California Prison Honors 50 Years of Holding Inmates

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By San Joaquin News Service

Published: 07/16/2003

On a cool, breezy day with fluffy clouds racing across a sky more reminiscent of spring than summer, Deuel Vocational Institution celebrated a half century with several hundred former employees, official dignitaries and their families recently. Warden Claude E. Finn joined former DVI wardens Midge Carroll and Ana Maria Olivarez and dozens of former and retired staff members in recounting key portions of the institution's history.
They also documented the prison's transformation from a young men's vocational institution to one of the state's primary reception areas, where those entering the state's prison population are academically tested and psychologically evaluated before they are transferred to one of the state's 33 prisons.
'When DVI was opened in 1953, people then, like now, didn't want a prison down the road,' Finn said. 'They told the city that it was primarily a youth vocational institution. Over the years, our mission has changed, and our once-touted vocational and academic training is becoming a fond memory.'
From the outside, DVI looks like military barracks. The land, which was previously a more than 5,000-acre farm owned by Dan Casson that saw service as an airport during World War II, is flat with several trees planted to try to stall the wind's endless progress across the Central Valley floor. Only the bars on the windows of the buildings and the fact that the guard towers and fences look in instead of out suggest that the complex is a prison.
Since the initial prison was built at a cost of $12 million, the complex has been repeatedly expanded and added to, either to make space for a new program or, more commonly, to make more room for inmates.
'In those days, there was no I-5,' Finn said. 'This was the biggest deal in town.' Retired prison officer and longtime Tracy resident Capt. Joe Dooman started working for the state in 1951. He came to DVI on July 1, 1953, before even the first inmate arrived.
'We were the seventh institution in the state,' Dooman said. 'Now we have 33. All of the prisons then had about 1,200 beds except for San Quentin, which had 2,000.' All of the state's prisons, DVI included, now house between 3,000 and 4,000 inmates. Since DVI is a reception area, it holds around 4,000 of what the state labels as level 3 and level 4, medium security inmates.
'It was forever changing,' Dooman said. 'The missions continue to change.' Dooman worked at the prison as the major prison gangs organized in the 1960s and 1970s. As more adults came to the prison, gangs such as the Aryan Brotherhood and the Black Guerrilla Family formed.
Dooman said that the Mexican Mafia, another national prison gang, formed at DVI. In 1973 and 1974, prison officials had to separate different gang members into different prisons to reduce prison violence.
The step proved successful, but by then, DVI had earned a reputation as one of California's bloodiest prisons. In the history of the prison, three officers have been killed in the line of duty: Raymond Messer, who was murdered before DVI opened at a preliminary facility in 1951, Connie Prock, who was killed in 1963, and Jerry Sanders in 1973.
The prison did prove to be a boon to Tracy. Prison Lt. John Alves, who retired recently after 31 years as an officer, 27 of which at DVI, said that several DVI employees lived in what were then 'the newest houses in Tracy.'

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