When the "Jungle" met the forest: Public work, civil defense, and prison camps in postwar California

Journal of American History

Volumn 96, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 702-726

  Janssen, Volker ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 76249090779     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jahist/96.3.702     Document Type: Article

References (269)

1. William J. Drummond, "Earthslide Buries Pomona Freeway: May Not Be Cleared This Week," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 13, 1969, p. A1.
2. Richard West, "Wettest Season in 79 Years: Seasons Rainfall Reaches Highest Mark in 79 Years," Los Angeles Times, ibid., Feb. 19, 1969, p. 1.
3. George Getze, "End of Rain Wont Mean End of Slides, Geologist Predicts," Los Angeles Times, ibid., Feb. 22, 1969, p. A1.
4. Jerry Ruhlow, "Deluge Floods Canyons, Streets, Disrupts Power: Police in County Report Chaotic Conditions after 3-Inch Rainfall in 3 Days," Los Angeles Times, ibid., Feb. 24, 1969, p. D1.
5. Gordon Grant, "Devastation in Canyons: Sound of Water Sets Scene," Los Angeles Times, ibid, Feb. 25, 1969, p. C1.
6. Don Smith, "Drenched County Braces for More Troubles: Canyon Hardest Hit by Up to 7 Inches of Rain," Los Angeles Times, 1969, p. C1, ibid.
7. Mrs. R. Quick to Ronald Reagan, March 12, 1969, Corrections January folder (1 of 2), box 1969/58, Correspondence Unit, Administration, Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Records (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, National Archives and Records Administration, Simi Valley, Calif).
8. Volker Janssen, "From die Inside Out: Therapeutic Penology and Political Liberalism in Postwar California," Osiris, 22 (no. 1, 2007), 116-34.
9. Report to Correctional Industries Commission, 2, Dec. 29, 1969, folder F3717:454 Correctional Industries Commission Minutes 1969-1970, Department of Corrections Records (California State Archives, Sacramento, Calif). Oregon established its camps in 1949, Michigan in 1948, Washington in 1954, and Wyoming in 1964. A number of other states, including Idaho, have similar programs. "Department of Corrections: Agency History," Oregon Blue Book, http://bluebook.state.or.us/state/executive/Corrections-dept/ corrections-dept-history.html.
10. "Camps," Michigan Department of Corrections, http://www.michigan.gov/corrections/0, 1607, 7-119-1381-1383-.OO.html.
11. "Cedar Creek Corrections Center," Washington State Department of Corrections, http://www.doc.wa.gov/facilities/cedarcreek.asp.
12. "Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp and Wyoming Boot Camp," Wyoming Department of Corrections, http://doc.state.wy.us/institutions/whcc/ index.html.
13. Idaho Department of Correction, http://www.corr.state.id.us.
14. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (New York, 1995), 167.
15. Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley, 2006).
16. Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (Berkeley, 2004).
17. Lawrence de Graaf, Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor, Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California (Seattle, 2001).
18. While other institutions of the modern state-such as public education, the military, the border, welfare programs-have captured the attention of historians concerned with labor, race, gender identities, and conceptions of citizenship, prisons have yet to find their place in the narrative of postwar liberalism. A recent exception is Michael B. Katz, Mark J. Stern, and Jamie J. Fader, "The New African American Inequality," Journal of American History, 92 (June 2005), 75-108.
19. For a work that describes the penal welfare state as the combination of "the liberal legalism of due process and proportionate punishment with a correctionalist commitment to rehabilitation, welfare and criminological expertise," see David Garland, Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago, 2001), 27.
20. New Left criminologists and more recently activist scholars have doubted the existence of an actual rehabilitative regime in corrections. See Eric Cummins, The Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement (Stanford, 1994), 13.
21. Prisoners of the penal welfare state certainly knew this, as work on linkages between die civil rights and the prisoner rights movements has shown. See James B. Jacobs, New Perspectives on Prisons and Imprisonment (Ithaca, 1983), 33-60.
22. John Irwin, Prisons in Turmoil (Boston, 1980).
23. See also Robert T. Chase, "Civil Rights on the Cellblock: Race, Reform, and Punishment in Texas Prisons, 1945-1990" (Ph.D. diss., Universify of Maryland, 2008).
24. Heather Thompson, "Blinded by a 'Barbaric' South: Prison Horrors, Inmate Abuse, and the Ironic History of Penal Reform in the Postwar United States," in The End of Southern History?, ed. Joseph Crespino and Matthew Lassiter (Ann Arbor, forthcoming).
25. The crucial place of penal institutions in liberal politics is apparent in Jennifer Mittelstadt, From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965 (Chapel Hill, 2005).
26. Margot Canaday, "Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship under the 1944 G.I. BUT," Journal of 'American History, 90 (Dec. 2003), 935-57.
27. Thomas Clarkin, Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administration, 1961-1969 (Albuquerque, 2001).
28. Paul C. Rosier, "'They Are Ancestral Homelands': Race, Place, and Politics in Cold War Native America, 1945-1961," Journal of American History, 92 (March 2006), 1300-1326, esp. 1301.
