In the early years of the 20th century, riots, revolts, plots, escapes, killings and investigations had spread like an incurable disease within the bowels of Folsom and San Quentin prisons. The evil was a cancer and a cure was necessary.
The governor of California in 1912 was Hiram Johnson, and the order for change could only come from him. Folsom was bursting at its seams with violence. Therefore, the governor chose as warden a “new man,” to implement the necessary changes. James A. Johnston was the man chosen. His previous experience was in fiscal matters.
“Prisoners were in an ugly mood. Punishments were plenty but apparently ineffective. Discipline was not improving. In fact it was getting worse,” Johnston said in his 1937 book Prison Life Is Different.
San Quentin and Folsom both utilized corporal punishment freely. Johnston wrote, “Prisoners who broke the rules were severely punished. They were regarded as a hard bunch and treated rough. The dungeon was always full, and the ‘back alley’ was fitted up as a place of punishment.”
Hooks meant a prisoner was shackled and fettered, then pulled up, his arms twisted behind him, his neck and shoulders wrenched, his head lowering to his chest and his feet straining to touch the floor. In Johnston’s view, “Such punishments were barbarously brutal.” It was time for “a new way” to run the California penal system.
As the new warden at Folsom, Johnston abolished corporal punishment. The experts said it could not be done. “I told the governor that I knew the head-and-heart handling of men, and that I thought I could make an impression on the prisoners without using a club,” Johnston said.
“It is well to have prison reform and to do all that we can and ought for the unfortunate, the erring and the sinful. But it is more important to prevent the disgrace, the shame, and the suffering in the first place. just as the modern school of medicine devotes more and more time to destroying the germs which make disease instead of letting unhygienic conditions produce illness and then applying medicines, so must the philanthropist, the publicist, the official, the humanitarian, and the industrial captain act as social physicians and lay a hand to the work of ameliorating the conditions which in many cases are responsible for crime.”
Johnston became the Folsom State Prison warden on June 01, 1912. Because the governor and prison directors liked his “new way” of running a prison, in November 1913 they asked him to take charge of San Quentin as well. He became warden for two of the most notorious prisons in America.