Word: prisons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Around a table at San Quentin Prison one morning last week met Frank C. Sykes of San Francisco; Joseph H. Stephens, Sacramento banker; Warren Atherton, Stockton lawyer. They were members of California's Board of Prison Terms and Paroles and at the moment none was particularly happy about it. Clyde Stevens, a notorious bandit, had just accomplished his fourth bank robbery since they paroled him last October. The Press was hounding them again for laxity...
...what could they do? San Quentin Prison, jutting into the Bay 10 miles above San Francisco, had space for only 3,000 inmates. Crammed into it were nearly 6,000, world's biggest prison population. Only way the Board could make room for new prisoners was to shunt old ones out as fast as they could. Meantime those remaining stirred like cattle squeezed in a ship's hold. A score had lately been sent to dungeons for riot & rebellion. Pondering their problem, the boardmen and Secretary Mark Noon adjourned to Warden James B. Holohan's house...
...boardmen traded clothes. Far too perturbed was Boardman Stephens to care that his new trousers did not meet in front. Secretary Noon telephoned the captain of the guards, got him to promise no shooting. Herding their hostages into the warden's automobile, the convicts roared through the prison gate...
Back in the prison hospital, where Warden Holohan lay seriously hurt, the convict leader died. To the shock of Boardmen Atherton, Stephens and Sykes was added chagrin when the recaptured convicts confessed that it was Clyde Stevens who had smuggled their guns into the prison. Next day on a swampy island in the Sacramento River, police caught Bandit Stevens...
...They" were old George Barker's divorced wife and his four sons. He was sick, poor, alone but his path had been honest. Their path had led two to prison, three to violent Death...