Taft TMCCF & Taft Federal - Taft, CA

First I thought, “Why does Taft City Hall need to house so many people (period) and in such a small space (secondly).” It looks way worse than Taft Federal Correctional Institution (bottom right).

First let’s start with the federal institution, the first privately run one I found. The Bureau of Prisons says

The majority of BOP inmates in private prisons are sentenced criminal aliens who may be deported upon completion of their sentence.

I can’t tell if the owners of Taft Federal Correctional Institution are actually legit but they’re saying the right things on their website, pro-education, pro-training, social integration, etc. Sounds good.

Eventually find that Taft Modified Community Correctional Facility has an interesting history (more here) of being opened in order to relieve overcrowding (AB 1591), closed by realignment (AB 109) and then reopened under contract with the CDCR, I’m assuming because of recent crowding.

Still thought it’s weird that the small, community jail is so much smaller than the federal prison. More googling… and I find way more information on Taft than any other facility I’ve looked at so far. First I find a number of blogs of prisoners, which sounds good, paired with the fact that the private owner might actually be running some helpful programs.

Then I found this and this then that Taft federal prison is where Jordon Belfortshared a cell with Tommy Chong, where Jordon was “hiring other inmates to do his chores for him.” More that I can’t help but quote:

“We were part of the elite gang,” Chong says… they ate meals “Goodfellas-style” with another famous inmate, the PGA Tour caddie Eric Larson… Larson “worked in the garden, and he grew these fresh, delicious vegetables, and he used to cook them,” Chong says. “We had these beautiful vegetarian, healthy meals every night, and Jordan was part of the gang. We had a nice little hierarchy there, intelligent famous guys hanging out together.”

Great, so the only prison where I easily found information about good programs is the rich people prison. If you zoom in on Google Maps satellite view you can see baseball fields, soccer fields, tennis and basketball courts, and then more over here, which I haven’t seen at others.

I also found a page of friends and partners talking about the prison. Lots of people writing about family getting sent from one prison to another, and having to get reapproved for visits each time, because heaven forbid that be standardized or centralized and records be consistent. So let’s wrap up with this, which just crushed me at the end of the night, reminding me that the dots are people. (emphasis mine)

What are the public transit options for getting to Taft CI from Bakersfield? I don’t have a license, and I’d be visiting from Canada (flying from Vancouver to Phoenix to Bakersfield) if my man is sent there. The hotels/motels in Maricopa and Taft seem really sketchy and unsafe for a petite 25-year-old like me… so I’d be staying in Bakersfield, but I need to know how I would get to the prison without a vehicle. Any info?

Yea, that’s what we do to prisoners and families here, welcome to America, my Canadian friend.

Corcoran State Prison - Corcoran, CA

And about now is when I started thinking “Hm, it’s such a contrast, these hyper-dense, hyper-defined areas versus the small towns they’re next to. Oh wait, what do they use the census for?…”

According to the Prison Gerrymandering Project:

The way the Census Bureau counts people in prison creates significant problems for democracy and for our nation’s future. It leads to a dramatic distortion of representation at local and state levels, and creates an inaccurate picture of community populations for research and planning purposes.

The Bureau counts incarcerated people as residents of the towns where they are confined, though they are barred from voting in 48 states and return to their homes after being released. The practice also defies most state constitutions and statutes, which explicitly state that incarceration does not change a residence.

Added to my list of things to look into through this project…

Avenal & Pleasant Valley State Prisons

While there are lots of towns, and dense housing (trailer homes, apartments, etc) that are also dense, the prisons really pop on the map because they’re so stark — there’s no petering out, no generally fading population designating the edge of town.

Pleasant Valley (northern in the first image, zoomed in on the bottom one) is next to Coalinga State Hospital, “California’s newest state mental health hospital and the first constructed in more than a half century”. Sure seems like a lot of yellow dots (Hispanic) in the jail and a lot of blue dots (White) in the hospital, and a lot of green dots (Black) in both. Will need to do more research on this, anyone know anything about it?

Read more from the CA Dept of State Hospitals trying to entice people to come there

The Department of State Hospitals (DSH) - Coalinga began treating forensically committed individuals – mostly sexually violent predators who were transferred from DSH - Atascadero – in early September 2005.

Construction was completed on the new state hospital in the summer of 2005. The hospital sits on 320 acres and is comprised of 1.2 million gross square feet of floor space. At full capacity, the facility will house 1,500 individuals and employ approximately 1,600 staff.

Administration Entrance

Main Courtyard

This small, rural community of approximately 16,000 people is an ideal location in which to settle and escape the traffic and congestion found in the larger cities of California. We enjoy the strong and enthusiastic support of a progressive and family friendly community.

If you have not had a chance to visit Coalinga in recent years, we are in the midst of a housing boom with an estimated 1,000 new homes in the planning stages for the next few years. Housing prices remain affordable. Community members are very accepting and eager to have our mental health professionals join their community. Plus, Coalinga is a very clean and nice hometown. Our climate is mildly seasonal compared to other Valley locations and its 676-foot elevation mitigates fog.

Please take a look at the exciting career opportunities available at Coalinga’s new state-of-the-art forensic facility, Coalinga State Hospital.

Salinas Valley State Prison - Soledad, CA

Once I started looking for “completely unnatural super dense” shapes, they became very easy to spot. 

Valley State Prision - Chowchilla, CA

Strangely rigid area out by itself? Another prison. Less dense than others though. I know there’s a women’s prison there.

San Quentin 

PRISON MAPS is a set of two mappings of the Prison Industrial Complex, "What is the Prison Industrial Complex?" and "What is the Context for Today's Prison Industrial Complex?" The first map, "What is the Prison Industrial Complex?", maps out the relationship between the many forces which profit from and influence prison growth and criminalization. The second map, "What is the Complex for Today's PIC?", maps the historical change from the Welfare State to a new security state in which the state's function has been reduced to one of force, apprehension and detention. Both are lend abstract visual representations to forces and things that can't be represented in a photograph or through video, giving an understandable form to the complex workings of a growing and dispersed system

by The Correction Project

The PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

prison maps

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