i charge pelican bay with racism, promoting inmate-on-inmate violence. how it was in the beginning it shall be in the end. the righteous shall live and the wicked shall perish. >> ever since it opened in 1989, pelican bay state prison in northern california has always had a reputation as one of the most violent and volatile penitentiaries in the nation. when we first visited the institution in 2000, it was under lockdown, still reeling from one of the worst prison riots in u.s. history. five years later, we went back inside pelican bay, where the staff has worked to curb gang activity and prevent violent outbreaks. but in an environment simmering with bitter rivalries and racial tension, finding any long-term solution is a never-ending battle. >> inmates in the general population right now consider everything a state of war, so they are ready for everything. >> some guys gonna get their head blown off, some guys are going to get stabbed real good. >> there's no hope. >> we are in the new alcatraz. >> isolated on the northern coastline, some 300 miles nor

that violence could be against other inmates or against officers. >> it was here in pelican bay's most secure unit that we came across perhaps the prison's most dangerous inmate. >> my name is scanvinski hymes. i got the name from my mother. she wanted me to have the name no other black man in america would have. >> hymes was originally sent to prison for possessing a weapon in a youth facility. at the time our cameras profiled him in 2000, he had been locked up for more than 12 years. almost half his life. >> everything is the same. nothing really changes too much. i mean, wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, go to the yard. when i get bored, i got -- i got to get into stuff, you know? >> the stuff hymes most frequently gets into is provoking officers to extract him from his cell. each inmate is assigned a security risk classification score based on his disciplinary record. [ bleep ] the average score ranges between 19 and 27 points. >> i probably have the highest classification score in this prison system, i'm over 2,000 points now. i have caught over 30, almost 40 felonies in pris

but we have a pretty good following and the chino and pelican bay, even on the gp yards, there are gay boy gangsters that are not on the sny yard. we're just a group of people that are gay and pretty much stand for our own. you know? that's our car is gay and then pretty much we're -- that's our car. >> while clements says the gbg is not a violent gang, some members can't leave their violent lifestyles in the past. >> i usually go by the nickname demon. i'm a gay boy gangster. >> they call us gbgs. you have to be able to fight to get in the gay boy gangsters. most gay boy gangsters are previous gang members that dropped out or kicked out because of their sexual orientation. on the mainline i ran as a skin head. i just tried to be that guy, the tough guy. someone needed to get beat up i raised my hand. anybody that tries to forcefully take property, rape or in any way hurt a homosexual that can't defend themselves, that's where we step in. we come in and tell them, check this out. this in your one and only warning. leave our people alone. do not put hands on our people. do not try to hu

. >> when we first met ivory taylor at california's pelican bay state prison, he had to be flanked byg unit, or the shu. >> hi, guys. okay. you got it. look at our man right here. you got this rambo camera. who do you work for? >> msnbc. >> nbc? >> msnbc. >> tell us who you are. what's your name? >> they call me double life because i've got two life sentences, a life without the possibility of parole. and 25 to life. and they call me godzilla because i've got more points than anybody else in the prison system. i fight everybody. i'll fight anybody who will fight with me. and i've been in the hole 19 years straight. >> taylor spent all those years in the shu because of a list of violent infractions rivaling any inmate we've ever profiled on "lockup." >> i've had my nose broke, hip broke, shoulder broke and foot broke, all in confrontations with the police, distractions, yard distractions, hospital distractions, shower distractions. anyplace you can get in a fight, i've gotten in a fight. >> when our crew later visited taylor's cell, he felt compelled to let the producer know that nobod

world, a prison inmate with ties to those vicious dogs is back in the news. 55-year-old inmate at pelican bayten a book about dog o'war. a state settlement allows his book to be published, the proceeds have to go to charity. he bred the two dogs which killed diane whipple in the hallway of her san francisco apartment back in 2001. the dogs had been placed with neighbors. san francisco attorneys describe sed as improperly prosecuted. >>> an inmate is in solitary confinement in san quentin. he offered money and sporting tickets in exchange for a phone he asked a guard for. >>> an nbc area investigation. the controversial technique on the rise here in california and the growing concern. >>> the music world in mourning tonight. heartthrob being remembered. >>> good evening, seem jeff ranieri in the nbc bay area weather center, we have another storm system lining up offshore. we'll see snow totals that will rival what we had this morning. oakland picking up 32/100 and san jose 23/100. anyone who grows things for a living will tell ya... a plant is only as good as the soil you put it in. look, both

