California Men's Colony
Encyclopedia
California Men's Colony (CMC) is a male-only state prison located northwest of the city of San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, California
San Luis Obispo is a city in California, located roughly midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles on the Central Coast. Founded in 1772 by Spanish Fr. Junipero Serra, San Luis Obispo is one of California’s oldest communities...

, San Luis Obispo County, California
San Luis Obispo County, California
San Luis Obispo County is a county located along the Pacific Ocean in the Central Coast of the U.S. state of California, between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2010 census its population was 269,637, up from 246,681 at the 2000 census...

, along the central California coast approximately halfway between Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 and San Francisco.

Facilities

CMC has two physically separate facilities on its 356 acres (144.1 ha): East and West. The minimum-security West facility includes Level I ("without a secure perimeter") housing and Level II ("with secure perimeter fences and armed coverage") open dormitories. The medium-security East facility has Level III ("Individual cells, fenced perimeters and armed coverage") housing "divided into four quadrangles," as well as "a fully licensed hospital" and "a Mental Health Delivery System."

As of Fiscal Year 2006/2007, CMC had a total of 1,870 staff and an annual operating budget of $151 million. As of September 2007, it had a design capacity of 3,840 but a total institution population of 6,512, for an occupancy rate of 169.6 percent.

Programs

CMC has been called a "country club" and "the garden spot" among California prisons because of its offerings of a wide variety of vocational, educational and psychological-treatment program. Notable CMC programs include:
  • Arts in Corrections, "designed to rehabilitate inmates through art."
  • A "Level I camp program for fire suppression, conservation and other community service work." The jobs include "trash pickup and removal" at Port San Luis Harbor District properties, including Avila Beach
    Avila Beach
    Avila Beach , pronounced AH-vuh-luh or spanish pronunciation as AH-vee-lah, is a census-designated place in San Luis Obispo County, California, USA and located about 160 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and about 200 miles south of San Francisco. The ZIP Code is 93424. The community is inside area...

    .
  • Central Coast Adult School, which "aims to reduce the recidivism
    Recidivism
    Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior...

     rate and help inmates rejoin the work force."
  • Prison Industry Authority, which "manufactures and ships millions of dollars of prison-made products annually."
  • Prisoners Against Child Abuse, which "donates more than $100,000 a year to local children's organizations."
  • Narcotics Anonymous
    Narcotics Anonymous
    Narcotics Anonymous is a twelve-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous describing itself as a "fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem," and it is the second-largest 12-step organization...

    .
  • Alcoholics Anonymous
    Alcoholics Anonymous
    Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...

    .

History

The West Facility opened in 1954, and the East Facility opened in 1961. Three female former CMC workers won a 1998 settlement for $4.3 million as a result of a sexual harassment lawsuit, which was "the largest such settlement ever for the Department of Corrections." A San Luis Obispo County grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...

 produced a 2005 report observing that "while old and overcrowded, CMC was well maintained."

Notable inmates

  • Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris
    Lawrence Bittaker
    Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy Lewis Norris AKA The ToolBox Killers are two American serial killers who together kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered five young women over a period of five months in California in 1979.-Lawrence Bittaker:...

     met at CMC in 1978, before they committed their crime spree.
  • In 1996, Christian Brando
    Christian Brando
    Christian Brando was the eldest child of actor Marlon Brando. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of the boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne. On May 16, 1990, Christian Brando had shot Dag Drollet to death at Marlon Brando's residence on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. He was...

     was released from CMC "after serving five years of a 10-year term in the fatal shooting of his half sister's boyfriend."
  • Richard Allen Davis
    Richard Allen Davis
    Richard Allen Davis is a convicted murderer, whose criminal record fueled support for passage of California's "Three strikes law" for repeat offenders...

     was paroled from CMC in June 1993 "after serving half of a 16-year sentence" for kidnapping.
  • Jim Gordon
    Jim Gordon (musician)
    James Beck "Jim" Gordon is an American recording artist, musician and songwriter. The Grammy Award winner was one of the most requested session drummers in the late 1960s and 1970s, recording albums with many well-known musicians of the time, and was the drummer in the blues-rock supergroup Derek...

    , the drummer, spent some time at CMC after killing his mother in 1983. As of 2005, however, he was in Atascadero State Hospital
    Atascadero State Hospital
    Atascadero State Hospital is located on the central coast of California, in San Luis Obispo County, half-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It is an all-male, maximum-security facility, that has patients from all over the state...

    .
  • Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson was in CMC between 1984 and October 1986 "for sexually assaulting two teen-age girls and then trying to bribe them not to testify against him."
  • Charles Keating Jr.
    Charles Keating
    Charles Humphrey Keating Jr. is an American athlete, lawyer, real estate developer, banker, and financier, most known for his role in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s....

     began his stay at CMC in 1992, but his state and federal convictions were overturned, so he was released in October 1996.
  • Suge Knight
    Suge Knight
    Marion "Suge" Knight, Jr. is the founder and CEO of Black Kapital Records and co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records. Death Row Records rose to dominate the rap charts after Dr. Dre's breakthrough album The Chronic in 1992. After several years of chart successes for artists including...

     was incarcerated at CMC beginning in February 1997 and but as of December 2000 had been transferred to Mule Creek State Prison
    Mule Creek State Prison
    Mule Creek State Prison is a California State Prison. It was opened in June 1987 and covers located in Ione, California. The current population is 3,769 although it was designed for a capacity of 1,700. The prison has a staff of 1,242 and an annual operating budget of $157 million...

