PRISON: The new Protective Custody — one parolee’s view
Sam Quinones | March 2, 2012
I had a meeting with a parolee yesterday. I’ll omit his name, but he’s been locked up for 10 years, and was convicted in a fairly high profile gang killing.
We talked about a lot of stuff. But one thing I find very interesting is the major change in the prison system that’s been underway for a decade now: gang-associated inmates have been dropping out of gangs in droves and entering protective custody.
Used to be, protective custody was only for child molesters, ex-cops, witnesses and old men. The entire population amounted to a feew hundred guys statewide. But in the last decade, gang members, from all the races, including Latinos, both northern and southern, have been dropping out in the thousands. (I wrote about this a few years ago. Since then, the SNY phenomenon has continued to expand.)
Prison administrators have had to open up entire yards –800-1000 guys each — not just wings of prisons, to house all the new PC inmates. These are called Sensitive Needs Yards — SNYs. Most prisons in the state now have them; one prison, Mule Creek, is entirely PC. The growth population is gang members, as you can see if you ever visit them. (The heads of these guys all have well-known gangs tattooed on them: Avenues, White Fence, Florencia, etc etc. The heads make for very interesting reading. If you ever get a visit, check them out.)
Many of these guys are just older — late 30s and early 40s — and tired of the gang rat race. Many, too, are fleeing what problems they got into in “active” prison yards (for active gang members), where they may owe someone money for dope or gambling, or they’ve been greenlighted for some infraction that is real or (often) imagined by prison gang shotcallers.
Read more at: http://samquinones.com/reporters-blog/2012/03/02/streets-the-new-protective-custody-one-parolees-view/
Image credit: Slate.com
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