i've been in the hot desert, pelican bay, every one of them, major riots with guys getting their heads blown off. but here, nothing happens. because they want to keep you on lockdown for nothing. >> what's wrong with change? >> another inmate faces the icc after fighting with a cellmate. >> they put crazy people in your cell, and crazy things happen. he was having problems with somebody else, so they moved him in my cell. this guy is having problems, why is he moving this guy in my cell? i don't need no problems. i had an operation on my testicles, because one of them swelled up as big as a softball. so when they let me out of the hospital, i came back to the cell, and there was this guy and he jumped on me and kicked me on my testicles after i had my operation, and hit me in the head with a cup. so i grabbed him and held him and choked him and made him quit. >> what really happened, nobody really knows, because we were in the cell, and an altercation occurred. he wound up getting hurt worse than i did. so it looked like i'm guilty. >> michael callans is brought before the institutiona

. >> designed to look and function like pelican bay, a maximum security prison in california, the shu is composed of windowless, concrete cells measuring 7 by 12 feet. of the 288 inmates housed here, 179 have been diagnosed by psychiatric staff as mentally ill. >> i heard the horror stories of this place back when it first opened up. >> sergeant dan haskins is a veteran of the secure housing unit. >> out of sight, out of mind. the outside world, out of sight, out of mind. they don't -- probably don't want to know what goes on in here. >> the population of the shu lives on 23-hour lockdown. leaving their cells only for showers and solitary recreation. >> some people will tell you that segregation unit is not the place for people with mental illness because we didn't design that particular unit for treatment. particularly for mental health treatment. we just didn't anticipate us having the numbers we have and going the way it's gone. >> although acute cases are referred to the psychiatric unit at a neighboring correctional institution, the staff in the shu deal with a variety of mental

after doing ten years of hard time at pelican bay state prison for manslaughter, he returned to l.a.laims to condemn, garofalo offers his unique perspective on the new breed of street criminal. >> jails are too full. but look at the new generation. carjacking. these kids will go out, stick a gun in someone's face to go joyriding in a car and turn a misdemeanor crime into a death penalty case because seven out of ten times they carjack, they kill the person they steal the car from. now, you've got to tell me, there is not something wrong with that? and somewhere in that confusion these kids don't know how to act like proper gangsters anymore. when my dad was a small-time mafioso back east, he used to say there's two kinds of gangsters -- there are thugs, and there are gangsters. thugs come and go. gangsters are about making money and respect. and if you're going to be a gangster in this life, there's two things you've got to know -- you don't kill cops and you don't kill innocent women and children. >> 900 max is also the home to nccf's discipline module, otherwise known as the hole.

bay area philanthropist, kelly roberts. she has chosen as the theme to be an evening of pelicans on the serengeti. the idea is sort of black ties in the brush. -- an evening of the allegations on the serengeti. burlap and black ties. we hope some of you will be able to join us. i want to highlight sending that i think is indicative of how much the zoo has once again become a cornerstone of the san francisco community. a key element of zoo fest is there a silent auction. for many years we had trouble getting people to donate items to our silent auction. this year we have had phenomenal responses. people coming in and saying, can we donate something? we would love to participate. my colleague, jessica, has been managing the silent auction, and we have had so many items. we're trying to figure out how to package them. to me, that underscores how community is coming out in support of the zoo. i wanted to close my report with a bit of sad news. as you know, we unfortunately lost a few animals in the past month. gene, our rino, our seal, and a bear were all very elderly and had been ill for some time. t

shows the as a 13 point lead over romney in the pelican state of gingrich a close third how about some weather now. >>> looking like a very nice day around the bay area but we saw several in the forecast right now of mostly clear skies the measures are fairly mild for the afternoon numbers in the '60s and '70s in the bay valley the clouds and fog and in the beaches and i'll keep this have the jurors into the fifties have pressure holding on here just enough to hold the system a day for the time being that all teams play tonight as affected to move on shore bringing a chance of rain is late tonight and tomorrow before today dry and mild all around the bay area except for the coastline where will be a blow that cool. the seventh low-cost for the coast of french up drops and not much rain with that in mind enjoy it 70 degrees in san jose 68 in milpitas ease their temperatures in the '60s and '70s and is again sad day a little bit of a sea breeze cooler in sausalito about 61 in san francisco and 65 degrees in the bottom the next couple of days we return to showers is to head toward tomorrow that looks like dry weather on friday. the bay area of your