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Sunday, February 28th, 1988Shakedown in Santa Fe Press Review
The Hellhole at Santa Fe
While reformers fight, the war goes on at New Mexico prison
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, February 23, 1988
by Michael Dougan
Television is most valuable and often most entertaining, when it takes viewers into places they cannot, or - being in their right minds - would not, choose to go. Places where violence is systemic, where death is as common as lunch. Places like the New Mexico penitentiary in Santa Fe.
This is no ordinary house of detention. The Santa Fe pen is a particularly unpleasant hellhole that erupted in 1980 into an orgy of horror and mayhem that still disturbs penal administrators nationwide. Twelve guards were beaten, stabbed and raped. Thirty-three inmates were tortured to death by their fellow cons. The prison was destroyed. Damage exceeded $80 million.
Now, as detailed on “Frontline” at 10 p.m. Tuesday on Channel 9, Santa Fe’s maximum security institution has become a battleground of a different sort, where prisoners, guards, the warden, federal courts, and the ACLU fight tooth-and-nail over the destiny of those incarcerated. As host Judy Woodruff notes, Santa Fe stands as a symbol of an ongoing “struggle for control of America’s prisons” between law and order proponents and civil libertarians.
And the beat goes on. Gangs behind bars maintain drug, gambling, extortion and prostitution rackets. Fear is the watchword. Suspected snitches continue to die.
“Shakedown in Santa Fe” is at once fascinating and repelling. This is not a show for the kiddies. Every scene vibrates with subsurface terror. Even the language seems violent. Guards and inmates don’t use Sunday school terminology; obscenities echo throughout the interviews.
On the other hand, if your young’un is contemplating a life of crime, this could prove instructive. Prison is no place for boys who want to have fun.
“Anybody who walks in here and says he’s not afraid is lying,” says correctional officer Ignacio Marujo in the opening seconds.
Marujo’s captain, Marcella Armijo, assumes a dejected look and adds: “We might as well give the keys to the inmates, they’re running it anyway.”
Armijo is a particularly fascinating character. One of the first female correctional officers to work in a maximum security facility, she is now the boss guard, employing a combination of patented toughness and feminine sensitivity to keep a lid on the joint. “I like a lot of the inmates here,” she says, “but I would never go as far as to say I trust them.”
Nor, clearly, do they have ample faith in each other. Much time in the program is spent with William Jack “Two-Pack” Stephens, a “professional convict” who was charged with two of the most brutal murders (one a beheading) during the 1980 riot. Two-Pack, and alert, articulate 38-year-old who authorities believe leads the “Aryan Brotherhood” gang, spells out his proud code of prison ethics: He doesn’t snitch and he doesn’t rape children.
What a guy. With a straight face, Two-Pack complains that it’s hard to find cons “who have a moral standard.”
Warden George Sullivan, who resigned in disgust during the filming of this documentary, speaks at length about “predatory behavior” on the cell block and how court decisions stemming from the riot make him powerless to protect his “reasonable inmates.” Local ACLU lawyers contrarily insist that the danger level at Santa Fe is a direct result of heavy-handed, inequitable treatment of the prisoners.
Both may be right. “Frontline” takes no point of view and offers no solutions. This intriguing documentary leaves viewers staring into a field of gray, a world so frightful and alien that standard concepts of right and wrong are relativistically rendered and, therefore, meaningless. It’s a bizarre, almost titillating, experience. “Shakedown in Santa Fe” will haunt you like a bad dream.
Does prison reform mean less control?
NEW MEXICAN, February 24, 1988
by Melissa Adams
The issue of who controls the Penitentiary of New Mexico - the inmates or the state corrections department - will be addressed tonight on Frontline, a national television series that airs at 9 p.m. on KNME - 5 in Alburquerque.
“Shakedown in Santa Fe” examines the state pen since the 1980 riot, which left 33 inmates dead and 12 guards beaten, stabbed and sodomized. Since that time, two guards and 12 inmates have been killed and four wardens have run the institution.
Hector Galán of Austin, Texas, produced and wrote the show, which includes interviews with former prison officials, correctional officers and inmates.
Galán’s show examines the effect of the reform movement following the riot, including the Duran Consent Decree, a federal court-sanctioned agreement between state officials and inmates that governs portions of prison life.
“The question the show raises is how much reform is too much reform?” Galán said in an interview from Washington, DC. “Have we gone too far in terms of inmate’s rights?”
Galán questions whether the warden and the guards or the inmates and their lawyers are in control. “While there is no question that the federal consent decree has made a difference, many of the changes seen have been superficial. It is still an extremely violent institution. Is the federal government really helping or hurting the prison?”
Galán said that 36 state prisons operate under consent decrees. His documentary, he said, raises the issue of what should be done. “It’s a real dilemma,” he said.
Galán spent 30 days last summer inside the penitentiary conducting interviews and observing life inside its walls. Former Warden George Sullivan granted his crew access. “We could really feel the pulse of the place. It was incredible,” Galán said.
Sullivan resigned while the crews were still working.
The documentary centers on William Jack “Two Pack” Stephens, an inmate serving a life sentence for murder and Capt. Marcella Armijo, who resigned while the crews were still working.
Much of the life at the pen is seen through Stephens’ eyes, Galán said. “Stephens is a convict and he abides by a convict’s code, which is more powerful than any laws or rules laid down by any administration,” Galán said.
He said that while many guards and officials agree with most of the Duran Consent Decree, they are concerned with the disciplinary portions that many think are not tough enough. Some correctional officers believe the reform means less control and more danger, he said.