    .
  • Timothy Leary
    Timothy Leary
    Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...

     was imprisoned at CMC after being sentenced in March 1970 for possession of marijuana, but escaped from the West facility in September 1970 with the assistance of the Weatherman organization
    Weatherman (organization)
    Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...

    . He had been placed in "the least security-rated institution in the state" because "he did not 'represent either violence potential or serious escape risk'." After spending time with Eldridge Cleaver
    Eldridge Cleaver
    Leroy Eldridge Cleaver better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a leading member of the Black Panther Party and a writer...

     in Algeria and attempting to "gain political asylum" in Switzerland, Leary was arrested in Afghanistan in January 1973. After being convicted of "escape from a minimum security prison," he was sent to California Medical Facility
    California Medical Facility
    California Medical Facility is a male-only state prison located in the city of Vacaville, Solano County, California. It is older than California State Prison, Solano, the other state prison in Vacaville.-Facilities:...

    .
  • Herbert Mullin
    Herbert Mullin
    Herbert Williams Mullin is a serial killer who committed 13 murders in California in the early 1970s.- Childhood and youth :...

     "spent nearly 20 years" at CMC "before being transferred to Mule Creek
    Mule Creek State Prison
    Mule Creek State Prison is a California State Prison. It was opened in June 1987 and covers located in Ione, California. The current population is 3,769 although it was designed for a capacity of 1,700. The prison has a staff of 1,242 and an annual operating budget of $157 million...

     in 1993."
  • Current inmate Craig Peyer
    Craig Peyer
    Craig Allen Peyer was a rogue California Highway Patrol officer convicted of the 1986 strangulation murder of 20-year-old motorist Cara Knott, a student at San Diego State University.-Murder of Cara Knott:...

     has a parole hearing in 2012.
  • Lawrence Singleton
    Lawrence Singleton
    Lawrence Singleton was an American criminal best known for perpetrating an infamous rape and mutilation of a teenage hitchhiker in California in 1978....

     in 1987 "earned an early release [from CMC] through a work program and good behavior" after having served 8 years of a 14-year sentence.
  • Edgar Smith
    Edgar Smith
    Edgar Smith is an American convicted murderer, who was once on Death Row for the 1957 murder of fifteen-year-old honor student and cheer leader Victoria Ann Zielinski. Vigorously contesting his conviction through the courts and in the media, Smith became a celebrity, and his case was argued in...

    , now at High Desert State Prison (California)
    High Desert State Prison (California)
    High Desert State Prison is a maximum security state prison that houses level IV inmates located in Susanville, Lassen County, California.-External links:*...

    , had a parole hearing in March 2007.
  • Ike Turner
    Ike Turner
    Isaac Wister Turner was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer. In a career that lasted more than half a century, his repertoire included blues, soul, rock, and funk...

     served 18 months of a four year sentence at CMC between March 1990 and September 1991 for cocaine possession offenses.
  • Charles "Tex" Watson was at CMC between the early 1970s and 1993, where he "married and fathered three children during conjugal visits" and "began operating a nonprofit Christian ministry that distributed audio tapes and solicited donations." He was then transferred to the medium-security Mule Creek State Prison
    Mule Creek State Prison
    Mule Creek State Prison is a California State Prison. It was opened in June 1987 and covers located in Ione, California. The current population is 3,769 although it was designed for a capacity of 1,700. The prison has a staff of 1,242 and an annual operating budget of $157 million...

    . A spokesman for the prison stated that the move was "part of the routine shuffling of inmates around the state"; however, others said that it was related to pressure from the family of Sharon Tate
    Sharon Tate
    Sharon Marie Tate was an American actress. During the 1960s she played small television roles before appearing in several films. After receiving positive reviews for her comedic performances, she was hailed as one of Hollywood's promising newcomers and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for...

    , recommendations of the state Board of Prison Terms, and the actions of a state senator.
  • Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell was at CMC between 2000 and 2004. Much of the film documentary Hooked: The Legend of Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell was filmed while Hook was at CMC. Since being released from CMC Hook has started Project Straight Path, a non-profit organization committed to raise the consciousness of youths, desire of youth's interest in education and raise cultural consciousness.
  • Bobby Beausoleil
    Bobby Beausoleil
    Robert Kenneth "Bobby" Beausoleil is a convicted American murderer and associate of the Charles Manson "Family" who is serving a life sentence. He killed music teacher and fellow associate Gary Hinman on July 27, 1969, and has been imprisoned since his arrest for that crime...

    , another convicted murderer associated with the Manson Family (though convicted of a crime pre-dating the Tate/LaBianca murders), was incarcerated at CMC during the 1990s. His wife, Barbara, lived nearby for years.
  • Bruce McGregor Davis, convicted Manson Family murderer serving two life sentences for his parts in two Manson Family murders.

External links

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