>> among the nation's most notorious institutions, san quentin state prison. our cameras spent months documenting life on the inside, where gangs, drugs and sheer boredom make up a violent mix. this is "lockup san quentin: extended stay." >> probably next to an inmate's release date, visits are the most important things in their lives. keeping in touch with their loved ones. >> i don't like coming here, but i have to so i can see him. >> for some, visits are rare moments of intimacy. and for others, a business transaction. >> a lot of drugs come in through the visiting room. a lot of drugs. >> you don't want to be here, man. >> and then the hustle just like the bona fide, hustler with the web and then with the two hands, like you said. >> the money. >> money in one hand, dice coming out the other. >> it's going to be hard. make sure that i do it, though, because if someone else does it, it's going to be different. >> no, i know. >> everybody hates prison. society hates prison. it's part of life. i've got to accept the things i put myself in. i can't try to be

this is "lockup: san quentin, extended stay." san quentin state prison served as the reception center for 17 counties in the state of california. each week, the prison releases 150 prisoners. and welcomes 350 new inmates. san quentin was built to hold about 3,000 people. it currently houses more than 5,000. >> unfortunate for some of them, they think this is a step up. in the circles they travel in, unfortunately, it is. you know, i made it. i'm in state prison now. >> with repeat offenders clogging up the works, the officers struggle to keep the inmates under control. >> control, be advised we have an alarm in south block. >> i can only speculate and the only thing i can think of is we have a missing inmate. that's probably the number one thing. >> step on the tiers and conduct a count, submit it to patrol immediately. >> hernandez. i don't know where he is. >> his name is skanvinsky hymes. my prison number is e-04448. i've had this prison number since i was 18 years old. i just turned 37 on february 15th. i'll be discharged from the prison system in a

after the murders, manson agreed to talk with "today" show correspondent heidi schulman at san quentin state prison about the book "manson in his own words" an autobiography of sorts. told to former prison mate nuel emmons. >> if i like this book, there would be a lot of people that probably wouldn't buy it. but if i don't like it, everyone that doesn't like me will probably buy it. >> you said you weren't impressed with it. >> no, not really, no. >> why not? >> well, we are good friends but we don't live in the same road. he's walking on one road and i'm living on another one, you know? he's making money and he's in business to be a writer. that's his trip. that's not my trip. i'm not into that. and he's kowtowed himself and compromised himself to the public. i think the public is full of it. they're a bunch of ants that want to eat me up, and they feed on fear and things that they're insecure about. they want to blame someone else, like a bunch of chickens pecking on each other. well, i fell up underneath the pecking order and i was convicted for being the father of this country. i was convicted

her father is serving time rate now at san quentin state prison. >> teenager accused of shooting and killing his sister in oakland is going to stay in custody. judge decided today the 14-year-old should not be released to his family. during the hearing the prosecution said the teenager has been involved in several very violent incidents which include threatening to shoot people. the teenager faces a murder charge and 3 gun charges. his sister justice toll ver killed at their home january 23rd. teenager can attend her funeral with a probation officer at his side. >> finally the bay area saw much-needed rain over the weekend. sandhya is here now with a look at live doppler 7hd. sandhya, it was good soaker but probably didn't make much of a dent in the drought. >> you are absolutely right. as you look at live doppler 7hd we have a few clouds around. 2 more storms are due in this week. i do want to show you exactly how we fared so saturday in green indicating where we were in terms of percent of normal. and in the blue box is where we are today. so santa rosa with 10% of average. before

her father is serving time rate now at san quentin state prison. >> teenager accused of shooting and killing his sister in oakland is going to stay in custody. judge decided today the 14-year-old should not be released to his family. during the hearing the prosecution said the teenager has been involved in several very violent incidents which include threatening to shoot people. the teenager faces a murder charge and 3 gun charges. his sister justice toll ver killed at their home january 23rd. teenager can attend her funeral with a probation officer at his side. >> finally the bay area saw much-needed rain over the weekend. sandhya is here now with a look at live doppler 7hd. sandhya, it was good soaker but probably didn't make much of a dent in the drought. >> you are absolutely right. as you look at live doppler 7hd we have a few clouds around. 2 more storms are due in this week. i do want to show you exactly how we fared so saturday in green indicating where we were in terms of percent of normal. and in the blue box is where we are today. so santa rosa with 10% of average. before

her father is serving time rate now at san quentin state prison. >> teenager accused of shooting and killing his sister in oakland is going to stay in custody. judge decided today the 14-year-old should not be released to his family. during the hearing the prosecution said the teenager has been involved in several very violent incidents which include threatening to shoot people. the teenager faces a murder charge and 3 gun charges. his sister justice toll ver killed at their home january 23rd. teenager can attend her funeral with a probation officer at his side. >> finally the bay area saw much-needed rain over the weekend. sandhya is here now with a look at live doppler 7hd. sandhya, it was good soaker but probably didn't make much of a dent in the drought. >> you are absolutely right. as you look at live doppler 7hd we have a few clouds around. 2 more storms are due in this week. i do want to show you exactly how we fared so saturday in green indicating where we were in terms of percent of normal. and in the blue box is where we are today. so santa rosa with 10% of average. before

