Although my book, "Behind The Walls," goes into the history of the school from its beginnings up to the time the Castle's Administration building closed, I am still very much interested in all things "Preston" related, so I was very enthusiastic to hear about his personal experiences while incarcerated at PSI, along with his thoughts on the youth authority correctional system itself based on his years of reflection and research.
It has taken some time for me to get back to writing and posting on this blog so I am thrilled to be sharing this now. As my first post in a long time, I am excited to finally be publishing part of his experience at Preston and his personal reflections here in this special blog post, in his own words.
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| (Photo Credit: Bill Thiry, c/o Alan)
The
watchtower can be seen between the trees on the right of the Castle.
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My Arrival at Preston -- by Alan CYA #65085
"That
toil of growing up;
The
ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of
Boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain."--
The unfinished man and his pain."--
The
Dialogue of Self and Soul, William Butler Yeats 1865-1939
From the first
day it opened on July 1, 1894, until the day it closed on June 2, 2011, Preston was known as a place that you didn't want to go. Our bus had arrived at the Preston
School of Industry in Ione, California, on November 12, 1968. Nearly a half
century later, I can still remember my escort taking me down the hill to my new
residence in Sequoia Lodge, which was located a good distance away from all the
other lodges in the far left hand corner of the institution from the main gate. Preston’s topography of gently
rolling hills had two noteworthy landmarks, the first was an extremely high
watchtower, and the other was Preston Castle with its ominous facade. The
Romanesque Revival architecture of Preston Castle is both eerie and
spectacular. Inmates were housed in this intimidating decaying structure until
1960, when the new facilities were completed.
Several days after my arrival I
learned that Sequoia Lodge housed the most violent wards in the CYA system.
Other lodges at Preston specialized in housing gang members, or drug offenders
but Sequoia held the murderers, rapists, and child molesters. My parole was
revoked for disturbing the peace. So when I first learned of Sequoia’s purpose, I
was surprised because I had never considered myself to be a violent person.
Although I had my share of fights, I had done my best to avoid them all and I
never used excessive force in a fight. However the unwritten rule of
incarceration is that you have but three choices you can “fornicate, fight or
flee.”
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| The Newer Sequoia Lodge |
All photos of
Sequoia Lodge were taken in February of 2017 just shy of six years after Preston’s closing.
When I entered my 6’ X 9’ cell, the door opened towards the steel bed frame that was bolted to the ground
against and parallel to the left wall. The head of my bed was against the rear
wall. The toilet sink combo was mounted against the right wall near the door,
and a desk sat in the far right hand side next to the only window. The cells
were later modified to resemble those of a supermax prison. The cell doors were also
modified at some point to be able to open them remotely and to add a slot for a
food tray/cuff up access. Again, something you’d find in a supermax prison but wouldn’t
expect in a juvenile rehabilitation center.
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| (example of Sequoia Cell) |
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| Actual cell at Colorado's supermax prison |
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| example of Sequoia sliding cell |
A perimeter road on the other side of the fence allowed for easy access by maintenance and security vehicles. Regular patrols monitored the condition of the fence to prevent escapes. The only time I would observe wards other than Sequoia’s was during trips up the hill to, the gym, auditorium, or clinic but no interaction of any kind took place between us. All Sequoia’s residents were isolated from the rest of the wards even in this society within a society.
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Notice
the new brick around the slot windows where old windows once were.
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Whether or not the violence by the wards brought about the changes to their
environment one must ask if the changes only contributed to more violence? Whatever
the case, Sequoia Lodge was transformed into something closer to a supermax prison pod than the juvenile rehabilitation unit that it was billed to be. I found two reports which reflect the effects of the changes. In July of 2005, the
California Department of Corrections issued a report on staff assaults.
“DISCUSSION:
Thirty-seven of fifty-four incidents involved wards with serious mental health
issues. Twenty-nine of the incidents occurred in Sequoia Lodge (roughly 54% of
the total)....Only 7 incidents involved wards on general program status."
During
the year 2004, twenty-seven incidents occurred in Sequoia Lodge, per the report. "These statistics support
the immediate issuance of vests to officers assigned to Sequoia."
The fact that the wards housed in Sequoia Lodge were responsible for more than half of all the assaults on staff, while those involving wards on general program status were under 13%, could be viewed as an indictment of the wards more restrictive environment. (In several states, where the use of solitary confinement was reduced, the violence level also decreased.) By 2004, Tamarack Lodge (the solitary confinement unit) below was listed as closed.
The fact that the wards housed in Sequoia Lodge were responsible for more than half of all the assaults on staff, while those involving wards on general program status were under 13%, could be viewed as an indictment of the wards more restrictive environment. (In several states, where the use of solitary confinement was reduced, the violence level also decreased.) By 2004, Tamarack Lodge (the solitary confinement unit) below was listed as closed.
By 2005, Sequoia Lodge had been configured for "close" security living but was not designated as being administrative segregation housing. Sequoia had by this time staffing up to three times the number of other lodges.
The ward population had dramatically changed at Preston by the time of this report more than 82% of the wards claimed gang affiliation. This also closely followed the trend in the CDRC population.
Staff has used several factors to decide placement. Age, program needs and gang affiliation appear to drive the process of housing wards.
Another classified a given ward using a security level.
Categories 1-2 were the highest security level and included wards committing murder and serious assaults.Many of the wards that I personally knew in Sequoia Lodge fell into this category.
The interview team conducted interviews with staff assigned to the Specialized Behavioral Treatment Program in Sequoia and found that the Specialized/Intensive Treatment programs treated the most difficult and troubled wards.
