i think that's what pelican bay is about.y the strong ones are the ones are going to make it, you know? this is it right here. everybody hears about pelican bay. but when it comes to doing time here? nobody wants to be here, you know? >>> next on "lockup" -- the hidden messages and secret codes gangs use to communicate inside and outside pelican bay. >>> well, everybody has hopes. they want to touch their loved ones. >> pelican bay doesn't allow no kind of phone call unless people are dying. >> letters and visits are very, very, very, very important. it's the only connection to the outside world. >> the paradox of gang life inside pelican bay is that some of its most isolated prisoners are also its most powerful. many gang leaders, though exiled to the shu, still manage to exert control over their legions of followers. >> they would not survive as a gang if they were unable to communicate with one another. or be able to communicate their will to their soldiers. >> the prison gangs, even though they're isolated and all up here

one of the most austere and punishing was the prison at pelican bay. gordon nonstop konstantin lockdown. were the things that got people sent to hell in bay was having copies of george jackson's books in their cells. having pictures of george jackson in their cell. the fear of association for guys who were born after jackson was killed. until very recently was still published in prison. what california officials had discussions on building pelican bay, what was called a super max. before that point maximum-security was the highest form of security in prison. pelican bay inaugurates this new form of prisons. they want to prevent another george jackson. they want to keep people as isolated as possible. it is deprivation as possible. the exercise yard where people are released on their own. every one or two days. the constant back-and-forth. in this process of mass incarceration. not just jackson inspired people to take activism seriously. also inspired the state to take their own kind of actions. that came back around in the last five years it was prisone

be sending a flamboyant homosexual is pelican bay. >> inmate adolph green was out on the pelican bay yard when our producer noticed him and asked for an impromptu interview. >> i'm flamboyant homosexual that wants to prefer to find a black girl and we call each other girls. you understand. some of the dudes around here, they call you girl, come here, girl, and this and that. but then you have those that's smile in your face and laugh at you behind your back. you walk around the track and you hear somebody call look at that punk. [ bleep ] >> green told us that those who are open about their sexuality face retribution from other inmates. >> you have people that are undercover. you got people that hiding in the closet. that's doing each other. but the minute they see somebody that's flamboyant that's out, that they don't understand, then they have something against that. and to go through this here every day, every day, where a bunch of people telling you what you can and can't do, who you can live with and who you can't live with because of your sexual preference, is wrong. because ha

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. 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 prison. you kn

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i charge pelican bay with racism, promoting

. >> the groom, raul vidal, has been in california's pelican bay state prison since age 18. >> i was street gang. you know, drugs, violence, all that. and got in a shoot-out. there were six guys in a car that they said i shot at. they gave me six life terms for that. >> because of his gang affiliation, vidal is assigned to the secured housing unit where contact visits are not permitted. >> right now here together you stand free and apart from all other people in this world because right now you stand within that charmed circle of your love together. >> vidal and his bride, leticia, were childhood friends and had reconnected five years earlier. though it's unlikely vidal will ever be free, leticia agreed to marry him anyway. her son, reuben, stood in as best man. >> you have a ring picked to go on your hand. >> oh, my gosh, i dropped the ring. >> she sees me, she opened up her house, her heart. she gave me her family. >> i, raul, take thee, leticia. >> i, raul, take thee, leticia. >> to be my wedded wife. >> to be my wedded wife. >> to have and to hold from this day forward. >> to hav

our producers first met him seven years ago inside pelican bay, california's toughest maximum securitypeace officer, if you are the governor, if you are the president, if you do something to me, it's on. >> he's bucking right now, he's struggling. >> hymes is a career inmate with 19 of his 37 years spent behind bars. >> turn around. turn around. >> nope. you all use that force on me. >> officers in several california prisons have gotten plenty of opportunities to document his bad behavior on videotape. while most inmates try to deal with prison life the best they can, hymes has fought the system all the way. >> ha, ha, ha. going to be like starting a whole new life. i can go anywhere. i can get a passport. i can do anything, you know, if i want to. i'm not under supervision of law enforcement at all times like i have been. so basically i can do anything i want to. >> although hymes has reached the end of his sentence, the stakes are higher than ever. >> hymes has two strikes against him right now, and i think he is aware that if he commits another crime and is prosecuted for that, it c

they tried to come up when i was in pelican bay, wanted me to go back to the main line.r head up, man. >> officers. >> ready. >> once back in the privacy of his own cell, angel begins his daily workout. >> i was standing on the toilet. it's easy to do like this. if you don't work out, you going to go crazy in here, you know what i mean? it's like -- >> how long do you work out? >> maybe two hours. i start with 1,000 push-ups, right? after i do that, i come and do these. >> fights inside the prison can initiate a lockdown at any time, revoking yard privileges for all inmates, making the in-cell workout their only option. >> they call it burpees workout. we do different kind of stuff. we do burpees. we do abdominals. we do arms. tomorrow we get yard. we only get yard two times a week. that's our routine every day. we get bored. and we don't know what to do, so we work -- so working out is wasting the mind out, you know what i mean? my english is not too perfect. so after, that birdbath and everything, we wait for chow. it's just wasting time. we got a long time to go. >>>

. >> when we first met ivory taylor at california's pelican bay state prison, he had to be flanked byterview in a secure housing 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 th

. >> 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. the very crime he claims to condemn, garofalo offerhis 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 k