The Grand Tour

Neither candidate is talking about the over 2 million people in jails and prisons in the US.   --   Bill Quigley in Counterpunch

Talk about justice...go down to the jailhouse and that’s all you see - just us.     -- Richard Pryor

Tourists in California are missing a great opportunity.  Where else can you travel north-south on either of two major highways and be so close to so many prisons - pardon me, correctional facilities -   some in plain sight.   And not just any prisons.  Famous prisons, notorious prisons, prisons immortalized in song.

Folsom State Prison, made famous in Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” is the only correctional institution on my list not conveniently located on or near Highway 101 or Interstate 5.  It is, however, a mere ten miles east of I-80, a bit west of Sacramento, so qualifies as near a major highway, and should be included in the Grand Tour.

Just south of Brookings Oregon, on the outskirts of Crescent City, is Pelican Bay, a high-security, high-tech facility noted for “cruel and unusual punishment” in its practice of severe solitary confinement and these prisoners’ lack of access to reasonable exercise space.  This is where they send the “really bad guys” and this must surely include the guards and other staff.

I don’t wish to stereotype, but will venture that it takes a special personality to be a prison guard.  A retired San Quentin guard operated a shop in Sausalito in the 70’s, and sold fishing and boating equipment, and guns.  There was a snack bar in the Bait Shop where you could drink beer.  It was to my knowledge the only place where you get drunk and then buy a handgun and bullets.  The owner was a mean-faced dour character who eyed everyone suspiciously and wasn’t commonly known as Rotten Richie for nothing.

San Quentin, visible from highway 101 in Marin County, needs no introduction, as it’s been celebrated in crime novels and movies, seemingly forever.  Anyone knows what you mean if you just say “Q.” The irony of its presence in Marin, former wealthiest county in the U.S. and birthplace of the smug yuppie, where BMW used to mean “Basic Marin Wheels” or “Break My Windows,” depending on your social status, is no longer even noticed.

Continuing south on 101, we come to the Salinas Valley Prison at Soledad, easily visible from the road.  It is known for the Soledad Brothers, a trio of black inmates who conspired to kill the guard who opened fire on prisoners in the exercise yard and shot three black men to death.  George Jackson, one of the three conspirators, wrote a book, Soledad Brother, calling attention to racism and cruelty at the facility.  Jackson was later killed at San Quentin when he staged an uprising and freed an entire floor of prisoners.

California Mens’ Colony at San Luis Obispo is not especially notorious, but there it is, right off 101 and should be included in the tour package.

The Federal Correctional Institution at Lompoc is a minimum-security prison, reserved for the likes of big drug traffickers, and white-collar criminals (who have the misfortune to get caught). Conveniently located off highway 101 in Santa Barbara County.

(A good account of the music business, cocaine trafficking, and doing time at Lompoc  — The Fortunate Son by Jake Rohrer - can be found here at the AVA’s website www.theava.com.)

Along Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Avenal State Prison is the most overcrowded prison in the state of California. Which, I would guess, is quite a distinction.

A bit farther south our tour includes the wonderfully-named Pleasant Valley state prison at Coalinga, which houses Sirhan Sirhan, the alleged assassin of Robert Kennedy.  I say “alleged” in the same sense that Lee Oswald was the alleged assassin of JFK and James Earl Ray was the alleged assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.  Was Sirhan Sirhan our first mass media bit of Islamophobic propaganda?  Before that all we had was Johnny Carson jokes about King Farouk, and Ray Stevens’ Ahab the Arab, the now socially verboten novelty song.