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The coming of statehood to California in 1850 forced the authorities to face one immediately pressing issue: what to do with the many convicts who were pouring forth from the local county courtrooms in the wake of the great Gold Rush of 1848-49. Lawlessness was everywhere rampant, and something had to be done immediately. The answer was found in establishing the first state prison at Quentin Point in Marin County, soon to be called San Quentin. Librarians Bonnie Petry and Michael Burgess have here gathered together several key documents dealing with the earliest years of the prison, including James Harold Wilkins' seminal work, "The Evolution of a State Prison," together with a list of early convict names, a bibliography of "San Quentiniana" (publications by the convicts themselves) by Herman K. Spector, and a new annotated bibliography of nonfiction resources about the prison compiled by Ms. Petry. Complete with Introduction and Index.
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...
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.
In this century the central and quintessential correctional facility program ought to be the library. While the U.S. prison industry has embraced a massive reentry movement emphasizing literacy and job readiness for former felons, prison libraries have been ignored as potential sources for reintegration. In The Prison Library Primer: A Program for the Twenty-First Century, Brenda Vogel addresses the unique challenges facing the prison librarian. This practical guide to operating and promoting a correctional library focuses on the basic priorities: collection development; location, space planning, and furnishing suggestions; information on court decisions and legislation affecting prisoners' rights. This volume also includes an information-skills training curriculum, sample administration policies, essential digital and print sources, and community support resources. Equipped with practical library science tools and creative solutions, The Prison Library Primer is an invaluable resource that will help the librarian and library advocate develop, grow, and maintain an effective, user-centered library program.
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