U.C.L.A. Law Review

Prison Row: A Topographical History of Carcerality in

Julia A. Mendoza

ABSTRACT

U.S. Highway 99 is often coined the Golden State Highway and the Main Street of California. The road originally extended from the U.S.–Mexico border all the way to the Oregon border while passing through the Central Valley. When you travel along this route, you pass a little over half of all California prisons. By using U.S. Highway 99 as an entry point, this Article is a topographical study of California’s carceral history. The first Part of this Article gives a brief history of the various forms of incarceration—from California’s gold rush era in 1949, to the massive multimillion-dollar prison expansion during the 1980s and 1990s. The second Part narrates the carceral landscape that surrounds U.S. Highway 99 when you are driving along the route, starting from the Calexico East Port Entry near California’s southern border and following the original road all the way to the north where the road eventually traces the Siskiyou Trail. Intertwined with this narration is a description of the various ways California has disproportionately incarcerated communities of color and how the reliance on carceral practices affects education.

AUTHOR

Julia A. Mendoza is a Thomas C. Grey Fellow at Stanford Law School, and currently working on her book manuscript, The Miseducation of the Barrio: The School to Prison Pipeline in Stockton, California (under contract with Stanford University Press).

She would like to thank the following people for their generous thoughts and comments: Michelle Wilde Anderson, George Fisher, Elaine Freedgood, Craig Gilmore, Cory Greene, Joss Greene, Shannon Guillot-Wright, Marie Legge, Michelle Lipinski, Joel Shields, David Sklansky, Patricia J. Williams, and the participants of the Stanford Grey Fellow Law Forum (2019).

This Article is dedicated to her grandfather, whose travels along Highway 99 were driven by survival.

66 UCLA L. Rev. 1616 (2019) TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1618 I. A Short ’s Carceral Practices ...... 1619 II. Driving Up Prison Row ...... 1624 Conclusion ...... 1632

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INTRODUCTION

Once upon a time, U.S. Highway 99 was the transit backbone of California. Formerly known as the Golden State Highway and the Main Street of California, the highway route originally began at the U.S.–Mexico border and extended north all the way along the traces of the Siskiyou Trail toward Oregon.1 What was once the path migrant farmers used to travel as the seasons changed is now the road many families take to visit their loved ones in prison and detention centers. From the Imperial Regional Detention Facility near the Calexico East Port of Entry all the way to Folsom State Prison where Johnny Cash once sang “Cocaine Blues,” the Golden State Highway has now become Prison Row.2 Driving along U.S. Highway 99 takes you through the heart of California.3 When driving along the route, you may pass through fields of alfalfa in Imperial, grapes in Delano, and almonds in Fresno. Home to more than 230 crops, the soil of the Central Valley nourishes people all over the United States.4 Driving at highway speeds past these farms, the workers laboring in the fields blur out. In Don Mitchell’s words, “The pattern and color of the California landscape are mortgaged on the backs of an endless stream of workers.”5 And alongside these laborers is a carceral landscape, also hidden in plain sight. The following narrative describes the various layers of California’s carceral history that exist along U.S. Highway 99. Although California’s incarcerated population has dropped in the last fifteen years,6 the rate of incarceration in the state remains significantly higher in comparison to countries such as Canada, France, Portugal and the United Kingdom.7

1. STEPHEN H. PROVOST, HIGHWAY 99: THE HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA’S MAIN STREET 5 (2017). 2. I was first introduced to this term by Sammy Nunez, the Executive Director of Fathers and Families of San Joaquin Valley. With that said, it is important to note that the notion of “prison row” is analogous to “prison alley” as described by Ruthie Gilmore in her foundational work, Golden Gulag. See RUTH WILSON GILMORE, GOLDEN GULAG: PRISONS, SURPLUS, CRISIS, AND OPPOSITION IN GLOBALIZING CALIFORNIA 129 (2007). 3. See generally PROVOST, supra note 1, at 172–250. 4. Mark Bittman, Everyone Eats There, N.Y. TIMES MAG. (Oct. 10, 2012), https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/californias-central-valley-land-of-a- billion-vegetables.html [https://perma.cc/QVR4-GLV5]. 5. DON MITCHELL, THE LIE OF THE LAND: MIGRANT WORKERS AND THE CALIFORNIA LANDSCAPE 15 (1996). 6. Peter Wagner, Tracking State Prison Growth in 50 States, PRISON POL’Y INITIATIVE (May 28, 2014), https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/overtime.html [https://perma.cc/V6L9-F7RR]. 7. California Profile, PRISON POL’Y INITIATIVE, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/CA.html [https://perma.cc/LS68-Q2V8] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). A Topographical History of Carcerality in CA 1619

I. A SHORT HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA’S CARCERAL PRACTICES

Before the 1920s, migrants were housed in labor camps across the Central Valley.8 Tents and kitchens on wheels arose to house individuals from all over the world.9 Beyond labor camps, tenement towns existed along U.S. Highway 99 from Los Angeles to Fresno to Stockton.10 Although the majority of laborers in the camps were men, the Commission of Immigration and Housing of California counted 1829 children living in the dismal conditions.11 Because of the difficulty in educating transitory children, the Commission of Immigration and Housing of California developed the Home Teacher Act, passed by the 1915 California Legislature.12 The sentiment espoused by the refrain— “Americanize the children and they will Americanize the home!”—characterizes the predominant educational theory of the time.13 Realizing that this educational framework left out the mother’s influence in the immigrant home, the Act developed a series of English lessons for immigrant mothers as a way of placing them “in command of their own situation by correlating them with the best America has to offer.”14 The first lesson instructed parents on how to write five sentences in cursive: “I cook. I wash. I sweep. I mop. I sew.”15 Although the teacher is instructed to conduct the lesson “with so much vivacity and variety that the pupil has no sense of monotony,” the second lesson immediately defeats the purpose with instructions to write the following six sentences: “We cook. We wash. We iron. We sweep. We mop. We sew.”16 During the 1920s, the United States passed a series of laws that restricted immigration for laborers of various racial and ethnic backgrounds. The shifting

