San Quentin State Prison

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Image:Sanquentinprison.jpg
The sprawling San Quentin prison complex.
Image:San Quentin.jpg
San Quentin up close.

San Quentin State Prison is located on 432 acres (1.7 km²) on Point Quentin in Marin County, California, United States, north of San Francisco. San Quentin State Prison was opened in July 1852, and is the oldest prison in California. It was built by inmates who were housed on the prison ship Waban during the construction. San Quentin held both male and female inmates until 1934 when the women's prison at Tehachapi was built.

The state's male death row is located at San Quentin, as well as its only gas chamber. In recent years, however, the gas chamber has been used to carry out lethal injections.

It has its own ZIP Code, 94974; the surrounding area is 94964. It is bordered by the water of the San Francisco Bay to the south and east and by Interstate 580, just after it crosses the bay on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

In 1941 the first prison meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous took place at San Quentin; in commemoration of this, the 25-millionth copy of the A.A. "Big Book" was presented to Jill Brown, of San Quentin, at the International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

On February 24, 1969, Johnny Cash played a live concert, At San Quentin, for the prison inmates. The concert was released as an album and was filmed by Granada Television.

In 2003, Metallica filmed the video for the song St. Anger inside San Quentin, playing to enthusiastic inmates. In 2007, as part of their World-wide tour, Michael Franti and Spearhead played a show for almost the entire prison population.

On the 18th of November 2006 the hip-hop group Flipsyde had a concert in the prison, which was not open for the public.

Alfredo Santos, one-time convicted heroin dealer and successful artist, painted six remarkable, 20-foot sepia toned murals during his incarceration that have hung in the dining hall of the prison since 1955.

The prison occupies 275 acres of waterfront land overlooking the bay and is estimated to be worth $80 to $100 million, making it the most valuable prison in the world.[1]

Contents

[edit] Notable inmates

Image:Gaschamber.jpg
The San Quentin gas chamber originally employed lethal cyanide gas for the purpose of carrying out capital punishment. The chamber has since been converted to an execution chamber where lethal injection is used. Two chairs once sat where the restraining table is now located.

[edit] Former

Source for all inmates except Masters, Sands, and Williams: Los Angeles Times article: "San Quentin"

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • Although "San Quintín" is Spanish for "Saint Quentin", the prison is not in fact named after the saint. The land on which it is situated, Point Quentin, is named after a Miwok warrior named Qintin, fighting under Chief Marin, who was taken prisoner at that place. [2]
  • Numerous towns and localities in the area (and in California generally) are named for Roman Catholic saints, and the designation of the prison's locality follows that motif.
  • Underaged girls have sometimes been referred to as "San Quentin Quail", on the assumption that violators of California's minor protection laws could end up there. In the 1940 Marx Brothers film, Go West, Groucho Marx plays a character named "S. Quentin Quale". There was also a 1946 Warner Brothers cartoon featuring a quail, named and titled Quentin Quail. [3]
  • In 1993 a movie titled Blood In Blood Out, which was based on Mexican / Prison gang warfare in Southern California, was filmed in parts at the prison.
  • In the movie [Heathers]] the character Veronica, after realizing that she had helped her boyfriend murder a high school classmate mutters that she does not know whether her college application should be sent to Stanford or San Quentin.
  • MythBusters visited San Quentin in a 2005 episode to conduct research about a paper crossbow.
  • The character Quentin in Cube is named after San Quentin.
  • Through the summer, groups of local, amateur baseball players gain access to the prison yard and play against the inmates in weekly games. Appropriately, the team of prisoners is called the "Giants" in honor of the San Francisco Giants, who donated old uniforms to the team. The team of outside players is called the "Willing". The only non-prisoners on the field are the opposing team--even the umpires are inmates and the only guards nearby are in the adjacent tower. These games were detailed in a Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel episode on June 20, 2006.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://deputydog.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/prisons-of-the-world/
  2. ^ Dudden, Alexis (2004). Japan's Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power. University of Hawaii Press, 81-83. ISBN 0824828291. 

[edit] External links

de:San Quentin State Prison fr:Prison d'État de San Quentin it:Carcere di San Quintino nl:San Quentin pl:Więzienie Stanowe Saint Quentin ru:Сан-Квентин fi:San Quentin sv:San Quentin

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