Selected Stories From Past Issues of
The San Quentin News
MAR. 1981 – The San Quentin News reports that the price of first–class stamps will go up to 18 cents on March 22, while post cards will increase to 12 cents.
MAR. 1981 – All available correctional officers converged on the East Block for a shake–down search. Free staff personnel were called upon to man various custody positions while the search was conducted. The search turned up “one well-made prison knife and several smaller knives.”
MAR. 1981 – On Feb. 24, fourteen shots were fired at 20 fighting black inmates on the Max B yard. Twelve of the cons were hit with birdshot – five in the face. Word got back to the staff that blacks intend to kill staff members for what they felt was excessive use of force in breaking up the fight.
APR 1981 – The wage scale of nurses at San Quentin’s acute care hospital should be raised to counter chronic shortages, says the Marin County Grand Jury. Registered nurses at the prison currently earn from $18,936 to $24,048 per year.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
APR. 1981 – The state’s prisons currently house 24,803 adults in space designed to hold 23,514.
APR. 1981 – An unprecedented wave of inmate violence has occurred at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville. Since Jan. 1, there have been four suicides, one killing, four attempted suicides and 11 assaults at the prison.
APR. 1981 – The U.S. Supreme Court gave its authorization last week to the resumption of capital punishment in California. The 7–2 decision to let stand the death sentence of Earl Lloyd Jackson was the first death sentence to be cleared by both the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court in more than nine years. Jackson was convicted of the brutal 1977 murders of two elderly widows in Long Beach.
APR. 1981 – State Senator Nicholas Petris, D–Oakland, has proposed a bill that would allow inmates in the state’s overcrowded prisons to be released 90 days before their parole dates, and up to 180 days if the overcrowding persists.
APR. 1981 – When inmates in the adjustment center refused to comply with orders to remove paper from their bars, tear gas was used on Friday, and again in an incident on Monday. A disturbance erupted when the convicts were removed from their cells, and injuries suffered included one con hospitalized for treatment of broken facial bones, and two officers were treated for bites.
