California History

Thousands of years before Spanish, English, and Russian exploration, what is now known as California was home to a diverse landscape of native people and tribes (Doak and Reséndez, 2006). The mid-1500s and forwards characterized the time of colonization for the European and Spanish in the North Americas (p.14). California experienced the displacement, exploitation, and disruption of the culture of its native people through commercial and religious exploitation (p.16). When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, California became a territory of Mexico. However, the volatility of a centralized Mexican government weakened the country's hold on the territory. The Mexican-American War was initiated in 1846 and ceased in 1848, with Mexico seceding the California territory to the United States (Starr, 2007). In 1850, California became the 31st state in the union (Doak and Reséndez, 2006). Against the backdrop of rocky settlement, Christian missions, and a bloody war between Mexico and the United States, gold was discovered in the American River area by what is now known as Sacramento (Turner, 2015). The Gold Rush ensued, and approximately 300,000 people flocked to the region searching for precious metals (Holliday, 2015); this remains the largest mass migration in American history. The migration brought a massive influx of people of varying socioeconomic statuses and cultures and created competition and tension between those searching for gold and silver (Clay and Jones, 2008). The number of people arriving in search of gold quickly overwhelmed the new state infrastructure and impacted the evolution of the state's prison system by creating a structure for individuals it sought to incapacitate for "public safety." The first evolution of California's prison system was a wooden ship called "The Waban," floating in the San Francisco Bay in 1851 (McKanna, 1987). The state expeditiously incarcerated individuals and realized it needed to expand its capacity beyond the 30 spaces available aboard The Waban and purchased land on Point Quentin for a larger prison. The incarcerated individuals aboard The Waban were used as laborers to construct the prison known today as San Quentin (p.49). By 1858, San Quentin Prison was so overpopulated that the state initiated the building of a second prison which opened in 1880, known today as Folsom State Prison (Bookspan, 1991). Since that time, California's prison boom has been nothing short of explosive. The Golden State legislature officially created its first prison and state corrections agency in 1912, known as California State Detentions Bureau. In 1951, the agency changed its name to the California Department of Corrections. Since 1984, California has built 23 prisons and is one of the world's most extensive and most expensive carceral infrastructure programs (Platt, 2006). With the expansion of the prison system and the political will of the "tough on crime" era in the United States, the California prison system grew too large and too fast without correctional science, or foresight only fear of and retribution for "the rampant lawlessness in California" (Comfort, 2003). In 2006, under Governor Schwartenzagger, the agency was renamed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (Rewers, 2013). The addition of "rehabilitation" to the agency's name was reflective of the political will of the time; the state's attempt at ownership and responsibility for providing currently incarcerated people with rehabilitation and opportunities to reenter society successfully. While "rehabilitation" was the singular word added to the agency's title, the public renaming was in response to more than rehabilitation alone. The state had a $6 billion budget, one of the largest in the state, and suffered from a recidivism rate much higher than any other state, reports of officer abuses, extreme overcrowding, and federal mandates to increase the efficacy of physical and mental health care services (Specter, 2010).