Part one of Black P. Stone Nation, Black Guerrilla Family, Blood, Ansar El Muhammad, revolutionary freedom fighters, warehousing the mind, prison politics, manufactured violence, and the new face of racism in California prisons.
I entered New Folsom’s B yard in 1987. I have now been held captive for 40 years. What I have witnessed over these decades is not simply incarceration, but a sophisticated system of racial manipulation, psychological warfare, and state-sanctioned corruption that thrives on manufactured conflict among prisoners, while disguising itself as public safety. In the late 1980s and early 1990s California prisons were openly dominated by white supremacist groups. Guards were overwhelmingly white, openly favored the Aryan Brotherhood, and permitted violence against Black prisoners with shows of indifference or encouragement. At that time, even the Mexican Mafia classified itself as white. Racial warfare was overt, unregulated, and normalized.
This was before the implementation of the Enhanced Outpatient Program, EOP, a psychiatric program intended for incarcerated people suffering from mental illness, depression, anxiety, and related conditions. Early EOP participants, especially at level four facilities, were housed on general population yards. White prisoners were routinely disowned for participating in the EOP program. Mexican prisoners were outright forbidden from it, as mental health care was equated with weakness and dishonor. Black prisoners, however, were allowed to move between general population and EOP. Over time, this produced a contradiction. Many prisoners who genuinely needed mental health services were barred from them due to racial politics, while others used EOP as a refuge from the constant pressure and violence of general population yards.
That contradiction was weaponized with the introduction of the non designated programming facilities, which forced general population prisoners and those from sensitive need yards to coexist, and the step down program for validated gang members. Prison politics shifted. Mexican Mafia and Aryan Brotherhood leadership reframed EOP participation as equivalent to SNY [Sensitive Needs Yards] status. The logic was simple and dangerous. If Black prisoners were housed in EOP alongside SNY prisoners, then they too were no good. Black gangs were under threat of racial war with Mexican Mafia and Aryan Brotherhood, bowed down and submitted. Rather than challenge the premise, they enforced it.
African Americans were forbidden from participating in EOP. Those who returned to general population yards from EOP were rejected. Many capable, disciplined prisoners were forced into SNY yards, not because of misconduct, but to maintain a false peace. What followed was predictable. Institutional Security Units, ISU, and Investigative Gang intelligence, IGI officers filled SNY yards with newly constructed gangs and artificial politics. Violence did suggest that Black prisoners adopt new enemy identities, often against each other under the guise of protection. The system recycled the same violence it claimed to prevent.
Meanwhile, prison administrations used this violence to justify increased funding, expanded staffing, and greater surveillance powers. The narrative of “dangerous prisoner” masked the real issue: a profound lack of racial diversity and accountability among staff, paired with deliberate manipulation of prisoner politics. At the same time, the SNY yards were flooded with drugs like ketamine, spice, Suboxone, crystal meth, heroin, and wax. Over decades, Mexican Americans increasingly entered the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s workforce. In many academy classes, graduation rates reached 75 to 85%. Today, many California prisons lack meaningful diversity among staff. And the power consolidates along cultural and racial lines. This concludes part one of Revolutionary Freedom Fighters. Part two to be continued.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