29. Historians of the South have explored the ways southern criminal justice systems facilitated informal and formal encounters between free white citizens and black convicts outside prison walls, but they point out that those encounters functioned only to reinforce Jim Crow racial hierarchies. See, for example, Stephen Garton, "Managing Mercy: African Americans, Parole, and Paternalism in the Georgia Prison System, 1919-1945," Journal of Social History, 36 (Spring 2003), 675-99.
30. Vivien M. L. Miller, Crime, Sexual Violence, and Clemency: Florida's Pardon Board and Penal System in the Progressive Era (Gainesville, 2000).
31. Early prison release in the South, the flip side of lynch law and other forms of extralegal white justice, often put African Americans in the control of free white citizens. See Christopher Waldrep, Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817-80 (Ur-bana, 1998).
32. David M. Oshinsky, "Worse Than Slavery": Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York, 1996).
33. Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865-1900 (Charlottesville, 2000).
34. Citizen convicts fit squarely into a larger effort to balance the domesticated manliness of postwar prosperity with martial-and dangerous-conceptions of manhood. See James Gilbert, Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s (Chicago, 2005).
35. Michael S. Kimmel, The History of Men: Essays in the History of American and British Masculinities (Albany, 2005).
36. Robert A. Nye, "Western Masculinities in War and Peace," American Historical Review, 112 (April 2007), 417-38, esp. 417.
37. Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst, 2001).
38. Workfare, writes Judith Sklar, "is about citizenship, and whether able-bodied adults who do not earn anything actively can be regarded as full citizens." Judith N. Sklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 98.
39. The prison, of course, has been a response to urban crises for much of American history. On prisons and urban geography, see Charles Bright, The Powers That Punish: Prison and Politics in the Era of the "Big House," 1920-1955 (Ann Arbor, 1996).
40. Timothy Gilfoyle, "America's Greatest Criminal Barracks: The Tombs and the Experience of Criminal Justice in New York City, 1838-1897," Journal of Urban History, 29 (July 2003), 525-54.
41. Rebecca McLennan, "Punishments 'Square Deal': Prisoners and Their Keepers in 1920s New York," Journal of Urban History, 29, 2003, ibid, 597-619.
42. Michael Meranze, Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760-1835 (Chapel Hill, 1996), esp. 78-79, 131-33.
43. David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), 138-41.
44. Nancy Stoller, "Space, Place, and Movement as Aspects of Health Care in Three Women's Prisons," Social Science and Medicine, 56 (June 2003), 2263-75, esp. 2264.
45. On the "morality of place," see Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 (Berkeley, 2006), 170.
46. On prisons and the comparison to welfare, see Premilla Nadasen, Jennifer Mittelstadt, and Marisa Chappell, Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents, 1935-1996(New York, 2009), 37.
47. On urban rehabilitation projects in the black neighborhoods of West Oakland, see Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, 2005), 138.
48. Lolc Wacquant, "Deadly Symbiosis: When Prison and Ghetto Meet and Mesh," Punishment and Society, 3 (Jan. 2001), 95-133, esp. 97. This essay expands on the work of urban historians who have traditionally focused on Chicago and other cities of the industrial Nordieast. See Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (New York, 1983); Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race andInequality in Postwar Detroit(Princeton, 1996); and Headier Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca, 2002).
49. " On the suburban origins of law-and-order conservatism, see Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, 2001).
50. Michael Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 2005).
51. Rural support for a Keynesian carceral state, in which state and local governments invest in the construction and maintenance of punitive infrastructure as a form of regional economic development, has not received much attention from historians of sun belt conservatism either. See Joe Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, 2007).
52. Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, 2007).
53. Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, 2005).
54. For a discussion of die significance of mass incarceration for the sun belt, see Volker Janssen, "Sunbelt Lockdown: Where the Suburbs Met the Super-max," in Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region in the American South and Southwest, ed. Michelle Nickerson and Darren Dochuk (Philadelphia, fordicoming).
55. Just as combining postwar urban political history with that of suburban development has enriched an otherwise mechanical notion of "white flight," die growdi and decline of California's forest camps grounds die origins of law-and-order conservatism in racial anxieties as well as the politics of regional development. See Self, American Babylon.
56. Richard A. Berk, Harold Brackman, and Selma Lesser, A Measure of Justice: An Empirical Study of Changes in the California Penal Code, 1955-1971 (New York, 1977), 133.
57. California housed 174, 603 sentenced prisoners as of June 30, 2007. With 178, 040 inmates, only the federal prison system is slightly larger. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Bulletin, NCJ 221944: Prison Inmates at Midyear 2007 (Washington, 2008), 14.
58. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley, 2007).
59. "Criminologist and Social Engineer: Kenyon Judson Scudder interview by Donald J. Schippers," 1965, transcript, pp. 228-35, 237, 244-46 Oral History Program (Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles).
60. Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York, 1989), 138.
61. Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts (New York, 1937), 410-12.
62. Lloyd Thorpe, Men to Match the Mountains (Durham, 1972), 42-48.
63. Harold D. Carew, "A Fair Deal Wins-A Foul Dole Loses," California History, 62 (Fall 1983), 172-74, 173.
64. For an exploration of the Civilian Conservation Corps as a "builder of men," see Jeffrey Ryan Suzik, "'Building Better Men': The ccc Boy and the Changing Social Ideal of Manliness," in Boys and Their Toys? Masculinity Class, and Technology in America, ed. Roger Horowitz (New York, 2001), 111-38, esp. 129.
