It’s Insanity Here, Inmate Says of Escalating Folsom Violence

“The past three years,” said Folsom Prison inmate Robert Darcy, “have been insanity here, quite frankly.”

Convicted of kidnaping and locked up in the California prison system since 1969, Darcy said a recent rash of violence has created warlike conditions at the 105-year-old prison, with gangs battling over turf and “lock-down” periods lasting weeks during which inmates are confined to cells and deprived of hot meals.

“It creates hatred and tension and makes you more paranoid,” Darcy told state legislators at an unusual hearing Wednesday on the prison grounds. “You begin to hate the system so much that it cycles hatred off to other inmates.”

Darcy was one of two inmates who agreed to testify along with a number of prison officials and criminal justice experts in response to escalating incidents of violence at Folsom and other California prisons.

Last year marked the bloodiest in the Department of Corrections’ history with more than 5,000 incidents of assault, drug possession and other serious crimes. At the current rate, 1985 promises to be even worse.

8 Stabbed in a Day

Last month, eight inmates were stabbed in separate incidents in one day at Folsom. So far this year, about 120 stabbings have occurred at Folsom compared with 94 during all of 1984.

Wednesday’s hearing produced a variety of possible explanations for the growing violence, ranging from prison officials’ failure to segregate warring gangs, to an upsurge in drug use and overcrowding that has forced inmates to share cells that were designed for one.

Prison officials, inmates and criminologists who testified agreed that California’s prisons are in their worst shape in years. But there seemed to be little agreement among those who testified in placing blame. Some said society at large is at fault for “warehousing” inmates. Others blamed the Legislature and the courts for compromising the ability of prison authorities to provide secure conditions. They cited a maze of laws and court rulings that make it difficult to build new prisons and dictate how prisoners can be treated--for example, how many can be housed in a cell.

Darcy and the other inmate who testified, Paul Redd, maintained that the violence is an outgrowth of inhumane treatment by prison officials, particularly double celling and extended lock-downs.

“It builds up a lot of tension,” said Redd, who is serving a life sentence for murder. “All you have to do is drop silverware and that will start something.”

Folsom Prison Warden Joe Campoy said the violent nature of the inmates themselves, combined with overcrowded conditions--Folsom is at 155% of capacity--is responsible for the outbreaks.

Campoy cited Darcy and Redd as examples of the problem, charging that Darcy had used weapons in three escape attempts from state prison and that a confiscated letter suggested that Redd was planning a violent prison breakout.

“Their testimony ought to be taken with this in mind,” Campoy told the committee.

But Campoy conceded that little can be done to stem the flood of illegal drugs into the prisons and that metal detectors in use in the prison are inadequate to detect many types of lethal weapons fashioned by inmates.

Prison officials displayed dozens of confiscated makeshift weapons for television cameras at the hearing, which was held by a joint Assembly-Senate committee on prison construction as a way of drumming up public support for building more prisons.

The day’s events seemed tailored for a television audience, staged against a backdrop of the prison’s medieval stone facade, with lawmakers served the same sack lunches that are provided to inmates during lock-downs.

According to prison officials, California’s correctional institutions house 46,000 inmates, but were designed for a maximum of 28,000. At the rate the population is climbing, there will be 10,000 additional inmates by year’s end, said Rodney J. Blonien, undersecretary of the state’s Youth and Adult Correctional Agency.

Blonien said that the department’s efforts to build new prisons have been hampered by lawsuits filed by groups opposed to prisons in their communities and by a long and confusing environmental assessment process required before construction can begin.

Several court decisions that restrict double celling in certain prisons and prevent officials from segregating certain seemingly dangerous inmates have added to the problem, said Greg Hardy, an assistant director in the Department of Corrections.

Other officials blamed the state’s determinate sentencing law for much of the problem. The law, enacted during the Administration of Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., generally results in longer prison sentences, officials said. A measure that would have allowed early releases under certain conditions died in the Legislature two years ago.

But Craig Haney, a professor at UC Santa Cruz who has studied prison problems for 15 years, said the violence results from the kind of treatment inmates receive.

“People believe inmates are vicious animals,” he said. “The Department of Corrections treats them that way, so they begin to act that way.”