My 30 Years with the California Department of Corrections

My 30 Years with the California Department of Corrections PDF Author: Terrance Hunter
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing Group
ISBN: 9781641112871
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Terrance Hunter was born a poor African American, fathered by an individual he still does not know. Terrance grew up as an angry, bitter and resentful child with a poor self-image. He moved out of his home to live by himself at age 15. Years later, Terrance took the life of a close friend, was convicted of second-degree murder and received a 17 years to life prison sentence.Terrance believes God brought Bruce Hodgin and his family into his life. The experience of this loving family relationship gradually transformed Terrance from an angry, bitter man to a different kind of person. Soon after, Terrance experienced a strong "Spiritual Awakening" to the presence of God's grace, mercy and blessings. The anger, resentment and darkness within him began to disappear. His viewpoint concerning his incarceration shifted to one of acceptance, and simultaneously from a spiritual and mental perspective, he became totally free.Terrance's life today is about being given the unmerited, undeserved, and unearned gift, of a second chance. For the rest of his life, he has chosen to serve God and strive to be the man that God intended him to be. He hopes to especially help the youth of today, so they don't become the prisoners of tomorrow. He encourages fathers to show up and be present in their children's lives. He is an advocate of non-violence and committed to convincing youth and adults that violence is never the solution. This true story is a must read for anyone who believes in the miracle of transformation through love and faith.- F. David Rollo M.D., PhD., from the Introduction

My 30 Years with the California Department of Corrections

My 30 Years with the California Department of Corrections PDF Author: Terrance Hunter
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing Group
ISBN: 9781641112871
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
Terrance Hunter was born a poor African American, fathered by an individual he still does not know. Terrance grew up as an angry, bitter and resentful child with a poor self-image. He moved out of his home to live by himself at age 15. Years later, Terrance took the life of a close friend, was convicted of second-degree murder and received a 17 years to life prison sentence.Terrance believes God brought Bruce Hodgin and his family into his life. The experience of this loving family relationship gradually transformed Terrance from an angry, bitter man to a different kind of person. Soon after, Terrance experienced a strong "Spiritual Awakening" to the presence of God's grace, mercy and blessings. The anger, resentment and darkness within him began to disappear. His viewpoint concerning his incarceration shifted to one of acceptance, and simultaneously from a spiritual and mental perspective, he became totally free.Terrance's life today is about being given the unmerited, undeserved, and unearned gift, of a second chance. For the rest of his life, he has chosen to serve God and strive to be the man that God intended him to be. He hopes to especially help the youth of today, so they don't become the prisoners of tomorrow. He encourages fathers to show up and be present in their children's lives. He is an advocate of non-violence and committed to convincing youth and adults that violence is never the solution. This true story is a must read for anyone who believes in the miracle of transformation through love and faith.- F. David Rollo M.D., PhD., from the Introduction

The California Prison and Parole Law Handbook

The California Prison and Parole Law Handbook PDF Author: Heather MacKay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692955260
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Prison Truth

Prison Truth PDF Author: William J. Drummond
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520298365
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
San Quentin State Prison, California’s oldest prison and the nation’s largest, is notorious for once holding America’s most dangerous prisoners. But in 2008, the Bastille-by-the-Bay became a beacon for rehabilitation through the prisoner-run newspaper the San Quentin News. Prison Truth tells the story of how prisoners, many serving life terms, transformed the prison climate from what Johnny Cash called a living hell to an environment that fostered positive change in inmates’ lives. Award-winning journalist William J. Drummond takes us behind bars, introducing us to Arnulfo García, the visionary prisoner who led the revival of the newspaper. Drummond describes how the San Quentin News, after a twenty-year shutdown, was recalled to life under an enlightened warden and the small group of local retired newspaper veterans serving as advisers, which Drummond joined in 2012. Sharing how officials cautiously and often unwittingly allowed the newspaper to tell the stories of the incarcerated, Prison Truth illustrates the power of prison media to humanize the experiences of people inside penitentiary walls and to forge alliances with social justice networks seeking reform.