65. On crime and the New Deal, see John A. Pandiani, "The Crime Control Corps: An Invisible New Deal Program," British Journal of Sociology, 33 (Sept. 1982), 348-58, esp. 350-51, 354.
66. On prisoners climbing the ladder of eligibility in the twentieth century, see Agnes Czajka, "Inclusive Exclusion: Citizenship and the American Prisoner and Prison," Studies in Political Economy: A Socialist Review, 76 (Autumn 2005), 111-42, esp. 122-23.
67. Edward W. Sieh, "Less Eligibility: The Upper Limits of Penal Policy," Criminal Justice Policy Review, 3 (June 1989), 159-83.
68. Harry Elmer Barnes, Report on the Progress of the State Prison War Program under the Government Division of the War Production Board(Washington, 1944), 24, 33, 40.
69. Maury Maverick, Prisons in Wartime: Report of the Progress of State Prison Industries under the Government Division of the War Production Board (Washington, 1943), 29.
70. California Department of Corrections, Biennial Report 1946 (Sacramento, 1947), 76.
71. Elvin Hatch, Biography of a Small Town (New York, 1979), 114.
72. Michael D. Brown, The History of China Prison: The First Fifty Years of the California Institution for Men, 1941 to 1991 (Sacramento, 1991), 121-23.
73. Frank G. Forward to Earl Warren, July 12, 1943, folder F3640:3092 Natural Resources-Penology/Board of Prison Directors, Administrative Files, Earl Warren Papers (California State Archives).
74. State Board of Prison Director Julian H. Alco to Warren, July 16, 1943, pp. 1-3, folder F3640:3093 Board of Prison Terms and Parole, Natural Resources-Penology/Board of Prison Directors, Administrative Files, Earl Warren Papers, ibid.
75. C. H. Purcell to Warren, Natural Resources-Penology/Board of Prison Directors, Administrative Files, Earl Warren Papers, Aug. 16, 1943, p. 6, ibid.
76. Assistant State Highway Engineer R. M. Gillis to Warren, memo, Sept. 13, 1949, p. 1, folder F3640:922 Department of Corrections, March-April 1950, Administrative: Files, Warren Papers. Although die labor performed on roads by chain gangs in the American South resembled the: work of inmate workers in California's forests, in each place the implications for the convict workers' claim on citizenship differed substantially. See Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (New York, 1996).
77. Kenyon J. Scudder, Prisoners Are People (Garden City, 1952), 119-29.
78. "Convicts May Work in Forest Camps," San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 11, 1940, p. 8.
79. "Convicts May Work in Forest Camps," San Francisco Chronicle, ibid, Dec. 17, 1940, p. 29.
80. "Convicts May Work in Forest Camps," San Francisco Chronicle, ibid, Jan. 1, 1941, p. 8.
81. "Prison Camps Planned," San Francisco Chronicle, ibid, Nov. 5, 1941, p. 16.
82. Clinton T. Duffy to Warren, Nov. 8, 1943, esp. pp. 3-7, folder F3640:3090 Natural Resources-Penology, Administrative Files, Warren Papers.
83. Isaac Pacht to Warren, June 29, 1943, pp. 1-2, Natural Resources-Penology, Administrative Files, Warren Papers, ibid.
84. Following a loosening of die standards of the Selective Service Act, the armed forces began admitting convicted felons and parolees; by 1943 between 50, 000 and 100, 000 ex-convicts and parolees served in the military. Albert G. Fraser, "Annual Report of the Executive Secretary," Prison Journal, 23 (Jan. 1943), 271.
85. "Lifer's Trips Bring Warden Suspension; Folsom Convict Taken in San Francisco Woman's Apartment," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 1943, p. 1.
86. For the history of California's protracted struggle for prison reform, see Shelley Bookspan, A Germ of Goodness: The California State Prison System, 1851-1944 (Lincoln, 1991).
87. John Aubrey Douglass, "Earl Warren's New Deal: Economic Transition, Postwar Planning, and Higher Education in California," Journal of Policy History, 12 (Dec. 2000), 473-512, esp. 474.
88. California was not the only state that recognized the war as a window for reform. See Rebecca McLennan, "The New Penal State: Globalization, History, and American Criminal Justice, c. 2000," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2 (Sept. 2001), 407-19, esp. 413.
89. Jonathan Simon, Poor Discipline: Parole and the Social Control of the Underclass, 1890-1990 (Chicago, 1993), 255.
90. "Public Service Broadcast by Governor Earl Warren, ABC Network, Dec. 6, 1949," transcript, pp. 1-3, folder F3717:1374 Administration Speeches 1948-1957, Department of Corrections Records.
91. On the discussion of prison spending by Richard A. McGee, the first director of the new Department of Corrections, see Richard A. McGee, "Saving Prison Waste," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 293 (May 1954), 59-69, esp. 62-63, 69.
92. California Governor's Investigation Committee on Penal Affairs, Final Report of Governor's Investigation Committee on Penal Affairs, January 21, 1944 (Sacramento, 1944), 7, 10-11.
93. "State Prisons Reorganization Plan: Recommendation of Special Prison Investigation Committee," San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 22, 1944, pp. 1-3.
