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San Quentin State Prison is located on 432 acres (1.7 km²) on Point Quentin in Marin County, California, United States, north of San Francisco. San Quentin State Prison was opened in July 1852, and is the oldest prison in California.

The state's male death row is located at San Quentin, as well as its only gas chamber. In recent years, however, the gas chamber has been used to carry out lethal injections.

The prison occupies 275 acres of waterfront land overlooking the bay and is estimated to be worth $80 to $100 million, making it the most valuable prison in the world.[1]

It has its own ZIP Code, 94974; the surrounding area is 94964. It is bordered by the water of the San Francisco Bay to the south and east and by Interstate 580, just after it crosses the bay on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

San Quentin has the only on-site degree-granting program in California's entire prison system

Although numerous towns and localities in the area (and in California generally) are named for Roman Catholic saints, and "San Quintín" is Spanish for "Saint Quentin", the prison is not in fact named after the saint. The land on which it is situated, Point Quentin, is named after a Coast Miwok warrior named Quintín, fighting under Chief Marin, who was taken prisoner at that place.[4][5]

In 1851, California's first prison opened; it was "a 268-ton wooden ship named The Waban, anchored in San Francisco Bay and outfitted to hold 30 inmates."[6][7] Subsequently, inmates who were housed on the Waban constructed San Quentin which "opened in 1852 with 68 inmates."[8] The prison held both male and female inmates until 1932 when the original California Institution for Women prison at Tehachapi was built.

In 1941 the first prison meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous took place at San Quentin; in commemoration of this, the 25-millionth copy of the A.A. "Big Book" was presented to Jill Brown, of San Quentin, at the International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The use of torture as "an approved method of interrogation" at San Quentin was banned in 1944.[8]

Alfredo Santos, one-time convicted heroin dealer and successful artist, painted six remarkable, 20-foot sepia toned murals during his incarceration that have hung in the dining hall of the prison since 1955.[9]

On February 24, 1969, Johnny Cash played a live concert, At San Quentin, for the prison inmates. The concert was released as an album and was filmed by Granada Television[10].

In 2003, Metallica filmed the video for the song St. Anger inside San Quentin, playing to enthusiastic inmates. In 2007, as part of their World-wide tour, Michael Franti and Spearhead played a show for almost the entire prison population.

On the 18th of November 2006 the hip-hop group Flipsyde had a concert in the prison, which was not open for the public.

In popular culture

  • Underaged girls have sometimes been referred to as "San Quentin Quail", on the assumption that violators of California's minor protection laws could end up there. In the 1940 Marx Brothers film, Go West, Groucho Marx plays a character named "S. Quentin Quale". There was also a 1946 Warner Brothers cartoon featuring a quail, named and titled Quentin Quail. [2]
  • In 1993 a movie titled Blood In Blood Out, which was based on Mexican / Prison gang warfare in Southern California, was filmed in parts at the prison.
  • In the movie Heathers the character Veronica, after realizing that she had helped her boyfriend murder a high school classmate mutters that she does not know whether her college application should be sent to Stanford or San Quentin.
  • MythBusters visited San Quentin in a 2005 episode to conduct research about a paper crossbow.
  • The character Quentin in Cube is named after San Quentin.
  • In NaS's track Life's A Bitch from his acclaimed record Illmatic, AZ mentioned it in his verse:
Now some, restin in peace and some are sittin in San Quentin
Others such as myself are tryin to carry on tradition
  • Through the summer, groups of local, amateur baseball players gain access to the prison yard and play against the inmates in weekly games. Appropriately, the team of prisoners is called the "Giants" in honor of the San Francisco Giants, who donated old uniforms to the team. The team of outside players is called the "Willing". The only non-prisoners on the field are the opposing team--even the umpires are inmates and the only guards nearby are in the adjacent tower. These games were detailed in a Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel episode on June 20, 2006.

taken from wikipedia

Gangs at SQ

Black Guerrilla Family    Aryan Brotherhood (especially those on death row)    Mexican Mafia    Texas Syndicate    La Nuestra Familia    Asian Tong    Mongols    Varrio Sureno Locos    Hells Angels    18th Street; Nazi Low Riders    Two Two Boys    Crips (Westside 18 GIB)    Hells Angels;   
 

taken from www.insideprison.com