San Quentin’s Warden Works to Ease Tension : Privileges Lost After Prison Riot Being Restored

Behind the aging walls of San Quentin, a violence-plagued fortress holding 3,427 of California’s toughest convicts, privileges lost during a riot nearly three years ago are being slowly restored.

Warden Daniel Vasquez, who was given command of the 132-year-old institution Dec. 12, 1983, said he has developed a three-year program to ease tensions and repair and clean up the prison, including restoring educational and vocational opportunities.

The 41-year-old warden says he has taken a “hands-on” administration approach that involved forming his top personnel into management teams and ordering them to work with the staff behind prison walls.

Still, there have been more than 300 violent incidents since Vasquez took over, including 100 attacks against guards. Nine inmates have been killed or committed suicide.

In August, 10 days before the anniversary of a bloody episode in 1971 in which black revolutionary George Jackson, two other inmates and three guards were killed during an escape attempt, a Latino inmate was able to saw through four bars and stab a black convict 33 times.

18-Month Lock-Down

Vasquez said he isolates such incidents whenever possible to prevent the rebuilding of tensions that led to an 18-month general prison lock-down and loss of inmate privileges in June, 1982.

The lock-down was triggered by a riot between opposing gangs that left 67 convicts injured.

The lock-down kept most prisoners in their cells virtually 24 hours a day. Food was delivered on trays, causing pest and rodent problems in tiny cells measuring 11 feet, 3 inches by 4 feet, 6 inches. Outside the cellblocks, weeds sprouted and barbells rusted in the exercise yard.

The lock-down was imposed by the previous warden, Reginald Pulley, who told a public hearing the prison was an uncontrollable “monstrosity” that should be closed.

Courts have agreed that conditions at San Quentin were bad.

U.S. District Judge Stanley A. Weigel signed a sweeping order in September requiring officials at that facility and Folsom--the state’s two maximum-security prisons--to improve sanitation, food and reduce overcrowding. The Legislature also has approved $23 million for improvements at San Quentin.

‘Tremendous Victory’

The judge’s decision was hailed as a “tremendous victory” by attorney Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit watchdog organization that filed the class-action suit against the prison 11 years ago.

Specter said it was crucial that the improvements be made quickly to ease tensions that led to the 300-plus violent incidents so far in the last year.

“It’s very tense,” Specter said. “There’s alienation between the prisoners and the staff and between the staff and the staff.”

The physical layout of the prison, with its nooks and crannies, exacerbates violence, Specter said. He said gang warfare is encouraged when the administration “warehouses” prisoners into various factions, which prevents them from communicating with other groups to resolve differences.

“If you are sentenced for three or four years, it can end up being a death sentence,” Specter said. “If anything, that’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

He said several convicts have been attacked at San Quentin within months of their arrival because of their reluctance to cooperate with gang members--including one case in which an inmate was stabbed for refusing to ask his wife to smuggle drugs into the prison.

In another case, lifer Tony Lara was allowed out of the locked-up high-security segregation cellblock because of his good behavior, Specter said. Lara was stabbed a few months later in one of the large shower rooms.

“Nobody saw it and he died,” Specter said. “There’s just not enough staff, and the prison is poorly designed.”

He said the prison was meant to hold a different type of inmate. Under a new state system, San Quentin and Folsom are now the only Level 4 maximum-security prisons in California and receive the most violent and uncontrollable convicts.

Attorney Sid Wolinsky of Public Advocates, which joined the class-action suit against the prison, said San Quentin’s problems can’t be solved by installing a new warden or releasing more money.

“The prison is a hopelessly antiquated monstrosity,” Wolinsky said. “It should be closed down, sold off and put to a better purpose.

“One more warden in the history of San Quentin won’t make any difference. The place is barbaric and has no reason for being anymore.”

Wolinsky said the valuable property on the edge of San Francisco Bay in Marin County could be sold, with earnings used to build a modern prison elsewhere.

Vasquez, who was former deputy warden at California’s Soledad Prison, disagrees.

“San Quentin’s going to be around for a long time,” Vasquez said. “This is a manageable prison, not a time bomb.”

He said he started working to improve prison conditions the day he took command, including establishing a new policy to avoid lock-downs, hiring a new kitchen manager to resolve food problems, and reducing overcrowding by shifting some inmates to lower security prisons.

He’s also restored visiting privileges, educational and vocational programs and phased out a “tent city” where some of the inmates had to live because of inadequate space. The revival of prison work crews has also alleviated sanitation hazards, he said.

The doubling-up of inmates in cells, a practice ordered halted by the court, now occurs only in 123 cases in one of the mainline blocks, the warden said.

His first priority, Vasquez said, was to establish better communications between the administration and the prison staff of 1,200 correctional officers, a “hands-on” approach to management that often takes him onto the prison grounds.

Unannounced Visit

“I make a point to go out, walk the areas and talk to the staff,” Vasquez said.

One day he showed up unexpectedly at a gun rail overlooking the prison’s exercise yard, where two officers displaying new “Mini 14” rifles that can fire stinging, high-powered projectiles were keeping opposing groups of inmates from attacking each other.

“I was really impressed by the intensity of the job the officers were doing,” the warden said. “By their sheer presence, they were able to prevent violence. They saw the dynamics occurring and put a stop to it.”

However, Vasquez also noticed the officers had no communications link with the rest of the staff working with prisoners in that section.

“It was a negative situation,” Vasquez said. “They had nobody to communicate with and the troublemakers couldn’t be plucked out.”

Vasquez solved the problem by giving his staff some inexpensive voice-activated radios.

“We did something about the situation--enhanced communication,” the warden said. “We got the officers talking to each other.”

Vasquez said he has also held “town hall”-type meetings with inmates, but is opposed to having any kind of prisoner’s advisory group as a liaison between the administration and convicts.

“This is a prison, not the board room of some organization,” Vasquez said. “You can’t vote on issues of safety and security.”

In the nearby communities of Marin County, Vasquez assures citizens groups that the prison is fulfilling its mission of protecting society.

“We have the toughest inmates in the department, so there’s bound to be violence,” Vasquez tells the groups. “But it’s not occurring in your living room or bedroom. It’s in a controlled environment, where it’s supposed to be.”

Since Vasquez took over, the only general lock-down of the entire prison took place last June 22, when Louis Montgomery, 21-year-old leader of a black gang known as the Crips, was stabbed to death by a member of a rival gang--the Mexican Mafia.

Crips gang sympathizers, believing Montgomery had been poorly protected by guards, directed their anger at correctional officers, stabbing one in the eye and hitting another on the head with a blunt instrument.

A lock-down was ordered and slowly eased as officers identified and isolated the assailants.

Vasquez said other lock-downs have only been temporary and that his system is to isolate only the cellblocks where there is trouble instead of punishing everyone.

“I’ve had the staff analyze each incident--tear it apart and feed it into a computer--and look for common denominators,” Vasquez said. “And, we’ve started finding them--things like finding similar locations of incidents and identifying the dynamics involved.”

Although the prison has plumbing and electrical problems, Vasquez says his recovery program--along with the $23-million allocation from the state--will keep it operating far into the future.