Overcrowding Increases Tensions in State Prisons

San Quentin’s death row attacks illustrate the tensions present at many of California’s 33 state prisons.

One reason: Housing about 160,000 inmates, the state penitentiary system--the nation’s largest--is bursting at the seams with some prisons handling double their capacity.

Death row is no different. California leads the nation in the number of condemned prisoners--580 men and 12 women--more than Texas, which has 450, and Florida with 372. There are 38 states with death rows.

California’s death row is so overcrowded the prison could stage an execution every day for 19 months--including weekends--and not exhaust its ranks.

Officials say California’s overflow has increased the stress between convicts and jailers.

From 1990 to 1999, inmate attacks on prison staff more than tripled statewide, from 1,002 to 3,224. The number of attacks with weapons increased from 200 in 1990 to 1,216 in 1999, according to the California Correctional Peace Officers’ Assn., the union representing the state’s 20,000 prison guards.

Inmate advocates don’t dispute the numbers, but say that many attacks are instigated by officers and that the numbers and severity of inmate assaults are exaggerated.

They point to last summer’s trial of eight Corcoran state prison officers accused of staging inmate gladiator fights for their own enjoyment--the largest prosecution of prison guards in California history. While all eight were acquitted, activists say the charges suggest a growing atmosphere of repression at the state’s maximum-security prisons.

From 1989 to 1994, for example, seven Corcoran inmates were fatally shot and 43 others were seriously wounded by guards firing assault rifles to break up inmate fistfights--more shootings and deaths than at any prison in the country. During the same period, only six inmates were killed at state and federal prisons nationwide--five of whom were trying to escape.

State officials say they investigate all fatal shootings and reports of excessive use of force by guards and prison staff.

Between March 1999 and March 2001, 68 officers and staff were disciplined for use of excessive force at prisons statewide--about twice the annual average of the preceding four years, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Experts say aggressive prison tactics have helped cause “impotent rage” among inmates, especially on death row.

“There’s this rage at being warehoused and mistreated,” said Robert Johnson, a professor of justice and social psychology at American University in Washington, D.C. “And being condemned to die is the ultimate warehousing--they hold you for years before they dispose of you.”

While the average time spent on death row is a little more than nine years, inmates can spend 20 years awaiting execution, battling isolation and depression over loss of appeals and dwindling family support--symptoms that grow more serious each year, experts say.

“The death penalty theory says you’re sentenced to death and then are fairly quickly executed,” said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. “But the reality is that you serve a life sentence and then you’re executed.

“In that atmosphere, the potential for violence is just enormous.”