94. "Department of Corrections Created, Effective May 1, 1944, ", "State Prisons Reorganization Plan: Recommendation of Special Prison Investigation Committee, ", San Francisco Chronicle, ibid, Feb. 1, 1944, p. 8.
95. "Replacement of Convict Bosses and Other Inmate Help with Free, Civilian Personnel Planned," San Francisco Chronicle, ibid., Nov. 21, 1944, p. 15.
96. San Quentin, Folsom, and Chino Minute Summary Books, April 24, 1943, p. 3, folder F3717:1039 State Board of Prison Records, Department of Corrections Records; Bookspan, Germ of Goodness, 114.
97. Brown, History of Chino Prison, 92-94.
98. "Regulations Relating to Prison Camps Established under Article 5, Chapter 5, Title I Part 3 of the Penal Code," Jan. 1944.
99. San Quentin, Folsom and Chino Minute Summary Books, 1944, folder F3717:1040 State Board of Prison Records, Department of Corrections Records.
100. Scudder, Prisoners Are People.
101. Fred Fromm, The Intensive Treatment Program, Phase II: A Condensation of Working Papers (Sacramento, 1966), 82.
102. California Department of Corrections, Biennial Report 1946 (Sacramento, 1947), 68.
103. Kenyon J. Scudder, "To What Extent Can Open Institutions Take the Place of the Traditional Prison?," in Report to the Twelfth International Penal and Penitentiary Congress: Proceedings (The Hague, 1950), 131-37, esp. 133.
104. California Department of Corrections, Biennial Report 1954 (Sacramento, 1955), 18. Only the Correctional Training Facility near Soledad was built on formerly private property.
105. Hatch, Biography of a Small Town, 122.
106. "Criminologist and Social Engineer," 176, 204-25.
107. Molina, Fit to be Citizens?, 170.
108. Jess Whitlow to Department of Corrections, April 25, 1950, folder F3717:408 Camp Magalia, 1949-1962, 1968, Corrections Conservation Camp Services, Department of Corrections Records.
109. John Heppen, "The Changing Political Landscape of California, 1968 to 2000," Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, 63 (2001), 25.
110. Communities in the rural, mountainous parts of northern California developed an increasingly strong political allegiance to the Republican party in the 1960s and remained overwhelmingly white. Claude S. Fischer, "The Spread of Violent Crime from City to Countryside, 1955-1975," Rural Sociology, 45 (Sept. 1980), 416-34, esp. 431.
111. "Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X," pp. 596-97.
112. folder F3640:921 Department of Corrections Jan.-Feb. 1950, Administrative Files, Warren Papers.
113. Paula M. Nelson, "Rural Life and Social Change in the Modern West," in The Rural West since World War II, ed. Douglas R. Hurt (Lawrence, 1998), 38-57, esp. 38-41.
114. For some of the hundreds of letters rural Californians wrote to Gov. Edmund G. Brown regarding the camps, see Joe R. Carmel to Edmund G. Brown, Dec. 21, 1961, folder 3, box 300, Edmund G. Brown Gubernatorial Papers (Bancroft Library, Berkeley, Calif.).
115. Jay Lincke (Publicity Inc.) to Governor Brown, Edmund G. Brown Gubernatorial Papers, April 8, 1959, ibid.
116. For a similar collection of letters, see folder F3717:413 Murphy Hill 1960-61, Conservation Camp Services: Camps-CDF, Department of Corrections Records. "Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X," pp. 596-97.
117. memo to Richard McGee, Feb. 18, 1950, folder F3640:921 Department of Corrections Jan.-Feb. 1950, Administrative Files, Warren Papers. William H. Friedland, "Agriculture and Rurality: Beginning the 'Final Separation?" Rural Sociological Review, 67 (Sept. 2002), 350-71, esp. 354-55.
118. Sonya Salamon, "From Hometown to Nontown: Rural Community Effects of Suburbanization," Rural Sociological Review, ibid, 68 (March 2003), 1-24.
119. Sides, LA City Limits, 96.
120. Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight.
121. Kruse, White Flight.
122. Michael Bunce, The Countryside Ideal-Anglo-American Images of Landscape (London, 1994), 35.
123. Deborah Che, "Constructing a Prison in the Forest: Conflicts over Nature, Paradise, and Identity," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95 (Dec. 2005), 809-31, esp. 809.
124. Nelson, "Rural Life and Social Change in the Modern West," 43.
125. "Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X," p. 596.
126. Gerald D. Nash, The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War (Bloomington, 1985), 203-4.
127. Lincke to Brown, April 8, 1959, folder 3, box 300, Brown Gubernatorial Papers.
128. Memo, Feb. 18, 1950, folder F3640:921 Department of Corrections Jan.-Feb. 1950, Administrative Files, Warren Papers.
129. "Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X," p. 597, 1950, ibid.
130. Ray V. S. Lynn, Chairman of Citizens against Lexington Dam Prison Camp to DeWitt Nelson, April 1962, box 568, Administrative Files, Brown Gubernatorial Papers.
131. Petersen to Brown, memo, Feb. 25, 1955, box 492, Administrative Files, Brown Gubernatorial Papers, ibid.
132. Petersen, Deputy State Forester, to Brown, memo, April 28, 1959, Administrative Files, Brown Gubernatorial Papers, ibid.