8. See OFFICE OF THE COMM’N OF IMMIGRATION & HOUSING OF CALIFORNIA, SECOND ANNUAL REPORT 346 tbl.IV (1916) [hereinafter SECOND ANNUAL REPORT] (demonstrating that the nationalities represented in 107 labor camps inspected between November 1, 1914 and June 30, 1915 included Americans, Italians, Mexicans, Japanese, Greeks, Germans, Chinese, Portuguese, Austrians, Swedes, Irish, French, Russians, English, Swiss, Negroes, Slavonians, Koreans, Porto Ricans, and Filipinos). 9. Id. at 21, 47–49. 10. See id. at 204. 11. Id. at 346. A total of 40,906 individuals lived in the 983 labor camps inspected by the Commission of Immigration and Housing of California between April 10, 1914 and June 30, 1915. Id. 12. See THE COMM’N OF IMMIGRATION & HOUSING OF CALIFORNIA, THE HOME TEACHER: THE ACT, WITH A WORKING PLAN AND FORTY LESSONS IN ENGLISH (1915). 13. SECOND ANNUAL REPORT, supra note 8, at 154. 14. Id. at 158. 15. Id. at 160. 16. Id. at 159, 161.

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racial demographics of the labor pool led California landowners to rely more on Mexican fieldworkers. As one farmer bluntly noted: We want Mexicans because we can treat them as we cannot treat any other living men . . . . We can control them at night behind bolted gates, within a stockade eight feet high, surmounted by barbed wire. . . . We make them work under armed guards in the field.17 The desire for Mexican labor shifted yet again in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Through a series of repatriations, Mexicans (many of whom were also U.S. citizens) were gathered and deported against their will.18 In the wake of these deportations, Dustbowl migrants began replacing Mexican and Mexican American laborers in the field.19 U.S. Highway 99 also passes along the sites of ten of the thirteen Japanese internment assembly centers in California. Under Executive Order 9066 during World War II, the federal government forced Japanese people, including American citizens, to report to repurposed fairgrounds and racetracks.20 After being forced to leave their homes, people of Japanese descent were temporarily incarcerated at an assembly center. A government commission wrote in 1997 that “[e]vacuees often recall two images of their arrival: walking to the camp between a cordon of armed guards, and first seeing the barbed wire and searchlights, the menacing symbols of a prison.”21 Japanese Americans were housed at the Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) assembly centers for a few months and then shipped inland to permanent concentration camps.22 Educational programming in the assembly centers was makeshift at best. Classrooms were staffed with evacuee teachers and college graduates. Teachers tried to teach a curriculum that included standard subjects such as English, American history, music, and art, but they lacked books and school supplies. Children attended classes and received grades without having any clue of what their future might hold.23

17. DON MITCHELL, THEY SAVED THE CROPS: LABOR, LANDSCAPE, AND THE STRUGGLE OVER INDUSTRIAL FARMING IN BRACERO-ERA CALIFORNIA 56 (2012). 18. See id. at 58. 19. Id. One of these American citizens was my grandmother, Velia Sanchez Mendoza. She was four years old at the time. 20. GREG ROBINSON, A TRAGEDY OF DEMOCRACY: JAPANESE CONFINEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA 129 (2009). 21. THE CIVIL LIBERTIES PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND, PERSONAL JUSTICE DENIED: REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON WARTIME RELOCATION AND INTERNMENT OF CIVILIANS 136 (1997) [hereinafter PERSONAL JUSTICE DENIED]. 22. ROBINSON, supra note 20, at 129. 23. PERSONAL JUSTICE DENIED, supra note 21, at 144–45. A Topographical History of Carcerality in CA 1621

After several months, the incarcerated Japanese were transported to concentration camps such as Manzanar. After a long and harrowing train ride even farther from home, they were forced to live in squalid conditions indefinitely.24 Manzanar detainees suffered for many reasons, but as described by a survivor, one of the greatest enemies was the sand: The desert was bulldozed to level it off. Barracks were built all over for the 10,000 people that lived there. When the wind blew, it was terrible, just like Imperial Valley sandstorms. Oh, everybody resented being put in such a place, especially when they were suffocated by sand! . . . When the wind blows, the sand goes in the kitchen, in pans, and the hot rice. On top of the rice they put Jell-O, since we had only one plate to eat out of, so it all melted together.25 After the interned were shipped to camps such as Manzanar, Poston, and ,26 the California Farm Production Council took control of some of the assembly centers and converted the buildings into a series of sixteen-by-twenty- foot shacks. These shacks then housed Mexican Bracero workers while they waited to be shipped to growers.27 The repurposed WCCA centers were not the only Japanese internment structures that were reused along U.S. Highway 99. As Kelly Lytle Hernández recounts, the fencing used to contain Japanese Americans was also repurposed. In 1945, U.S. Border Patrol authorities began to recognize a shift in illegal border crossings away from the El Paso, Texas area to the California border. To confront the rise in California crossings, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) delivered “4,500 lineal feet of chain link fencing (10 feet high, woven of No. 6 wire) to the International Boundary and Water Commission at Calexico, California,” the same chainlink fence used at the Crystal City, California internment camp.28 When you drive down U.S. Highway 99, this history is not readily apparent. The old remnants of labor camps are hard to find. The fairgrounds and racetracks hastily transformed into WCCA centers have returned to their original purpose.29 Yet the history is still there, embedded in the landscape—the landscape of prisons in California. Today there are thirty-eight prisons and juvenile detention centers

24. See id. at 149–52. 25. Interview by Arthur A. Hansen with Dr. Yoriyuki Kikuchi, in L.A., Cal. (July 29, 1974). 26. See PERSONAL JUSTICE DENIED, supra note 21, at 149–50. 27. MITCHELL, supra note 17, at 51. 28. KELLY LYTLE HERNÁNDEZ, MIGRA!: A HISTORY OF THE U.S. BORDER PATROL 130 (2010). 29. See PERSONAL JUSTICE DENIED, supra note 21, at 137.