The entire report can be read here: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/docs/PRESTON_Report.pdf
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| Tamarack Lodge, originally Company G (built 1929) |
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| View from second floor of Tamarack |
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Interior of a Tamarack Isolation Cell here too they replaced the bed with a concrete slab. |
After I left, the wards remained
totally isolated from the rest of Preston’s population. This
is confirmed in a 1977 CYA report which reported:
"The Sequoia Counseling Program is an intensive counseling milieu and educational program that is designed to deal with 48 wards.... This program is primarily segregated from the other programs at Preston. The Special Unit Academic Program provides education...within the Tamarack Intractable Unit, the Sequoia Counseling Program, and the Ironwood Protective Custody Program this allows the special treatment programs, to maintain their isolation where necessary.
Tamarack Intractable lodge is a 40-bed living unit which provides a secure
setting for older more sophisticated wards of the Preston population who are
considered intractable. Tamarack does not contain program elements designed to
deal with weak, psychotic, or suicidal wards. Also included on Tamarack Lodge
is a 21-bed Crisis Intervention Unit for use as a temporary program for other
Preston lodges.”
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Classroom cages, called “secure program
areas”, were first introduced in 1998 in Preston and Stark both high security
CYA facilities located in Ione and Chino respectfully. Caged like animals some
belligerent wards began to expose themselves, make treats, or “gas” the
teaching staff (dousing them with urine).
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The
suicidal young boy in my story needed expert help which the report above admits
was lacking. During my nearly eight months at Preston’s Sequoia Lodge, no staff members
were attacked and the only disturbance in our classroom was a fight between me
and another ward for which I spent two weeks in Tamarack’s solitary confinement
unit. It is notable however, that after our altercation all our cells were
searched and numerous weapons were found mostly in my opponent’s cell room. He was asked why he had so many weapons, he replied that he planned to kill me and then attack
the staff. I received no counseling or medications during my stay, leaving me to
believe more than the architecture of Sequoia Lodge changed after my release.
Such rage against the system
that had begun during the 1960’s, was by 1970, frequently leading to violent confrontations
with the men running these prisons. With so many losing hope of ever reentering
civil society, the number of violent incidents increased dramatically in the
1970’s leading to ever more draconian measures being deployed against inmates.
Unknown to me at the time, the
legendary George Lester Jackson, commonly referred to today as the Dragon, had
been transferred from nearby San Quentin Prison to Soledad Prison in January of
1968. He would later be charged with killing a guard in retaliation for the
shooting deaths of three black inmates. The inmates had been shot by a lone
white guard during a brawl three days prior in what is now known as “The
Soledad Incident” of January 13, 1970.
Jackson along with two “Soledad Brothers” Fleeta
Drumgo, and John Clutchette, as they were called by the press at the
time, would dominate the newspapers of the era.
Following the “Soledad Incident”
Jackson’s revolutionary, ideology took hold on both sides of the prison walls
and resulted in the deaths of nine more prison guards and 24 inmates over the
next year earning him the rank of Field Marshal in the Black Panther Party.
On August 21, 1971, Jackson
himself died a violent death in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center, reportedly
during an escape attempt. Three guards and two white building tenders also died
in what is now called the “Bloodiest Day” in San Quentin’s history, after being
repeatedly stabbed and having their throats cut. Three other, similarly
wounded, guards would recover. Jackson’s co-conspirators Hugo Pinell, Johnny
Spain, Willie Tate, Luis Talamantez, David Johnson, and Soledad Brother Fleeta
Drumgo were known as The San Quentin Six, and would go on to dominate the news cycle
during their trials.
In response to this rise of
institutional violence, the Control Unit was created at the United States
Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois in 1973. Marion was designed as the place
where prisons across the nation could send their most radicalized inmates and
violent gang members. As Marion’s
Control Unit received more and more, of the worst of the worst, Marion’s security
deteriorated to the point where violence became the new norm. Marion’s warden may have indeed been
seeking an excuse to lock down the whole population at the institution when in October
1983, Aryan Brotherhood members Thomas Edward Silverstein and Clayton Fountain
supplied him with a politically correct excuse to do so when, in two separate
incidents, they brutally murdered two guards. The supermax Prison model was
thus born. As Oscar Wilde wrote in the Duchess of Padua (Act 4), “We are each our own devil, and make this
world our hell.”
As the Mecca of the prison
reform movement the California Department of Corrections choose not to address
the prison movements concerns but instead the state took the lead and opened the
countries first supermax prison in
Crescent City, CA in 1989 designed especially for the isolation of troublesome
inmates.
It is obvious
to me that Preston’s modifications to Sequoia Lodge were inspired by, and modeled
after, the CDC’s efforts to isolate those they considered disruptive
regardless of its effectiveness. It is also clear to me that George Jackson’s ideology
of violent resistance and a culture of gang violence that it inspired had taken
hold in Preston. Preston was
finally closed after a long battle in which the public refused to be silent
over the reported abuses of wards and the “increased violence” that it
produced.
Peaceful protest by the public can indeed bring about change, where as
violence only begets violence. --------- By: ALAN CYA # 65085
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Thank you Alan CYA # 65085 for contributing your experience at the Preston School of Industry, as well as your own thoughts on how the system has worsened over the years. And thank you to Bill Thiry for permission to publish the photos of some of the old buildings at Preston.
Update: Per an email from Alan CYA # 65085, some of the photos of the Sequoia Lodge posted are of a different building that he states was later renamed the Sequoia Lodge. The buildings are the same, although this is not the original Sequoia Lodge, per his understanding. The photos are examples of what many of the buildings at Preston appeared to be at the time.---
Update: Per an email from Alan CYA # 65085, some of the photos of the Sequoia Lodge posted are of a different building that he states was later renamed the Sequoia Lodge. The buildings are the same, although this is not the original Sequoia Lodge, per his understanding. The photos are examples of what many of the buildings at Preston appeared to be at the time.---