133. Sonoma County Firemen's Association to Brown, Feb. 7, 1961, box 492, Brown Gubernatorial Papers.
134. "Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X," p. 594.
135. LA. County Fire Department Commander to Department of Corrections, memo, Nov. 29, 1958, folder F3717:385 California Conservation Camp Services, Camps General, Department of Corrections Records.
136. John H. Schubert to Department of Corrections, Sept. 11, 1961, folder F3717:387 Camps General, "Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X, ", ibid.
137. Allen Cook, Superintendent Deuel Vocational Institution, Tracy, to McGee, April 11, 1958, folder F3717:391 Camp Fire Crews, 1953-64," Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X, ", ibid.
138. Merle Schneckloth to Fred Engle Jr., Aug. 24, 1960," Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X," ibid.
139. Citizen of Weott to San Quentin Warden, Feb. 12, 1960, folder F3717:402 Camps CDF- High Rock, 1959-1961," Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X, ", ibid.
140. "Report of the Director of Corrections to the Board of Corrections, June 3, 1964," p. 4, folder F3717:1776, 1961-1968, "Placer County Supervisors' Minutes Book X, ", ibid.
141. Memo Aug. 12, 1964, folder California Conservation Center, box 726, Brown Gubernatorial Papers.
142. resolution of Crestline citizens during Pilot Rock Appreciation Week, April 24, 1964, Brown Gubernatorial Papers, ibid.
143. The citizens gathered over 1, 300 signatures on this resolution. Wayne Hunnicutt interview by Volker Jans-sen, Dec. 8, 2003, audio file (in Volker Janssen's possession).
144. Charles Dean interview by Janssen, April 20, 2008, recording (in Janssen's possession).
145. "Flames Still Roar in Northern California Counties," San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 5, 1961, p. 11.
146. McGee to Warren, Dec. 6, 1948, folder F3640:918 Department of Corrections, Aug.-Dec. 1948, Administrative Files, Warren Papers.
147. Scudder, Prisoners Are People, 120; minutes of a meeting of the State Board of Prison Directors, April 24, 1943, p. 6, folder F3717:1039 San Quentin, Folsom, and Chino Minute Summary Books 1943, Department of Corrections Records.
148. Pioneer News, Feb. 23, 1946, folder F3717:1839 Newsletters 1945-1946, 1966, Institutions Publications, California Institution for Men (Chino), Department of Corrections Records.
149. "May 11, 1959, Inspection Relative to Fire and Life Safety," folder F3717:409 Conservation Camp Services, Camps-Minnewawa 1947-1961, Department of Corrections Records.
150. "Report on Camp Rainbow, California Institution for Men, for the 12 months period between August 26, 1946, and September 31, 1947," pp. 2-4.
151. folder F3717:1482 Corrections Administration, Institutions, C.I.M., Chino Camp Records, 1941-1948, "Report on Camp Rainbow, California Institution for Men, for the 12 months period between August 26, 1946, and September 31, 1947, ", ibid.
152. Judith R. Johnson, The Penitentiaries in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah from 1900 to 1980 (Lewiston, 1997).
153. Blake McKelvey, American Prisons: A History of Good Intentions (Montclair, 1977).
154. Brown, History of Chino Prison.
155. Pioneer News, 1944, p. 10, 12, folder F3717:l 839 Institutions, Publications, California Institution for Men (Chino) Newsletters 1945-46, 1966, Department of Corrections Records.
156. Superintendent Allen Cook, Deuel Vocational Institution at Tracy, memo, April 11, 1958, folder F3717:391 California Conservation Camp Services, Camp Fire Crews, 1953-63, Newsletters 1945-46, ibid.
157. field report to Conservation Camp Services, July 20, 1959, folder F3717:436 Camps U.S.F.S. 1951-1954, 1959-1964, Department of Corrections Records.
158. Hunnicutt interview.
159. "Report of the Fact-Finding Committee on Governmental Administration: Expanded Use of Prison Inmates in the Conservation Program," in Journal of the Senate, March 1961, appendix vol. 1, p. 13.
160. Nancy Quam Wickham, "Rereading Man's Conquest of Nature: Skill, Myths, and the Historical Construction of Masculinity in Western Extractive Industries," in Boys and Their Toys?, ed. Horowitz, 91-110, esp. 92-94.
161. Michael Meranze, "Michel Foucault, the Death Penalty, and the Crisis of Historical Understanding," in Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historique, 29 (Summer 2003), 191-209, esp. 200-201.
162. Three Folsom inmates died in September 1954, seven Los Angeles County inmates died in December 1956. Paul E. Chamlee, Captain, Chief Camp Supervisor to Warden Heinze, Sept. 24, 1954, and Dec. 11, 1956, folder F3717:391 California Conservation Camp Services, Fire Crews 1953-61, Department of Corrections Records. Prisoners died again in 1990 and 1999. Marita Hernandez and Ashley Dunn, "Death Toll of 2 is Low for Such Huge Fires," Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1990, p. 27.
163. Matt Surman and Julie Ha, "Inmate Killed Battling Fire in Mountains," Los Angeles Times, ibid., July 19, 1999, p. 3.