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under the control of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).30 You pass over half of them driving north on old U.S. Highway 99. ***

Prior to statehood, one of California’s first jails was a San Francisco schoolhouse. The insecurity of that jail’s structure allowed for several successful escapes. Recognizing the need for a more secure jail, San Francisco transformed a retired shipping boat named the Euphemia into a prison brig and docked it in the bone-cold waters of the San Francisco Bay in 1849.31 The conditions on the Euphemia quickly turned deplorable, supposedly rivaling those at the famous black hole of Calcutta.32 The next year, the City of Sacramento docked another ship, the La Grange, at the foot of I-Street in downtown to house people with criminal convictions and mental illnesses.33 A grand jury report provided a window into the terrible conditions aboard the La Grange: [The jail is] considered insecure and, for close confinement, unhealthy. There are at present only 16 cells, each about 4 ½ by 8 feet in size, divided by board partitions, and occupying a space in the center of the brig of about 25 by 40 feet . . . . Each of these cells contain from two to three prisoners . . . 34 Despite the fervor of shock and disgust about the inhumane conditions of prison brigs, California continued the practice of jailing people on water. Rumored to have sailed into the San Francisco Bay on Bastille Day, the Waban

30. There are thirty-five prisons and three juvenile centers. This number does not include the juvenile fire camp. CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS & REHABILITATION, MAP OF CALIFORNIA’S CORRECTIONAL AND REHABILITATION INSTITUTIONS (2018), https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/map/docs/Correctional-and-Rehabilitation-Institutions-with- Parole-Regions.pdf?pdf=Institutions-Map [https://perma.cc/57JS-VH4G]. 31. See James P. Delgado, Gold Rush Jail: The Prison Ship “Euphemia”, 60 CAL. HIST. 134, 136 (1981). 32. Id. at 139. The story of the Black Hole of Calcutta refers to a hot summer night in 1756, whereupon 146 Europeans were taken captive by the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah and confined to a tiny airless room in the old Fort William. The following morning, only twenty-three Europeans emerged alive. The remainder had died of suffocation. See generally PARTHA CHATTERJEE, THE BLACK HOLE OF EMPIRE: HISTORY OF A GLOBAL PRACTICE OF POWER (2012). Scholars contend that the legend of the Black Hole of Calcutta is most likely a myth. See Brijen K. Gupta, The Black Hole Incident, 19 J. ASIAN STUD. 53 (1959). 33. See Sacramento Once Had Floating Jail, SACRAMENTO UNION, Jan. 14, 1912, at 35; see also The State and County Prisoners, SACRAMENTO TRANSCRIPT, Apr. 5, 1851, at 2. 34. Report of the Grand Jury, SACRAMENTO DAILY UNION, Feb. 27, 1854, at 2. A Topographical History of Carcerality in CA 1623

became California’s first official prison until the 1852 construction of a prison on San Quentin Point.35 From the beginning of California’s history until 1983, California only built twelve prisons. From 1984 until 2005, California built twenty-three new prisons, each costing taxpayers between 280 and 350 million dollars.36 Between 1982 and 2000, the number of people imprisoned by the CDCR grew by nearly 500 percent. This growth of incarcerated people occurred even though the crime rate peaked in 1980 and declined throughout the following decades.37 If a state budget is a moral document, California’s citizens were running an ethical deficit. The Golden State was not always a golden gulag, as Ruthie Wilson Gilmore called it in her foundational book.38 In addition to significant jail growth after 1985, California “added more prisoners each year than the system added in the average decade between 1950 and 1980. Between 1980 and 1991, California experienced seven times as much total growth in prison population as in the

35. San Quentin also quickly became known for horrific living conditions. On February 2, 1858, the California Legislature listened to a report on the status of the prison. In addition to testimony of witnesses, the committee members reported their own personal observations from a recent visit, highlighting not just the terrible clothing and food, but also the inhumane living conditions: “The cells being six feet by ten, with something like two shelves on each side, about two feet each in width, upon which is a kind of straw mattress, and one coarse, shaggy, double blanket, which is all that is found when the complement of bedding is full . . . . But this is by no means the worst feature of the Prison. In the long room, so called, which is in size twenty four by one hundred and forty six feet, are turned loose, like so many brute animals in a corral, to stay and sleep . . . . The manner of stowing away such a number in so small a space is accomplished by placing a row of standee bunks close to each other, on each side of the room, with their heads to the wall, leaving an open space through the middle of the room, the bunks being one above another, and into which the prisoners crawl from the end, the open space being so small, that before any take their bunks, it is with a good deal of difficulty you can make your way through the crowd; and the stench issuing from the room when opened in the morning, will have to be imagined, as a description in words is impossible.” California Legislature—Ninth Session, SACRAMENTO DAILY UNION, Feb. 3, 1858, at 1. On October 9, 1852, the Commissioners of the State of California signed a contract with Ferdinand Vassault, James M. Estill, Robert Allen, and Joseph Daniels to design the first prison in California at San Quentin Point. State Prison Contract, SACRAMENTO DAILY UNION, Oct. 20, 1852, at 3. Although the contract included the cost for labor, Estill used convict labor to build San Quentin and pocketed the money for himself. See SACRAMENTO DAILY UNION, Nov. 8, 1854. 36. GILMORE, supra note 2, at 7. 37. Id. at 7–10. 38. Ruth Wilson Gilmore provides a critical understanding of the political economy of California’s prison system. See GILMORE, supra note 2.

