WALL CITY

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1 SPRING 2018 Editor-in-Chief Richard Richardson  Senior Editor Juan Haines  Staff Writer Charles David Henry  Staff Writer Kevin D. Sawyer  Columnist Curtis Carroll  Columnist David Jassy  Art Director Jonathan Chiu  Staff Photographer Eddie Herena  SQ PIO Lt. S. Robinson  Warden’s Office Raphaele Casale  CDCR Information Officer II Krissi Khokhobashvili  Adviser William Drummond  Adviser Sarah Horowitz  Adviser … [Read more...] about WALL CITY VOLUME 1: Front Cover

Implementing Arnulfo Garcia’s vision for an outstanding inmate-run magazine DEDICATION  by Bo Kovitz I just can’t bring myself to write about Arnulfo in the past tense. Months into being a free man, Arnulfo was killed in a car accident while on his mission to build a supportive community for the men and women who would follow him across the walls of prison. In recent weeks, I, like everyone who knew him, have had serious trouble coming to terms with what happened. It seems unreal, because he was and is so real to everyone who … [Read more...] about WALL CITY VOLUME 1: Introducing Wall City

A path of transformationCheap and simple, yoga helps inmates manage the stresses of prison life Darrell “Moe” Washington and Daniel Plunkett doing yoga poses in the SQ Education building Behind San Quentin’s baseball field, in a doublewide trailer surrounded by barbed wire, a dozen inmates sprawl out on yoga mats. Filling inside the bungalow are men, young and old, of different races, religions and worlds.  Eyes shut, they take one deep breath together. After a few moments of stretching and balancing themselves, they begin to heal … [Read more...] about WALL CITY VOLUME 1: A path of transformation

Between them, five men spent nearly a century inside a prison within a prison, California’s notorious Security Housing Unit (SHU). Isolated from contact with other inmates, they endured sensory deprivation, an unavoidable consequence of solitary confinement. They didn’t commit any crimes in prison, nor did they violate any rules. All but one was serving a life term. Their charge: gang membership. That was reason enough under a previous California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) policy to confine them indefinitely … [Read more...] about WALL CITY VOLUME 1: LIFE AFTER THE SHU

Ballot measure’s implementation speeds path to parole for many. New CDCR regulations that implement Proposition 57 shift the focus of incarceration more toward rehabilitation, though not as much as many had hoped. Still, the rules are expected to allow the early release of about 2,000 prisoners within the first year — and up to 10,000 by 2021.  That’s far fewer than the 30,000 estimated by the Legislative Analyst’s Office before the ballot measure passed in November 2016. The huge difference is mainly because the CDCR’s … [Read more...] about WALL CITY VOLUME 1: Proposition 57 and California’s road to declaration

How prisoners change young lives By Charles David Henry, Photographs by Eddie Herena A dozen teenage boys arrive at San Quentin and shuffle around, awkwardly trying to look cool. Flanked by rose bushes and razor wire, the Plaza is a luxuriant little square inside the prison gates. Each of them has a back-story but today the plan is to keep them out of prison — courtesy of San Quentin Utilization of Inmate Resources Experiences and Studies, better known as SQUIRES.  The Plaza is bounded with religious chapels on one side, and … [Read more...] about WALL CITY VOLUME 1: SQUIRES