. >> darryl "big d" wright is serving hard time at california's aging san quentin state prison.. >> we have three barbers in here. we're pretty steady. you know, they come in. one of us try to be here at all times. so we all have to know how to cut all kind of hair. >> as with any barber, it's important to keep the customers satisfied. that's especially true when your clients are inmates. >> you know, occasionally guys, they drop by and want to give you a little something if you give a good haircut, you know? want to give you a soup or something like that or a canned good or something like that. it's not a mandatory thing but they won't let you refuse them. you know what i'm saying? they won't let you refuse them. >> barber shops have been a favorite stop for "lockup" crews at prisons nationwide. >> any man that walks through the door can get a haircut and he'll get a good haircut. he might not get a whole lot of layers and feathers and all that, but he'll get a good haircut. >> we met willard lucas at indiana state prison. he had been working the same chair for 26 years. >> my

. ♪ >>> california's 150-year-old san quentin state prison has been the site of much history, includingirst ever prison performance by johnny cash. >> we actually found out that johnny cash had played at san quentin ten years prior to his more famous folsom concert. so our producer asked us to find inmate musicians, and i could hear eric phillips playing all the way down this noisy tier. >> here in san quentin phillips's guitar has grown to be his best friend. >> i really wanted to play the guitar, so i picked one up, like back in the late '80s, i bought one and just started getting my practice on and playing. you know? and just picked up from there. that became my main thing, my main passion. >> but pursuing that passion is complicated by the fact that overcrowding in san quentin has forced two men to live in cells originally designed for one. that means musicians don't always get to choose their accompaniment. but no distraction can keep phillips from his guitar. >> it provides for me a comfort in a sense that it takes me away from all this. and you know, it's like it transcends me wh

more than 600 condemned men await their execution dates here on death row at california's san quentin state prisonlace where inmates are much more concerned with filing appeals than causing trouble. that's not the case here. >> me myself i consider everybody in here a potential threat. >> we met two officers assigned to keep watch in the adjustment center where san quentin's most violent death row inmates are housed. the daily grind here is bleak for both inmates and staff. >> the mentality of most inhates in here is there's nothing you can do to me today. if i assault you today there is nothing they will do to me tomorrow. you can only kill me once. >> assaults are so common here that any contact with inmates, even serving meals, requires officers to suit up in full riot gear. >> but that doesn't stop them from gassing, which is where they throw a variety of substances, can be anything, urine, feces. >> from the time you open the food port, there's an opening for the inmate to assault you. >> death row at san quentin is a really very scary place. the adjustment center is the scariest place at dea

>> our cameras were at california's san quentin state prison when officers received word that a 20-year-old inmate was suffering severe chest ins. >> be advised, medical emergency. >> the thing you have to realize about san quentin is that this is -- this prison was built prior to the civil war and the cells are stacked five stories high. no elevators. so of course the emergency that we were covering, it was on the fifth floor.r. so not only did we have to haul our stuff up there but so did the responding correctional officers. >> up on the fifth tier, officers tend to the inmate inside his cell. >> you're going to have to take some deep breaths, man. i know you might be in pain, but you're going to have to help me. >> moments later the paramedics arrive on the tier. >> the paramedics had to make the five-story climb as well and it's difficult to respond right away because of that. but the bigger challenge though was getting the inmate out of his cell and back down all of those stairs. >> hospital door carson 2 be advised, we have inmate in stretcher, en route to the urgent care clinic. >>

. >> in 1987, the "today" show went to san quentin state prison and interviewed the infamous charlesic. >> you know, if i wanted to kill somebody, i'd take this book and beat you to death with it. and i wouldn't feel a thing. >> the interview sparked