Inside the Broken California Prison System

Inside the Broken California Prison System PDF Author: Boston Woodard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780964700932
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Inside the Broken California Prison System by veteran jailhouse journalist Boston Woodard provides an insider 's view of California's dysfunctional prison industrial complex in crisis. On May 23, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that due to massive overcrowding, California is in violation of the Eighth Amendment, which constitutionally prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Because its 33 prisons are at nearly 200 percent capacity, the state has been ordered to release or find new accommodations for more than 30,000 prisoners within two years. With the harshest sentencing laws, toughest parole policy, and highest recidivism rate in the nation, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is a failure on all counts except for those who profit from the $10 billion spent annually to maintain it. Woodard describes how it came to this, as well as the day-to-day reality of the impact on prisoners in a corrupt system effectively accountable to no one.Inside the Broken California Prison System is a collection of more than 40 articles originally published over a period of six years in the Community Alliance, a small monthly newspaper in Fresno, California. They detail subjects such as restricted media access to prisoners, the brutal impact of overcrowding, medical and mental health treatment failures, rogue prison staff, religious and racial discrimination, an omnipotent prison guard union, and shipping prisoners out of state to private prisons. At the same time he offers real solutions to the overcrowding problem that would not endanger public safety.Woodard is a writer, musician, literacy tutor, event organizer, and prisoners rights advocate who has been writing about what goes on inside the California prison system for almost two decades in both free world and prison publications. His articles have embarrassed and angered prison officials used to operating without public oversight, and he 's paid a price for exercising his First Amendment right to define his surroundings. He 's been put in the Hole, had his mail tampered with, lost his typewriter, subjected to verbal threats, had his personal property stolen or destroyed, and been illegally and adversely transferred from prison to prison. Still he refuses to be intimidated. My writing is not about prison rights, he says. It 's about the public 's right to know about the good and bad within these prison walls and how their money is being spent. It 's also about the positive efforts of men and women given up for lost by society. I just want the guards and prison officials to do what is demanded of me and every other prisoner in the system, and that is to obey the law and follow the regulations.

The Toughest Beat

The Toughest Beat PDF Author: Joshua Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199985073
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The Toughest Beat uses the rise of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the state's powerful prison officers' union, to explore the actors and interests that have created, shaped, and protected the Golden State's sprawling, dysfunctional penal system -- and how it might yet be transformed.

The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement

The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement PDF Author: Eric Cummins
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804722322
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
This is a history of the California prison movement from 1950 to 1980, focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area's San Quentin State Prison and highlighting the role that prison reading and writing played in the creation of radical inmate ideology in those years. The book begins with the Caryl Chessman years (1948-60) and closes with the trial of the San Quentin Six (1975-76) and the passage of California's Determinate Sentencing Law (1977). This was an extraordinary era in the California prisons, one that saw the emergence of a highly developed radical convict resistance movement inside prison walls. This inmate groundswell was fueled at times by remarkable individual prisoners, at other times by groups like the Black Muslims or the San Quentin chapter of the Black Panther Party. But most often resistance grew from much wider sources and in quiet corners: from dozens of political study groups throughout the prison; from an underground San Quentin newspaper; and from covert attempts to organize a prisoners' union. The book traces the rise and fall of the prisoners' movement, ending with the inevitably bloody confrontation between prisoners and the state and the subsequent prison administration crackdown. The author examines the efforts of prison staff to augment other methods of inmate management by attempting to modify convict ideology by means of "bibliotherapy" and communication control, and describes convict resistance to these attempts as control. He also discusses how Bay Area political activists became intensely involved in San Quentin and how such writings as Chessman's Cell 2455, Cleaver's Soul on Ice, and Jackson's Soledad Brother reached far beyond prison walls to influence opinion, events, and policy.