164. On the role of the citizen soldier in the nation-state, see Elizabeth D. Samet, Willing Obedience: Citizens, Soldiers, and the Progress of Consent in America, 1776-1898 (Stanford, 2004).
165. Michael S. Neiberg, Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service (Cambridge, Mass., 2000).
166. On the parallels between the discovery of group counseling in the therapeutic culture of the postwar military and that of the prison, see Volker Janssen, "Convict Labor, Civic Welfare: Rehabilitation in California's Prisons, 1941-1971" (Ph.d. diss., University of California, San Diego, 2005).
167. Citizen of Weott to San Quentin Warden, Feb. 12, 1960, folder F3717:402 California Conservation Camp Services, Camps, CDF High Rock 1959-62, Department of Corrections Records.
168. Allen Cook to McGee, April 11, 1958, folder F3717:391 Camp Fire Crews, 1953-1961, Convict Labor, Civic Welfare: Rehabilitation in California's Prisons, 1941-1971, ibid.
169. "Report of the Director of Corrections to the Board of Corrections," June 3, 1964, p. 4, folder F3717:38 Board of Corrections Reports, 1958-66, 1958, ibid.
170. Conservation Camp Services to Walter Craven, memo, Jan. 28, 1974, folder F3717:389 California Conservation Camp Services, Camp Administrators Conferences and Meetings, 1959-60, pp. 73-74, Department of Corrections Records.
171. "Study on Building Needs of State Correctional Institutions. Report of the Senate Special Committee on Governmental Administration," in Journal of the Senate, California, March 1955, appendix vol. 1, p. 23.
172. "Proposed Plan for Base Camps," n.d., p. 2, .
173. folder Department of Corrections, April 1959, box 300, Brown Gubernatorial Papers.
174. "Report of the Fact-Finding Committee on Governmental Administration," p. 5.
175. Thorpe, Men to Match the Mountains, 111.
176. "The Research Department of the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Los Angeles Report No. 9, June 1950," pp. ii, 49, Social Welfare Archive (Special Collections, University of Southern California, Los Angeles).
177. Michael B. Smith, "'The Ego Ideal of the Good Camper' and the Nature of Summer Camp," in Environmental History, 11 (Jan. 2006), 70-101.
178. "Report of the Senate Interim Committee on Natural Resources, Study on Prison Labor and Forestry Camps. Senate Resolution No. 162," Appendix to the Journal of the Senate, 1957, regular session, vol. 3, p. 34.
179. letters to Edmund G. Brown from March 28 to April 16, 1959, folder 3, box 300, Brown Gubernatorial Papers.
180. "Idle Convicts Must Work, Brown Says," Valley Times, March 28, 1959.
181. "Study on Building Needs of State Correctional Institutions," 23, 32-33.
182. Prisoners often shared the view that idleness and confinement promoted homosexuality. Wilbert Rideau and Billy Sinclair, "Prison: The Sexual Jungle," in Male Rape: A Casebook of Sexual Aggressions, ed. Anthony M. Scacco (New York, 1982), 3-30.
183. The explosion in criminological, sociological, and popular writing on prison homosexuality reflected a new urgency about homosexuality in the culture at large. Regina G. Kunzel, "Situating Sex: Prison Sexual Culture in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States," GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 8 (Sept. 2002), 253-70, esp. 262.
184. An increasing concern over aggressive homosexuality led to stricter controls of women prisoners as well. See Estelle Freedman, "The Prison Lesbian: Race, Class, and the Construction of the Aggressive Female Homosexual, 1915-1965," Feminist Studies, 22 (Summer 1996), 397-423, esp. 403.
185. "Report of the Fact-Finding Committee on Governmental Administration," 25-26, 83.
186. for a series of newspaper articles, see "From Convict to Citizen," San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 29-Sept. 2, 1949.
187. On the prison riots in 1952 and 1953, see Gresham M. Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (1958; Princeton, 1971).
188. Irwin, Prisons in Turmoil.
189. "Brown Dedication Speech, Susanville," July 13, 1963, pp. 1-2, 4, folder F3717:439 California Conservation Camp Services, Sierra Conservation Camp, 1961-1963, Department of Corrections Records.
190. McGee to Departmental Secretary Charles W. Johnson, July 13, 1960, folder F3717:386 Camps General, Prisons in Turmoil, ibid.
191. A. Q. Mankian to E. M. Kelly, July 11, 1961, folder F3717:408 Magalia Camp, 1949-1962, 1970, Prisons in Turmoil, ibid.
192. "Summary of Items, 1977," May 1977, p. 2, folder F3717:1639 Corrections Administration, New Digest, 1977, Prisons in Turmoil, ibid.
193. "Proposed Plan for Base Camps," n.d., 2.
194. Thorpe, Men to Match the Mountains, 147, 193-208.
195. Brown, History of Chino Prison, 133-36.
196. "Report of the Fact-Finding Committee on Governmental Administration," 1, 19, 22.
197. "General Plan for California Conservation Center," p. 4, folder F3717:385 California Conservation Camp Services, Camps General 1950-1959, Department of Corrections Records.
198. "Convicts on Forest Duty," Oakland Tribune, Aug. 12, 1965, p. 8.
