Unlocking History
Using extensive research culled from historical records, Inside CDCR explores the rich history of the people, places and programs that helped shape the modern state correctional system.
A horse thief named Robert Southern and career criminal John Pastor are two forgotten prison cemetery tales. They are just...
Read More About Tales from the Cemetery: Southern and Pastor
The tales of two men laid to rest in prison cemetery grounds at San Quentin and Folsom go beyond the...
San Quentin and Folsom prisons each have a cemetery where many incarcerated people were buried, marked only with their inmate...
Read More About Tales from the Cemetery: The rancher and the mobster
After witnessing the horrors of the Civil War, working as a police officer and finally serving as San Quentin hangman,...
Read More About Tragic tale of Amos Lunt, the San Quentin executioner
Two inmate numbers on grave markers reveal the stories of a miner and a young gambler who landed at San...
Among the first parole agents were a fingerprint expert, a man involved in charitable causes, and a former deputy sheriff.
Thanks to the 1893 parole law, those serving sentences in California's two prisons were given an incentive to be on...
Read More About 1893 parole law reshapes California prison system
With people rushing west in the mid-1800s, food was scarce so some turned to raiding sea-bird nests, landing one man...
Prior to San Quentin Warden Hoyle arriving in 1907, volunteers were rare. Thanks to his reforms, and the volunteers who...
Read More About Warden Hoyle volunteers ensured lasting changes
When an early 1900s incarcerated patient at San Quentin was diagnosed with a terminal illness, the doctor prescribed a pet...
Read More About San Quentin pet duck was therapy animal for terminal patient