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previous three decades combined.”39 Although California’s incarceration rate was not as high as other states during the beginning of the 1980s, the prison population grew to one of the largest in the country by the end of the decade.40

II. DRIVING UP PRISON ROW

Many roads trace the contours of California. Perhaps the most beautiful is U.S. Highway 1—the Pacific Coast Highway—which curves along the California coast from one beach town to another. Whether the water is a sparkling blue or a melancholic grey, the still ocean greets you at every turn. You can travel U.S. Highway 1 to eat oysters at Tomales Bay, hike through the redwoods in Santa Cruz, or surf the waves in Del Mar. A roadway to pleasures, U.S. Highway 1 is driven by people who can enjoy the fruits of their labor. Yet U.S. Highway 1 is not the heart of California. That mantle belongs to U.S. Highway 99: a road routinely trekked by people who pass through field after field, divided by white mounds to mark the boundaries of farms. To drive up the original U.S. Highway 99, you begin at the Calexico East Port of Entry at the U.S.–Mexico border. The recently built multimillion-dollar border station monitors the passage of vehicle and pedestrian traffic and supports both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies. The architectural design of the building incorporates sustainable features to minimize the port’s environmental impact.41 But part of the new station includes a bridge that extends over the New River, a dark green stream that emits a noxious smell and produces unnatural foam that billows off the surface of the water. In addition to the toxic air of the region causing widespread asthma, the river contains pathogens that cause tuberculosis, encephalitis, polio, cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid. Alongside the

39. Franklin E. Zimring & Gordon Hawkins, The Growth of Imprisonment in California, 34 BRIT. J. CRIMINOLOGY 83, 85 (1994) (emphasis omitted). 40. Zimring lists three factors that contributed to the expansion of the prison population: (1) California following suit with other jurisdictions across the country whereupon the average jurisdiction’s prison population more than doubled; (2) the interaction of these higher imprisonment rates with a thirty percent increase in California’s population; and (3) the change in imprisonment levels relative to the other states. Id. at 86. All three of these factors interacted with one another “in a multiplicative way.” Id. at 86–87. 41. U.S. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION, CALEXICO WEST LAND PORT OF ENTRY FACT SHEET 2 (2019), https://www.gsa.gov/cdnstatic/Calexico%20West%20Fact%20Sheet% 20-July%2024%202019.pdf [https://perma.cc/HKB6-2QEH]. A Topographical History of Carcerality in CA 1625

river in the Imperial Valley is a low-income community of mostly agricultural workers.42 After driving about eight miles north, you first pass Centinela State Prison43 on the right. Continuing north, as the road curves toward the left side of the Salton Sea, you then pass the Calipatria State Prison.44 As you continue toward the City of Angels, you pass by the California Rehabilitation Center,45 the California Institution for Women,46 and the California Institution for Men.47 Despite the vague names, all three are prisons. Los Angeles has more people in jail or prison than any other city in the United States.48 More than 3150 people are incarcerated in Los Angeles County State Prison,49 and other jails in the county hold 17,000 more.50 Additionally,

42. Jose A. Del Real, ‘Pits of Infection’: A Border Town’s Crisis Has Nothing to do With Migrants, N.Y. TIMES (Feb. 9, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/us/calexico- new-river.html [https://perma.cc/HR7E-HN6B]. 43. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Centinela State Prison housed 3606 individuals at 156.2 percent capacity. CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS & REHABILITATION, MONTHLY REPORT OF POPULATION 2 (2019) [hereinafter CDCR MONTHLY POPULATION REPORT], https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2019/12/Tpop1d1911.pdf [https://perma.cc/2LZE-YL9V]. 44. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Calipatria State Prison housed 3292 individuals at 142.6 percent capacity. Id. 45. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, California Rehabilitation Center housed 3540 individuals at 142.1 percent capacity. Id. 46. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, California Institution for Women housed 1672 individuals at 119.6 percent capacity. Id. 47. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, California Institution for Men housed 3656 individuals at 122.8 percent capacity. Id. 48. See KELLY LYTLE HERNÁNDEZ, CITY OF INMATES: CONQUEST, REBELLION, AND THE RISE OF HUMAN CAGING IN LOS ANGELES, 1771–1965 1 (2017) (“Los Angeles . . . imprison[s] more people than any other city in the United States, which incarcerates more people than any other nation on earth.”). 49. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Los Angeles County State Prison housed 3138 individuals at 136.4 percent capacity. CDCR MONTHLY POPULATION REPORT, supra note 43, at 2. 50. Los Angeles County Jail System by the Numbers, L.A. ALMANAC, http://www.laalmanac.com/ crime/cr25b.php [https://perma.cc/Y8BH-NM45] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). In Jennifer Chacón’s insightful book review for City of Inmates, she complicates Kelly Lytle Hernández’s claim by illuminating the fact that one of the main reasons the incarceration rate in Los Angles is so high is because it is one of the largest counties in California. Jennifer M. Chacón, Unsettling History, 131 HARV. L. REV. 1078 (2018) (reviewing HERNÁNDEZ, supra note 48). Chacón asserts that, “[t]he true incarceration capital of California may be a place like Kern County, which consistently sends a disproportionately high percentage of its population to state prison by any measure, but particularly when controlling for violent crime.” Id. at 1105.