Prison Work

Prison Work PDF Author: William Richard Wilkinson
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 0814210015
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
What do we know first-hand about prisons? We have accounts from many top administrators. There is a large literature of convict reports and memoirs. But we have almost no personal accounts written by the people who were engaged in the day-to-day work of guarding and keeping prison inmates. In Prison Work, former California prisons corrections officer William Richard Wilkinson candidly tells what it was like to try to handle problems that can arise in prison, from furnishing three meals a day to quelling a riot. Constructed around a series of interviews with Wilkinson, this book recounts his extensive experience with discipline problems, wrong-headed administrators, contraband, and escapes. Wilkinson's story presents a blunt, unabashed view of daily life in prison, including fascinating discussions of racial and religious conflict, gangs, and prison violence as well as the institutional culture and more human side of life as experienced by a prison employee. The duration of Wilkinson's career (1951-1981) saw the greatest change in the American prison system. He was responsible for implementing change on the level of the prison block. At the California Institution for Men in Chino, he started out under the inspiring leadership of one of the most famous reform figures in penology. At the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, he participated in one of the great prison experiments when medical officials ran a maximum security prison. And at Soledad, he experienced the reaction to earlier liberal policies. Over the years, he accumulated much wisdom concerning how to handle convicts-wisdom that still has importance for corrections workers. Book jacket.

Breathing Fire

Breathing Fire PDF Author: Jaime Lowe
Publisher: MCD
ISBN: 0374721920
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
A dramatic, revelatory account of the female inmate firefighters who battle California wildfires. Shawna was overcome by the claustrophobia, the heat, the smoke, the fire, all just down the canyon and up the ravine. She was feeling the adrenaline, but also the terror of doing something for the first time. She knew how to run with a backpack; they had trained her physically. But that’s not training for flames. That’s not live fire. California’s fire season gets hotter, longer, and more extreme every year — fire season is now year-round. Of the thousands of firefighters who battle California’s blazes every year, roughly 30 percent of the on-the-ground wildland crews are inmates earning a dollar an hour. Approximately 200 of those firefighters are women serving on all-female crews. In Breathing Fire, Jaime Lowe expands on her revelatory work for The New York Times Magazine. She has spent years getting to know dozens of women who have participated in the fire camp program and spoken to captains, family and friends, correctional officers, and camp commanders. The result is a rare, illuminating look at how the fire camps actually operate — a story that encompasses California’s underlying catastrophes of climate change, economic disparity, and historical injustice, but also draws on deeply personal histories, relationships, desires, frustrations, and the emotional and physical intensity of firefighting. Lowe’s reporting is a groundbreaking investigation of the prison system, and an intimate portrayal of the women of California’s Correctional Camps who put their lives on the line, while imprisoned, to save a state in peril.

Folsom Prison

Folsom Prison PDF Author: Jim Brown
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738559216
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Folsom Prison is California's second-oldest prison, dating back to 1880. In the decades following the Gold Rush, it housed some of the state's most notorious prisoners in stone, dungeon-like cells behind solid-metal doors; was the first prison with electric power; and for many years provided labor for various state projects, including construction, fabrication, and printing of license plates. Thrust into the public consciousness in the 1960s by high-profile performances from country music's Johnny Cash, the prison remains a notorious and legendary institution. The variety of offenders housed at Folsom are incarcerated for a large gamut of criminal behavior, and the California Department of Corrections has been dedicated to rehabilitation efforts throughout the facility's long history.

128-G

128-G PDF Author: Nate Fish
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578750224
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
128-G is a collection of art and writing from inmates at Calipatria State Prison in Southern California. Topics in the book range from art to sex to science and philosophy to criminal justice reform to American culture. "What you have in your hands is not only a collection of art, but a collection of voices," Joel Baptiste, one of the inmates, says about the book. "[We] have amazing stories if you're willing to look and listen." 128-G consists of scans of original artifacts from inside Calipatria - drawings on paper, napkins and other found materials, typed and handwritten letters, birthday cards, and powerful photos from filmmaker Danny Dwyer. All the material in 128-G come from Words Uncaged, a non-profit organization running art and writing programs in several California prisons. Visit www.wordsuncaged.org to learn more about the organization.