Serving time in prison is not meant to be a luxurious experience. Many facilities are equipped with the simplest privileges-including gyms and recreation fields. While the lifestyle of an incarcerated person is not meant to be torturous, a number of corrections facilities are defined as the most brutal, the most dangerous places to serve time in.

The San Quentin State Prison is a large penitentiary located in San Rafael, California. It is home to the largest death row population in the nation. San Quentin is infamous for gang-related race riots and internal exploitation. It sits on a $2 billion piece of real estate and is home to hundreds of death row inmates.

The prison is home to six notorious gangs: the Mexican Mafia, Ayran Brotherhood, Nuestra Familia, Nazi Low Riders, the Bloods, and the Crips.

History

The prison was built between 1848 and 1852 when fortune seekers brought an increase in crime in the San Francisco area. The city decided to build a penitentiary when the jail spaces proved inadequate.

Convicts began building the building in 1852. The cell blocks were completed by 1854. Initially, the state prison featured 48 windowless cells with a 250-inmate capacity.

The San Quentin was under private management. The arrangement allowed individuals to hire out the inmates, proving a much-abused system. Lessors profited and mismanaged the prison, leading inmates to live in inhumane conditions and suffer from brutal punishments.

Prisoners were often flogged as a punishment. Many were exposed to worse experiences where they were stripped and sprayed with a high-pressure water hose in a punishment called "shower baths."

The security was also very lax. In 1854, more than 80 prisoners broke out of the prison, contributing to an increase in complaints against the management. The state finally regained control of the control in 1858.

Notable Inmates

Charles Manson

Charles Milles Manson was an American cult leader. He led followers into a murder campaign in the late 1960s. The Manson Family Cult involved more than 100 supporters who followed Manson's unconventional lifestyle and the use of hallucinogenic drugs. They believed Charles was Jesus.

His family is said to have been involved in the murder of 35 individuals. Most of their cases were never tried primarily due to an extreme lack of evidence. One of their most notorious killings involved the brutal murder of actress Sharon Tate who was pregnant at the time.


Isauro Aguirre

The 39-year-old is known for systematically torturing and beating 8-year-old Gabrel Fernandez to death.

Aguirre and his partner, Gabriel's mother Pearl Fernandez, began torturing Gabriel after they first noticed signs indicating he might be gay. The couple made the child sleep inside a narrow cabinet. They fed him cat feces and litter and made him drink his own vomit.

When Gabriel died, authorities found no food in his body. He had a crushed skull, three broken ribs, and BB gun pellets inside his body. His teeth were also found knocked out with a baseball bat.

Netflix featured Gabriel Fernandez's case in the docuseries "The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez."


Charles Ng

Charles Ng is an Asian-American mass murderer who was sentenced to death after he tortured and killed over 25 people at an isolated ranch.

He obtained a student visa to study in the United States in 1978. He was caught stealing military weapons after joining the Marines and was sentenced to three years in jail.

After his release, he and an accomplice began a terror campaign where they abducted, raped, and murdered countless people in his partner's remote cabin. According to official reports, authorities found the bodies of seven men, three women, two baby boys. They also recovered 45 pounds of bone fragments near the site.

Apart from the corpses and body parts, investigators found a stash of weapons and personal items that once belonged to the victims. They also uncovered numerous videotapes of Ng raping and killing in the bunker.

He was caught after trying to shoplift in Alberta.

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