199. These numbers were generated from the population statistics prepared for the California Department of Corrections and published under die auspices of the Research Committee of die Board of Corrections and by die Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics between 1944 and 1966. See California Prisoners: Summary Statistics of Prisoners and Parolees, http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports-Research/ Orfender-Information-Services-Branch/Annual/CalPrisArchive.html.
200. Thorpe, Men to Match the Mountain, esp. 128, 143.
201. folder F3717:1391 Corrections Administration, Administrative Bulletins 1964 (Folder 2), Department of Corrections Records.
202. minutes, Sept. 15, 1959, folder F3717:436 California Conservation Camp Services, Camps U.S.F.S. 1951-1954, 1959-1963, Corrections Administration, Administrative Bulletins 1964, ibid.
203. "Home Visit for California Convict-Sex Leave First in California," San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 6, 1964, pp. 1, 2, 6.
204. These numbers were generated from the population statistics prepared for the California Department of Corrections, 1955 to 1977. See California Prisoners, http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports-Research/OfFender-Information- Services-Branch/Annual/CalPrisArchive.html.
205. Alice O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, 2001), 173-75.
206. Jennifer S. Light, From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America (Baltimore, 2003), 3, 80.
207. "A Study of Prevention and Control of Crime and Delinquency. Final Report pccd-7," July 29, 1965, pp. 213-17, folder F3717:1388 Corrections, Youth and Adult Corrections Agency. Reports 1965, Department of Corrections Records.
208. Lawrence E. Davies, "Computers Turn to Crime Causes: Brown Hails New Project of Coast Space Concern," New York Times, Aug. 30, 1965, p. 35.
209. Thorpe, Men to Match the Mountains, 128.
210. "Forestry Training Program Study Report," April 14, 1970, folder F3717:1774 California Conservation Camp Services, Camps General, Reports Misc., 1970-1974, Department of Corrections Records.
211. "Conservation Camp Study Team Report," April 21, 1970, Forestry training program study report, ibid.
212. By 1959, narcotic offenders had already become "a liberal segment of the camp group." See "Minutes of Seminar on Inmate Programming for Camp," June 4, 1959, p. 2.
213. folder F3717:389 Camp Administrators Conferences and Meetings, 1959-60, 73-74, 1959, ibid.
214. On the Watts riots and the McCone Commission, see Sides, L.A. City Limits; and Gerald Home, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville, 1995).
215. For expert testimony from the McCone Commission, see Fred E. Case, "Housing in Los Angeles Riot Area," in California Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, vol. XVII: Reports of Consultants (Los Angeles, 1965).
216. John Chapman, "Epidemiological Analysis of the South Central Los Angeles Area, ", "Housing in Los Angeles Riot Area, ", ibid.
217. Frances Lomas Feldman, "Public Welfare: Dependency, Despair-and Opportunity, ", "Housing in Los Angeles Riot Area, ", ibid.
218. Paul Bullock, "Employment and Training, ", "Housing in Los Angeles Riot Area, ", ibid.
219. Michael E. DePrano and Jeffrey B. Nugent, "Economic Aspects of the Los Angeles Riots and Proposed Solutions, ", "Housing in Los Angeles Riot Area, ", ibid.
220. Walter A. Fogel, "The Employment Problems of the Los Angeles Minority Groups, ", "Housing in Los Angeles Riot Area, ", ibid.
221. Leo G. Reeder, "Mental Health Report," in California Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, vol. XVIII: Reports of Consultants (Los Angeles, 1965).
222. Milton Roemer, "Health Services in the Los Angeles Riot Area, ", "Mental Health Report, ", 1965, ibid.
223. Henry J. Steinman, "Constitutionality of Exclusion of Press from Riot or Disaster Areas, ", "Mental Health Report, ", 1965, ibid.
224. Kenneth A. Martyn, "Report on Education, ", "Mental Health Report, ", 1965, ibid.
225. Melvin Seeman and E. Edward Ransford, "Attitude and Other Characteristics of Negroes in Watts, South Central, and Crenshaw Areas in Los Angeles, ", "Mental Health Report, ", 1965, ibid.
226. Berk, Brackman, and Lesser, Measure of Justice, esp. 58.
227. Myra B. Deutsch to Governor Reagan, Jan. 26, 1968, folder Juvenile Delinquency, box 73, Correspondence Unit, 1968, Reagan Gubernatorial Records.
228. Sides, LA. City Limits, 96-97.
229. Flamm, Law and Order.
230. These figures are taken from the population statistics prepared for the California Department of Corrections, 1944 to 1977. See California Prisoners, http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports-Research/OrFender-Information-Services-Branch/ Annual/CalPrisArchive.html.
231. Minutes of superintendent's staff meetings, June 28, Aug. 7, Sept. 4, 11, 1968, March 5, 12, Oct. 8, 1969, Feb. 2, 1970, folder F3717:442 California Conservation Camp Services, Sierra Conservation Center, Department of Corrections Records.
232. Paul Morris, John Oneto, Larry Richey, "Conservation Study Team Report," April 21, 1970.
233. folder F3717:1360 California Conservation Camp Services, Camps General, Reports Misc., 1970-1974, "Conservation Study Team Report, ", 1970, ibid.
