Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

If you would like to be involved please go to our website and become a member.


Friday, January 18, 2008

San Quentin Dungeon Remains, New Hospital To Be Built


I am actually surprised that they haven't built condos....

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. — The dank crypt for the living still wields emotional power, its peeling ocher walls and low vaulted ceilings suffused with chill and darkness.

A new hospital is being built at San Quentin, but the original dungeon, with its grim history of pain and misery, will remain.

With its oaken, iron-latticed door and two-foot-thick granite bricks, San Quentin’s dungeon looks so stereotypically medieval that it might have been dreamed up by one of Hollywood’s masters of the macabre. But as niches for wooden pegs that once secured chains and shackles attest, these gloomy catacombs bore witness to “an enormous amount of human history, pain, misery and atonement,” said Kevin Starr, the California historian.

As a federal court-ordered overhaul of California’s prison medical system begins, the storied prison overlooking San Francisco Bay is tearing down several outmoded buildings on the 432-acre property, including the original 1885 hospital built in the institutional Italianate style. A $146 million, state-of-the-art primary care health services complex will open in 2010.

Before demolition, state historians called in to survey the site discovered the significance of what had been a forgotten space used for storage. The space, a dungeon, was the original San Quentin and is believed to be the oldest surviving building constructed by the state.


New York Times

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