. >> eventually transferred to san quentin state prison, the man who is arguably california's most violent inmate completed his sentence and was released in 2007. >> you have people locked up in this, this type of environment and then you release them to the street. what do you expect? >> back up -- >>> next on "lockup: raw." >> they'll come across their enemy, slice them across the neck. >> the ingenious weapons inmates use to attack and the lengths officers will go to in combating them. long lasting relief use doctor recommended gaviscon®. only gaviscon® forms a protective barrier that helps block stomach acid from splashing up- relieving the pain quickly. try fast, long lasting gaviscon®. ♪♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] what kind of energy is so abundant it can help provide the power for all this? natural gas. ♪ ♪ more than ever before america's electricity is generated by it. exxonmobil uses advanced visualization and drilling technologies to produce natural gas... powering our lives... while reducing emissions by up to 60%. energy lives here. ♪ ♪ tte or au lait? cozy or cool? "meow" or "woof"

occasion, ken was the deputy tasked with the job of driving a condemned man to death row at san quentin state prison the opportunity to ask where that prisoner's life had gone so wrong. >> and these guys, most of them, grew up without a father in the home for the most part. and so they told me that, hey, i was allowed to just run wild and do my own thing out there with no kind of structure, no kind of responsibility. >> reporter: it was a foreign notion to ken, who grew up in a two-parent, strict household in rural mississippi. >> that was the difference that i saw, you know. they didn't have the structure that i grew up with. >> reporter: but for those men, it was too late for ken to do anything to help them. >> got one more lap. let's go, let's go, let's go. >> reporter: not these guys, though. >> let's go, run. you don't want to be last. >> reporter: born out of his experience with hardened criminals. ken seven years ago started the men of iron program. taking boys from the east bay, many of them already getting in trouble at ages 6 and 7, and giving them structure, responsibility, and more than

. >> at san quentin state prison, we learned that not only do gangs force most of the prison population into racial segregation, they even draw boundaries on the rec yard. >> this is the lower yard. and the inmates segregate themselves out here, the reason being that the gangs want it that way. the blacks are over here. the northern hispanics is our main gang here at san quentin. and it's because they're better organized. the white guys are over here on the parallel bars and on the picnic table. over in the corner you see where the asians are sitting. you can't just walk and sit on a table. i had to explain that. i almost got into a confrontation with that two or three times because, you know, i saw a table and i sat down, you know, it's not like that. you got to ask for permission to sit down there. >> even such a minor misstep can be taken as a sign of disrespect, and that can lead to widespread violence. though correctional staff is constantly on the lookout for weapons, it's well known that many on this yard are armed for battle. and none more so than the northern hispanics. >> they

. >> at california's san quentin state prison, we saw how sophisticated some inmate weaponry can be. this homemade pistol is known as a zip gun. >> this portion is filled with ground up match heads. the two holes here, the inmate inserts a wick, inmate takeses a plunger, pokes shrapnel in the open end. pieces of metal, ground up zippers. when the target walks by the cell, may it be an officer, inmate, the inmate lights this. when it goes down, strikes the match heads, basically acts like a firecracker and shoots the shrapnel out. >> the majority of inmate-manufactured weapons or shanks are designed for slashing and stabbing. the ease and with lethal weapons are made is shocking. this san quentin inmate who goes by the name speedy, agreed to show correctional staff and "lockup" cameras just how simple it can be. he starts by using a roll of toilet paper as a crude forge to melt plastic coffee cup lids. >> i'm making a weapon right now. melting this plastic down into a shape. what i'm doing, i'm trying to get a little wad of it into a shape, to where i have something to work with, you

few, though, made as lasting an impression on us at solon league of california's san quentin state prisonot 12 years. i only got 13 days now. so i'm really preparing him to what is ahead of him. we keep our house clean. >> league gave both his cellmate and our producer a lesson on the finer points of laundry behind bars. >> i get my t-shirt, grab my bar of soap, dip it in the toilet. keep my toilet fresh and clean. scrub it out. like so. and once the toilet fills up, it's fresh water now. i can just rinse it. i fold my towels. put it here. right up under here is my clothesline. >> league went on to give us a cooking demonstration, using toilet paper like a stovetop burner. >> take this, set it on the edge of the toilet. because it's got to breathe. set it here, light it at the bottom. as you see, it's like a fire. you hold your can over it, and you cook. therefore your water gets hot. flush it down. grab a damp towel because you don't want it to be on your toilet. don't want to burn your toilet up. i get my bowl, crack my soup open and do my eating. >> over the years, we've also seen anot

>> among the nation's most notorious institutions, san quentin state prison.as spent months documenting life on the inside, where gangs, drugs and sheer boredom make up a violent mix. this is "lockup san quentin: extended stay."

. >> in 1987, the "today" show went to san quentin state prison and interviewed the infamous charlesckled and unapologetic. >> you know, if i wanted to kill somebody, i'd take this book and beat you to death with it. and i wouldn't feel a thing. >> the interview sparked controversy within nbc. >> we here on the "today" show staff debated among ourselves whether to air his answers. half of our staff said, absolutely not.