Corcoran State Prison, part of the California prison system, has become infamous as a place where prisoners are abused, where guards used prisoners to stage fights and then bet on the outcome, where complaints by prisoners led to punishment for the prisoners but not for the guards who were committing offenses, and where finally a court delivered a major verdict against the California state prison system.
In its first decade of operation, Corcoran State Prison, touted as a state-of-the-art facility, proved to be a very dangerous place for prisoners to be placed. In that first ten years, Corcoran guards shot and killed seven inmates, and only nine months after opening, guards shot and wounded three inmates in eight weeks. These shootings were ruled justified on the claim that the intent was to protect an inmate or guard. Guards did not use either physical restraint or non lethal weapons to stop a fight, and eight Corcoran officers were eventually indicted for arranging prison fights for recreation. In addition, four guards were charged in the death of inmate Preston Tate. However, not one top administrator has been charged with any crime, and Department of Correction officials continue to deny that the prison was mismanaged. When the California Department of Corrections found all of the abuse allegations groundless, the FBI was called in to investigate ("Corcoran State Prison Fact Sheet").
Outside groups such as Amnesty International have also raised concerns about Corcoran and specific practices there, such as the following report from 1998:
Guards at Corcoran State Prison are alleged to have deliberately staged "gladiator" fights between inmates and placed bets on the outcome. Between 1988 and 1994, seven prisoners were shot dead and dozens of others wounded when armed guards fired on them. Lawyers acting for relatives of victims obtained prison videotapes that contradicted official accounts of the shootings. Two...