Logo Created By VSPW Graphic Arts Program
"Thank You Ladies"
The Words of a Family Member
It’s 8 a.m. on a summer Saturday, and you’ve traveled hours to reach this part of California’s Central Valley. As you exit Highway 99 and drive east on Avenue 24, you’re glad the trip's nearly over.
Suddenly you see a massive complex rising above the almond trees north of the two-lane road. From your frame of reference, you could be approaching an industrial park. Or a large sports stadium.
It is neither. You’re looking at Valley State Prison for Women – home to almost a third of California’s 9,700-plus women inmates, and the last place you ever expected to be.
Nevertheless, here you are on one of the strangest mission of your life. You’ve come to call on your wife/daughter/sister/niece/mother/friend who’s one of the residents at VSPW.
As you approach the administration building and visiting processing center, you’re surprised that the facility looks more like a small college campus than your nebulous concept of a prison. Then you notice the razor wire and gun towers.
Once inside, you’re “processed” by the institutions visiting staff, to ensure compliance with the CDCR's security concerns. Clearance typically involves no more than 10-15 minutes, but that’s after you’ve worked your way to the front of the line, which can take well over an hour on weekends and holidays.
Inside the visiting center, the experience is more benign than you expected. But it’s regimented, monitored, and structured in dramatic contrast to a normal weekend at home.
As a visitor at VSPW (or any other prison, for that matter), plan to leave most of your choices outside the gate. The price of admission is a nearly total suspension of the liberty you take for granted. Once inside, you’re temporary part of the system, and for the next few hours your freedom is only slightly greater than that of the inmates who populate VSPW.
As a visitor, your clothing options are limited, and the items you can take inside are heavily restricted. Prior to passing thru the metal detector you will have turned out your pockets, removed your shoes, and pirouetted like a ballet dancer under the gaze of the institution’s visiting staff. And perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this experience is that, once you’ve done it a few times, it no longer seems bizarre.
The VSPW visiting center is a air-conditioned building composed of two large, separate rooms, each with an adjoining patio. Typically, one room is filled by the early arrivals while the other is used when the first is filled.
Once inside you are asigned a visiting table, but outdoors, your options are unlimited. The patios are extremely popular.
Food and drinks can be purchased by visitors (inmates have no money and cannot have money in their possession at anytime). Separate restrooms are provided. Inmate “restroom breaks” occur every hour and visitors can go whenever they like – unless cleaning is in process.
At the end of the visit you’re processed out in a manner only slightly less intensive than when you entered. Did you wear a wristwatch when you came in? Carry a handkerchief? When you leave, you’ll be expected to have them with you.
You’ll exit the prison compound through two gates and a door, just as you entered. Each is opened for you, in turn, by personnel in the tower alongside the visitor processing center.
Crossing the parking lot to your car, you might expect a sense of relief at regaining your freedom, in spite of the institution’s security-related restrictions. For the most part, the visiting experience at VSPW is abundantly tolerable. If the process is reasonably comfortable from a visitor’s perspective, it’s safe to assume the inmates find it even more enjoyable. It’s the closest they’ll come to any kind of freedom until they’re released, which is why contact with “outside” people is so important for those fortunate enough to have it.
And they are few, indeed.
Consider that the average Saturday/Sunday brings maybe 120 visitors to VSPW. And since some are families visiting a single inmate, fewer than a hundred inmates are likely to receive visitors on any given day. Keep in mind, too, that most visitors are repeat visitors, which means that, over a period of time, essentially the same group of inmates receives visits. Probably no more than 200 or so have outside contact on a semi-regular basis, and that’s considerably less than 10 percent of VSPW’s inmate population.
Tragically, the remaining 90-plus percent have no contact at all with anyone other than staff members and inmates during the entire period of their confinement.
Such a disparity in our world would be an inexplicable and unacceptable anomaly, but at VSPW, these numbers simply define the hard edge of reality in a strange and very private existence.
As visitors, we hope to make a difference.
Suddenly you see a massive complex rising above the almond trees north of the two-lane road. From your frame of reference, you could be approaching an industrial park. Or a large sports stadium.
It is neither. You’re looking at Valley State Prison for Women – home to almost a third of California’s 9,700-plus women inmates, and the last place you ever expected to be.
Nevertheless, here you are on one of the strangest mission of your life. You’ve come to call on your wife/daughter/sister/niece/mother/friend who’s one of the residents at VSPW.
As you approach the administration building and visiting processing center, you’re surprised that the facility looks more like a small college campus than your nebulous concept of a prison. Then you notice the razor wire and gun towers.
Once inside, you’re “processed” by the institutions visiting staff, to ensure compliance with the CDCR's security concerns. Clearance typically involves no more than 10-15 minutes, but that’s after you’ve worked your way to the front of the line, which can take well over an hour on weekends and holidays.
Inside the visiting center, the experience is more benign than you expected. But it’s regimented, monitored, and structured in dramatic contrast to a normal weekend at home.
As a visitor at VSPW (or any other prison, for that matter), plan to leave most of your choices outside the gate. The price of admission is a nearly total suspension of the liberty you take for granted. Once inside, you’re temporary part of the system, and for the next few hours your freedom is only slightly greater than that of the inmates who populate VSPW.
As a visitor, your clothing options are limited, and the items you can take inside are heavily restricted. Prior to passing thru the metal detector you will have turned out your pockets, removed your shoes, and pirouetted like a ballet dancer under the gaze of the institution’s visiting staff. And perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this experience is that, once you’ve done it a few times, it no longer seems bizarre.
The VSPW visiting center is a air-conditioned building composed of two large, separate rooms, each with an adjoining patio. Typically, one room is filled by the early arrivals while the other is used when the first is filled.
Once inside you are asigned a visiting table, but outdoors, your options are unlimited. The patios are extremely popular.
Food and drinks can be purchased by visitors (inmates have no money and cannot have money in their possession at anytime). Separate restrooms are provided. Inmate “restroom breaks” occur every hour and visitors can go whenever they like – unless cleaning is in process.
At the end of the visit you’re processed out in a manner only slightly less intensive than when you entered. Did you wear a wristwatch when you came in? Carry a handkerchief? When you leave, you’ll be expected to have them with you.
You’ll exit the prison compound through two gates and a door, just as you entered. Each is opened for you, in turn, by personnel in the tower alongside the visitor processing center.
Crossing the parking lot to your car, you might expect a sense of relief at regaining your freedom, in spite of the institution’s security-related restrictions. For the most part, the visiting experience at VSPW is abundantly tolerable. If the process is reasonably comfortable from a visitor’s perspective, it’s safe to assume the inmates find it even more enjoyable. It’s the closest they’ll come to any kind of freedom until they’re released, which is why contact with “outside” people is so important for those fortunate enough to have it.
And they are few, indeed.
Consider that the average Saturday/Sunday brings maybe 120 visitors to VSPW. And since some are families visiting a single inmate, fewer than a hundred inmates are likely to receive visitors on any given day. Keep in mind, too, that most visitors are repeat visitors, which means that, over a period of time, essentially the same group of inmates receives visits. Probably no more than 200 or so have outside contact on a semi-regular basis, and that’s considerably less than 10 percent of VSPW’s inmate population.
Tragically, the remaining 90-plus percent have no contact at all with anyone other than staff members and inmates during the entire period of their confinement.
Such a disparity in our world would be an inexplicable and unacceptable anomaly, but at VSPW, these numbers simply define the hard edge of reality in a strange and very private existence.
As visitors, we hope to make a difference.