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federal prison Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), Los Angeles detains 573 people.51 As you leave Los Angeles County, you pass the Los Angeles County State Prison and enter Kern County, driving by the California Correctional Institution, Tehachapi,52 on your right, and the federal Taft Correctional Institution on your left.53 At this point, you would begin to drive on what is left of U.S. Route Highway 99. Home to croplands of blueberries, pistachios, carrots, and cantaloupes,54 Kern County is also home to one of America’s deadliest police forces. In 2015, the police force in Kern County killed more people per capita than any other county in the United States.55 Before entering the City of Bakersfield, you would then pass by the unincorporated community of Weedpatch, a town memorialized by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Continuing north and towards the east sits the town of Lindsay, where picking oranges is like “picking cotton in trees.”56 You would then drive through the town of Tulare, and on this stretch of the road, the tule fog will frequently greet you during the winter months.57 Toward the west is Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi which extended across the valley for about eight hundred square miles.58 Four distinct tribes of Yokuts made homes in the Tules that surrounded the lake for nearly 7000 years.59 The water brimmed with a wide variety of fauna

51. As of February 4, 2020, MDC Los Angeles listed 573 incarcerated individuals. MDC Los Angeles, FED. BUREAU OF PRISONS, https://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/los [https://perma.cc/8T69-M4LX] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). 52. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, California Correctional Institution housed 3720 individuals at 133.7 percent capacity. CDCR MONTHLY POPULATION REPORT, supra note 43, at 2. 53. As of February 4, 2020, CI Taft listed 1223 incarcerated individuals. CI TAFT, FED. BUREAU OF PRISONS, https://www.bop.gov/locations/ci/taf [https://perma.cc/54BE-954Z] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). 54. Steven Mayer, Kern Hits Top Crop Value in Nation for the First Time, BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN (Sept. 19, 2017), https://www.bakersfield.com/news/kern-hits-top-crop- value-in-nation-for-the-first/article_131d8628-9d6d-11e7-86ee-e726eeb2a60b.html [https://perma.cc/T2U7-TYLT]. 55. See Jon Swaine & Oliver Laughland, The County: The Story of America’s Deadliest Police, GUARDIAN (Dec. 1, 2015, 8:33 AM), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/ dec/01/the-county-kern-county-deadliest-police-killings [https://perma.cc/RQR7- 88V7] (“Police in Kern County, California have killed more people per capita than in any other American county in 2015.”). 56. This insightful comment is from Sammy Proctor from Sylvester, Georgia. 57. Marianne Lavelle, Loathed by Motorists, Loved by Fruit Trees, California’s Tule Fog Fades Away, SCI. AM. (May 22, 2014), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/loathed-by- motorists-loved-by-fruit-trees--tule-fog-fades-away [http://www.perma.cc/ A4SM-2ZMA]. 58. MARK ARAX & RICK WARTZMAN, THE KING OF CALIFORNIA: J.G. BOSWELL AND THE MAKING OF A SECRET AMERICAN EMPIRE (2005). 59. Id. at 46. A Topographical History of Carcerality in CA 1627

ranging from rainbow trout, sturgeon, pike, catfish, salmon, clams, mussels, and terrapin.60 Geese, mallards, swans, pelicans, cranes, teal, and curlews inhabited the shores in “flocks so immense they extinguished the sun.”61 After one of the biggest land grabs in U.S. history, the lake was drained and the fertile land claimed by a few wealthy landowners.62 Transmogrified into fields of cotton by a descendent of cotton farmers from Greensboro Georgia,63 the land was milled by Mexican migrants, Dust Bowlers, and Southern black sharecroppers who traveled west rather than north.64 At the north side of Kern County, you pass three prisons: Wasco State Prison,65 Kern Valley State Prison,66 and North Kern State Prison.67 About twenty- two miles north, there are two more prisons: the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran68 and California State Prison, Corcoran.69 Built upon the bed of Tulare Lake, California State Prison, Corcoran was unlike any other prison in California at the time. Conceived by the state as a model for absolute control,70 Corcoran was built with a Security Housing Unit (SHU)—a prison within a prison. Upon walking past five guard towers and through several gates topped with razor wire, the architecture of the SHU appears constructed with the main goal of housing 1500 individuals considered to be the worst of the worst. As a warden later recalled, “[T]hat’s what we were there for. We were going to take the garbage from everybody else.”71 Standing on the bed of the remains of Tulare

60. Id. at 48–49. 61. Id. at 49. 62. Id. at 72–86. After taking the land from Mexico, the selling of California quickly became corrupt. Rather than selling $1.25 scrip to war veterans for the purpose of purchasing land, the scrip was sold in large blocks for as little as fifty cents apiece to only a few. William Chapman, Issac Freidlander, and Moses Church amassed 170,000 acres in the Tulare Lake basin and another 80,000 acres near Fresno. Id. at 73. 63. Id. at 31. 64. Id. at 5. 65. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Wasco State Prison housed 4780 individuals at 160.2 percent capacity. CDCR MONTHLY POPULATION REPORT, supra note 43, at 2. 66. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Kern Valley State Prison housed 3619 individuals at 147.8 percent capacity. Id. 67. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, North Kern State Prison housed 4002 individuals at 148.6 percent capacity. Id. 68. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Substance Abuse Treatment Facility housed 5362 individuals at 156.6 percent capacity. Id. 69. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, California State Prison, Corcoran housed 3147 individuals at 101 percent capacity. Id. 70. Mark Arax & Mark Gladstone, State Thwarted Brutality Probe at Corcoran Prison, Investigators Say, L.A. TIMES, July 5, 1998, at A1. 71. Id.