234. "Escapes from Camp and Average Monthly Camp Population 1971 through March 1973," folder F3717:1360 Corrections, Human Relations Agency Statistical Reports, 1970, ibid.
235. "800 Inmates Start Sit-Down at Sierra Center," Los Angeles Times, Oct. 31, 1972, p. A2.
236. James Williams, former President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to Department of Corrections, Feb. 2, 1973, folder F3717:1780 Sierra Conservation Camp, Correspondence, 1972-76, Department of Corrections Records.
237. Nicholas Horrok, "New Breed of Convict: Black, Angry, and Radical," San Jose Mercury, Sept. 26, 1971, p. 58.
238. Allen F. Breed, "The Significance of Classification Procedures to the Field of Correction," in Report of the United States President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (Washington 1967).
239. James Park remarks at Seminar on Inmate Programming for Camp, minutes, June 4, 1959, p. 6, folder F3717:389 Conservation Camp Services, Department of Corrections Records.
240. Thorpe, Men to Match the Mountains, 128, 131-32.
241. Information Officer James P. Alexander to Deputy Director Fred J. Engle, Dec. 13, 1961, folder F3717:387 California Conservation Camp Services, Camps General, Department of Corrections Records.
242. reviews of conservation camp placements, Dec. 14, 1960, folder F3717:398 California Conservation Camp Services, Camps CDF Crystal Creek, 1955-1961, Men to Match the Mountains, 128, 131-32, ibid.
243. Berk, Brackman, and Lesser, Measure of Justice, 67.
244. Minutes of the wardens and superintendents' conference, June 11, 1964, p. 8, folder F3717:247 Corrections Administration Wardens/Superintendents Meetings, Department of Corrections Records. To maintain peaceable prison operations, the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration recommended that at least 36% of prison staff be nonwhite. "Susanville Crisis Blamed on Racism, Poor Detention Facilities," Sacramento Bee, April 17, 1977, p. B4.
245. Petition of Tuolomne residents, 1971, Conservation folder, box 56, Correspondence Unit, Administration, Reagan Gubernatorial Records.
246. William D. Brown to Governor Reagan, Sept. 12, 1967, Feb. 5, 1968, March 18, 1968, California Conservation Camp folder, box 62, Correspondence Unit 1968, Reagan Gubernatorial Records.
247. correspondence to Governor Reagan, Jan. 27-June 22, 1971, Conservation folder, box 56, Correspondence Unit 1971, Susanville crisis blamed on racism, poor detention facilities, Sacramento Bee, 1977, B4, ibid.
248. Mittelstadt, From Welfare to Workfare, 9-14.
249. Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York, 1994).
250. Michael B. Katz, The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare (New York, 1989).
251. "ccc Closure Jars Susanville," Sacramento Bee, Dec. 8, 1972, p. B1.
252. "Lassen County Residents Gain Support in Battle to Halt Closing of Susanville Prison, ", "ccc Closure Jars Susanville, ", ibid, Dec. 28, 1972, p. B1.
253. Charles Hillinger, "Susanville Economy at Stake: Townspeople Battle Order to Close Prison," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 14, 1973, p. 2.
254. "Costs to Convert Susanville Prison to Med Security Prison," Sacramento Bee, Feb. 2, 1973, p. B1.
255. Ralph Couso to Department of Corrections, Feb. 1973, folder F3717:1780 California Conservation Camp Services, Sierra Conservation Camp, Correspondence 1972-76, Department of Corrections Records.
256. "Problems Faced by Wives of Susanville Inmates," Sacramento Bee, Oct. 21, 1973, p. A1.
257. Jessica Mitford, Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business (New York, 1973), 10.
258. "Susanville Crisis Blamed on Racism, Poor Detention Facilities," Sacramento Bee, April 17, 1977, p. B4.
259. "Investigation into Shooting of Inmates," San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1977, p. 5.
260. "Investigation into Shooting of Inmates," San Francisco Chronicle, May 7, 1977, p. B2.
261. Marie Gottschalk, "Prisoners of the Census Bureau; How and Where the U.S. Counts Inmates Has Huge, and Unsettling, Consequences," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 2007, p. A19.
262. For an article in the Los Angeles Times series "The Price of Punishment: The Booming Business of Running California's Prisons" that focuses on these developments, see Maria L. LaGanga, "New Prisons No Panacea for Ills of Rural California: They Bring Jobs, but Also More Demand for Government Services, ", "The Price of Punishment: The Booming Business of Running California's Prisons", ibid., Oct. 18, 1994, A1.
263. "The Central Valley: California's Gulag Archipelago," Sacramento Bee, May 6, 2004, p. B7.
264. Christian Parenti, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (London, 1999), 211-13.
265. Gilmore, Golden Gulag 151, 166.
266. Matthew R. Engle, "When a Prison Comes to Town: Siting, Location, and Perceived Impacts of Correctional Facilities in the Midwest" (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2007).
267. Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York, 1999), 131.
268. Joshua Page, The 'Toughest Beat': Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers' Union in California (New York, forthcoming).
269. William Richard Wilkinson, Prison Work: A Tale of Thirty Years in the California Department of Corrections, ed. John C. Burnham and Joseph F. Spillane (Colmbus, 2005), 160-62.