who spreads himself in the newspapers as being a student of "anthropological somatology"; also as an efficiency expert who is going to put the prison on a paying basis. Although I am a convict in San Quentin I have no personal quarrel with Mr. Smith. I believe that the warden is just an average politician.

On February 18 a riot occurred in which an inmate, Tony Hernandez, was killed. At once the warden caused about 40 men to be locked in the dungeon. They have been there now 39 days on bread and water. There is no evidence against them.

On March 3 some of the men so confined were taken to bathe. One of them, Wendell Dollar, stooped over to pick up a cigarette butt and a guard shot him through the back, killing him. The officer excused himself by saying that he thought Dollar was trying to pick up a club or rock and the coroner's jury exonerated him. There was nothing within reach of the prisoner that he could possibly have used as a weapon, and as he was only about 30 feet distant the guard must have observed this. Men undergoing punishment are not allowed tobacco, and in reaching for a cigarette stub Dollar was breaking a prison rule. Murder, however, for a cigarette stub was not justified, even under California prison rule. The guard still occupies his post, so Mr. Smith evidently did not disapprove very strongly.

The new warden revived the prison bulletin, a convict publication, and promised that it should be a shining example of free press. Prisoners are not allowed certain radical papers, which are granted second-class mailing privileges by the United States post office department, so apparently there are varieties of free press in this prison.

To make a good citizen out of a bad one, you must feed him good, wholesome food and teach him a useful trade, says the warden. The food in San Quentin was poor under the former administration, but it is worse now. The diet is mostly starch and lacking in vitamines and other ingredients necessary to good health.

The prison has a much-advertised vegetable garden, and it keeps chickens, hogs, and milch cows. The table garden covers about five acres and is highly cultivated and carefully tended. For months at a time no fresh vegetable appears upon the convicts' table, and when one does appear, it is always single, an onion or a stalk of celery, unwashed and tough.

The only trade it is possible to learn is the manufacture of gunny sacks, and anyone who is forced to follow this occupation for a year or two will have had enough of it for one lifetime. There is a jute mill in Oakland, Calif., but it will not employ ex-convicts.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all is San Quentin's "crazy alley," where those mentally deranged, or that the doctor does not like, are kept. It is what the name implies, an alley, located between two three-story cell-houses, and has a high picket fence at each end. The place is damp and dark, alive with stink and slime. There is no warmth in it, no kindness; no sunlight ever penetrates its gloom. If you peep through the pickets you can see the "Miserable Ones," walking up and down in the shadows. Some old and gray and broken, only a little way from death and freedom. Some young and robust. How long will they be so? Nothing to do but go mad. One is an old Chinaman tottering on a broom handle cane. He has been there 16 years. Tomorrow or the next day or a month from now they will bury him on the wind-blown hill above San Quentin and Justice will have been satisfied.

Sodomy flourishes almost unheeded; men with syphilis are not even segregated and young boys mingle indiscriminately with the most hardened men. Those who have money are able to procure all sorts of "extras" through underground sources, and it is even said by the convicts that he who has the price can buy his freedom.

It is probable that all these things are known by the people of the United States and California. Maybe they do not care; they are not interested; or perhaps they think it serves us right to have to live under such conditions. Whatever is the case, why not be honest about it? San Quentin is not a place where men are reformed and made over into useful citizens. It is a place of cruel and stupid punishment where the ruling class gets even with those who have offended. It is a school that teaches depravity to the young and hate to all.

San Quentin, Calif, March 21.

X.Y.Z.