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Lake, these prisons are shrouded by tule fog, which local legend considers the ghost of the old lake.72 When you drive by Fresno, there is the Mendota Federal Correctional Institution.73 And as you continue north, you pass two more prisons: Valley State Prison74 and the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla,75 which houses the largest population of incarcerated women in the state. Another thirty miles north of Chowchilla is the United States Penitentiary, Atwater. USP Atwater is located in Merced County, the same county where the state constructed the first four-year public university in the past fifty-four years.76 California built twenty- two prisons during the same time span.77 Can you imagine what the state would look like if we had built twenty-two public universities instead? As you arrive in San Joaquin County and drive toward Stockton, you pass two more prisons, the Deuel Vocational Institution78 and the newest in the state, the California Health Care Facility in Stockton.79 You will also drive by two of the three operating juvenile facilities: the O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility80 and the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility.81 Originally, California had

72. Eric Bailey, Tule Fog Puts a Blanket on San Joaquin Valley Life, WASH. POST (Feb. 3, 2002), https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/02/03/tule-fog-puts- a-blanket-on-san-joaquin-valley-life/6394224b-cc82-4bdf-8919-ab823df022cb [https://perma.cc/PA88-4RDE]. 73. As of February 4, 2020, FCI Mendota listed 860 incarcerated individuals. FCI Mendota, FED. BUREAU OF PRISONS, https://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/men [https://perma.cc/ HX4X-HHQM] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). 74. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Valley State Prison housed 2904 individuals at 146.7 percent capacity. CDCR MONTHLY POPULATION REPORT, supra note 43, at 2. 75. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Central California Women’s Facility housed 2801 individuals at 139.8 percent capacity. Id. 76. History, UNIV. OF CAL. MERCED, https://www.ucmerced.edu/history [https://perma.cc/ Y9HJ-8L4Q] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). 77. Facility Locator, CAL. DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS & REHABILITATION, https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/ Facilities_Locator [https://perma.cc/C3U7-UBBJ] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). See also CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS & REHABILITATION, CALIFORNIA’S CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES (2007), https://web.archive.org/web/20080313080141 http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/ Visitors/docs/20071015-WEBmapbooklet.pdf. 78. As of midnight on November 30, 2018, Deuel Vocational Institution housed 2209 individuals at 131.4 percent capacity. CDCR MONTHLY POPULATION REPORT, supra note 43, at 2. 79. As of midnight on November 30, 2018, California Health Care Facility, Stockton housed 2840 individuals at 96.2 percent capacity. Id. 80. CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS & REHABILITATION, CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DIVISION OF JUVENILE JUSTICE POPULATION 6 (2018). 81. Id. at 7. A Topographical History of Carcerality in CA 1629

eleven youth correctional facilities; eight of them were located off of U.S. Highway 99.82 Stockton is a city of migrants, immigrants, and refugees from all over the world who have fled wars, famine, and racial persecution.83 Whether workers came to eke out a living on the railroads or the asparagus fields, the essence of the community is the sweat equity of these laborers. Originally formed by the glacial formations that once covered California’s landscape, Stockton sits atop the San Joaquin Valley along the delta waters. As the glaciers melted, the tides of water that flowed into the valley carried mineral sediments that enriched the soil.84 From Stockton’s fertile ground, asparagus, tomatoes, garlic, and strawberries were harvested by generations of migrants—Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Black,85 and Mexican—to create some semblance of a living.86 Originally inhabited by the Yokut and Miwok tribes, indigenous communities once thrived off the richness of the land and the delta waters alongside the Stockton shores.87 During the nineteenth century, the town became a halfway stopping point for 49ers.88 After a gold nugget from the Stockton Mining Company was sent to the capitals of the United States and England to show the world California gold, Stockton became the midpoint between pursuing dreams of gold and the sea.89 Yet a place that is so rich with history, culture, and community is funding a school system that uses its resources to turn cash-strapped

82. See Jazmine Ulloa, Newsom Plans to Move California Juvenile Justice Division out of Corrections Department, L.A. TIMES (Jan. 22, 2019, 5:35 PM), https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca- gavin-newsom-juvenile-justice-plan-20190122-story.html [https://perma.cc/T8AG-QZMV]. 83. See generally DAWN BOHULANO MABALON, LITTLE MANILA IS IN THE HEART: THE MAKING OF THE FILIPINA/O AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA (2013). 84. OLIVE DAVIS, STOCKTON: SUNRISE PORT ON THE SAN JOAQUIN 9 (1984). 85. Following the scholarship of Kimberlé W. Crenshaw and Cheryl I. Harris, I use the term “Black” throughout this article. Specifically, I use the term Black because “the use of the upper case and lower case in reference to racial identity has a particular political history. Although ‘white’ and ‘Black’ have been defined oppositionally, they are not functional opposites. ‘White’ has incorporated Black subordination; ‘Black’ is not based on domination.” Cheryl I. Harris, Whiteness as Property, 106 HARV. L. REV. 1707, 1710 n.3 (1993); see also Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law, 101 HARV. L. REV. 1331, 1332 n.2 (1988). 86. DAVIS, supra note 84, at 48–51, 75–84. 87. Id. at 9–12. 88. The discovery of gold in California in early 1848 provoked an enormous mass movement. By 1849, the news of California gold spread across the United States and the rest of the world. The gold seekers were informally called “forty-niners.” See J.S. HOLLIDAY, THE WORLD RUSHED IN: THE EXPERIENCE 1–60 (2015). 89. DAVIS, supra note 84, at 9–12.

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schools into quintessential examples of the school-to-prison pipeline.90 By employing a school police department with a long history of criminalizing youth,91 the Stockton Unified School District’s efforts contradict the fundamental goals of California public education.92 As you move north past Stockton, you follow the traces of the Siskiyou Trail. You then pass Mule Creek State Prison,93 and in another thirty miles Old Folsom94 and New Folsom95 State Prisons. Located along the American River, Old Folsom was California’s second prison, built by the mighty force of the river with prison labor. Crushing the blue granite in the local quarries, incarcerated individuals built the walls that eventually enclosed them.96 After passing the small metropolis of the Folsom Prisons, you continue along the Siskiyou Trail originally created by

90. Upon conducting a comprehensive investigation of the school police practices between 2013 to 2015, the Attorney General’s Office concluded that Stockton school district’s policies and procedures discriminated against students with disabilities and students of color. Complaint for Injunctive Relief, California ex rel. Becerra v. Stockton Unified Sch. Dist., No. 34-2019-00248766 (Cal. Super. Ct. Jan. 18, 2019). So much so, that the odds of a Black student being booked into custody were 148 percent greater than that of other students. Id. at 6. For Hispanic youth, the odds of being booked into custody were 124 percent greater. Id. The investigation also found that certain search and seizure practices involving students were unconstitutional. In particular, the complaint described a canine inspection program whereupon canines were brought to classrooms on a random and suspicionless basis and students were forced to allow the canines to sniff their belongings. Id. Finally, the investigation also found a troubling pattern with the use of force on students which involved the usage of handcuffs and restraints. Id. at 5. 91. See Dave Manoucheri, 5-Year-Old Handcuffed, Charged With Battery on Officer, KCRA3 (Feb. 9, 2012, 5:15 AM), https://www.kcra.com/article/5-year-old-handcuffed-charged- with-battery-on-officer/6395087 [https://perma.cc/Q8QD-5XCT]; Jennie Rodriguez- Moore & Elizabeth Roberts, D.A. Files Complaint in Strip Search of Teen, STOCKTON REC. (Feb. 3, 2015, 12:01 AM), https://www.recordnet.com/article/2015020 3/NEWS/150209938 [https://perma.cc/LX8U-PV4K]; Jennie Rodriguez-Moore, Officer Accused in Strip Search Had Prior Investigation, STOCKTON REC. (May 6, 2015, 9:00 PM), https://www.recordnet.com/article/20150506/NEWS/150509754 [https://perma.cc/M26H-QURJ]; see also Press Release, ACLU of N. Cal., ACLU Releases New Data on Stockton Unified’s Pattern of Wrongly Arresting Students (June 6, 2017), https://www.aclunc.org/news/aclu-releases-new-data-stockton-unified-s-pattern- wrongly-arresting-students [https://perma.cc/64KY-9X6J]. 92. See CAL. EDUC. CODE § 52060(d) (West 2018). 93. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Mule Creek State Prison housed 4027 individuals at 122.6 percent capacity. CDCR MONTHLY POPULATION REPORT, supra note 43, at 2. 94. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, Folsom State Prison housed 2838 individuals at 137.4 percent capacity. Id. 95. As of midnight on November 30, 2019, California State Prison, Sacramento housed 2214 individuals at 121.1 percent capacity. Id. 96. See Ward M. McAfee, A History of Convict Labor in California, 72 S. CAL. Q. 19, 25 (1990). A Topographical History of Carcerality in CA 1631

Native Americans.97 The Siskiyou Trail stretches toward Oregon, following the light of the North Star.98 The list above does not include all of the facilities operated by the CDCR. Beyond these thirty-five adult and three juvenile correctional institutions, there are six other incarceration facilities vaguely called modified community correctional facilities, including five near U.S. Highway 99.99 Most of the modified community correctional facilities are run by GEO Group, a private prison company.100 The CDCR also runs forty-four fire camps and one juvenile conservation camp. The 3700 people in the conservation camps labor under strenuous conditions and are more than four times more likely to sustain injuries. Even though firefighters in conservation camps receive the same entry-level training that CALFIRE’s seasonal firefighters receive, they receive only two dollars a day.101 Finally, the old U.S. Highway 99 also passes by several immigrant detention centers: the Imperial Regional Detention Facility near Calexico, the Mesa Verde

97. The Siskiyou Trail, which later became U.S. Highway 99, continues into Oregon and passes along the original territory of the following California tribes: Sierra, Nisenan, Patwin, Konkow, Momlak, Yana, Wintu, Atsugewi, Maidu, Achomawi, Modoc, and Shasta. I established this fact by mapping the Siskiyou Trail onto the California Indian Tribal Groups map provided by Yale University’s California Indian Library Collection. See California Indian Tribal Groups, GENOCIDE STUDIES PROGRAM, YALE UNIV., https://gsp.yale.edu/case- studies/colonial-genocides-project/california-indian-tribal-groups [https://perma.cc/ DAA7-BPMV] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). See also PROVOST, supra note 1, at 5. 98. PROVOST, supra note 1, at 5. 99. Community Correctional Facilities, CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS & REHABILITATION, https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Facilities_Locator/Community_Correctional_Facilities.html [https://perma.cc/2B97-EWE8] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). 100. See, e.g., Delano Modified Community Correctional Facility, DELANO CAL., https://www.cityofdelano.org/103/Modified-Community-Correctional-Facility [https://perma.cc/VBY6-ZNMY] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020); Desert View Annex, GEO GRP., INC., https://www.geogroup.com/FacilityDetail/FacilityID/46 [https://perma.cc/ NKS4- LG3L] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020); Golden State Annex, GEO GRP., INC., https://www.geogroup.com/FacilityDetail/FacilityID/196 [https://perma.cc/7W4J-4GAL] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020); McFarland Continuum of Care Program: Gender-Responsive Programming and its Efficacy, GEO REENTRY SERVS., https://www.georeentry.com/ videos/mcfarland-prison-gender-responsive-programming [https://perma.cc/43EW- MJ76] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020); Taft Modified Community Correctional Facility (MCCF), CITY OF TAFT, https://taft.municipalcms.com/pView.aspx?id=6751&catid=562 [https://perma.cc/U6AB-ZHDZ] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). 101. During an active fire, the firefighters receive an additional dollar a day. Abby Vesoulis, Inmates Fighting California Wildfires Are More Likely to Get Hurt, Records Show, TIME (Nov. 16, 2018), https://time.com/5457637/inmate-firefighters-injuries-death [https://perma.cc/38JZ-YXEQ].

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Detention Facility in Bakersfield, and the Yuba County Jail in Marysville.102 Unlike prisons, where people have a sense of their fate, people in detention centers live indefinitely. They are frequently separated from friends and family and live without knowing the location of their loved ones. In many ways, living in a prison off U.S. Highway 99 is a luxury. The old road makes the journey to visit your loved ones a manageable trek. Visiting a loved one in a prison such as High Desert in the northeastern corner of California or Pelican Bay, nestled along the northern coast, is a different type of slog especially when over half of all individuals locked up in the state’s prisons are from Southern California.103 For their loved ones, a prison visit usually involves taking a day off work, which is a difficult and often impossible choice for those living paycheck to paycheck. U.S. Highway 99 is also the road that an individual hopes they can someday travel on their way back home. The route that farm laborers still travel to follow the rotation of crops is the same path people take to return home from five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and thirty year sentences. The route that people take to make a better life for themselves is the same path others take to build a new life upon the remnants of their past. In other words, the old highway that is the spine of Californian mobility is also a palimpsest for travel toward various notions of freedom.

CONCLUSION

As I described the drive up through Prison Row, I listed the numbers of individuals behind bars. Each singular value—one individual, one body— represents a life connected to communities filled with loved ones. When listing these numbers, it is easy to get lost in the numerical monotony and to translate these numbers too readily into a verdict on the system’s injustice. It is important to remember there are many ways to convey this rate of incarceration beyond

102. In 2017, the average detainee population for Imperial Regional Detention Facility—located along the California-Mexico border outside Mexicali—was 672 individuals. See Detention by the Numbers, FREEDOM FOR IMMIGRANTS, https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention- statistics [https://perma.cc/3K7Z-8NS5] (last visited Feb. 4, 2020). The average detainee population for Mesa Verde Detention Facility—located in Bakersfield, California—was 379 individuals in 2019. This facility is operated by GEO Group, a publicly-traded, private prison corporation. See id. The average detainee population for the Yuba County Jail in 2019 was 180 individuals. See id. 103. See CALIFORNIA DEP’T OF CORRECTIONS & REHABILITATION, OFFENDER DATA POINTS 13 (2018), https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2019/ 08/DataPoints_122017.pdf [https://perma.cc/VQ86-63F6]. A Topographical History of Carcerality in CA 1633

merely stating the numbers. What does this rate of incarceration look like? What does this rate of incarceration feel like? As I was writing this Article, I kept thinking of a young girl I worked with. Her name is Adriana and she is sixteen years old and lives in Stockton, California.104 I met Adriana through my work with a local organization called Fathers and Families of San Joaquin Valley—a social justice organization run by formerly incarcerated individuals and individuals who have been significantly affected by incarceration. Many of the youth in the organization were pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline. Unfortunately, Adriana was one of those youth. Adriana and I did not talk much until one summer afternoon. On that particular day, it was 108°F of dry, suffocating, California valley heat. It was the type of heat that seeped into your brain and flattened all your wits. After not being productive at work, Adriana and I took off with a few friends to run some errands. While the other two passengers were away, she shyly began to inquire about my life: “So, you teach at San Quentin?” “I do!” “That’s cool, my great grandfather was at San Quentin.” I awkwardly paused, as I didn’t know what to say. What does one say? On the ride home, we drove past her house and in a desperate attempt to reignite a conversation with her, I commented on the beautiful, decked out, Chicano-styled lowrider parked in front of her house. “It’s my grandfather’s,” she said as she swiftly glanced away from her home and down toward the floor while painfully grimacing. Although I tried to talk with her for the remainder of the car ride, she spent the time aloofly looking out the window as the sweltering Stockton heat continued to daze us both into silence. As the summer progressed, Adriana would mention other landmarks in her home that were placeholders for family members who are locked up. Her uncle’s motorcycle. Her mom’s clothes. After a while, I got the sense that the geography of her home was poignantly marked by various mementos of loved ones that were no longer physically present. Items that perhaps would seem insignificant to anyone else symbolized to Adriana what was left of her family. When she talked about certain material items scattered throughout her home, I got the sense that the memory of her loved ones were kept alive by these mementos. By holding on to them she was grasping for totems to represent being part of a complete family. Within the carceral geography of her home, so hauntingly marked by the possessions of absent family members, Adriana lived with her Grandma Rosario

104. All names in this Part have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals.

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and her brother Mario. As the guardian of both Adriana and Mario, Grandma Rosario maintained a steely guise which most likely had been informed by the fact that her children are in prison. Beyond keeping Adriana healthy and safe, Grandma Rosario bent her life around keeping Mario from following other men in her family. Until this last summer, Adriana never realized that there were other kids like her. Instead, she wandered through most of her sixteen years of life with the large bulk of shame that comes with the stigma of incarceration. Scared to truly talk about her life, she rarely discussed with friends anything personal. When both of her parents were locked up a few years ago, she refused to discuss the issue with anyone and instead just disengaged from all areas of her life, including school. Only upon meeting other youth this past summer who also have parents that are in prison did she realize, “It’s not just us.” Adriana’s story is just one of many. One story of how incarceration not only deeply impacts individuals that are locked up, but also dramatically affects the entire community. Thus, when you think about the carceral history of prison row, this history does not begin and end with a prison sentence. The history is part of a larger landscape that extends not only past the prison gates, but years into the futures of families and communities. Thus, just one person, one incarcerated body, one singular tally, a mere notch in state demographic figures, is still everything for the families and communities of incarcerated people.