Slated to close, California Men’s Colony facility was originally Camp SLO’s hospital
The original part of California Men’s Colony, the West Facility, is being shut down.
It isn’t the first time this newspaper has carried that story.
The facility was slated to shut down in 1970, but apparently that plan was later reversed.
CMC opened in the post World War II era of explosive California population growth. According to an almanac published by the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in 1969, the state had doubled in population every 20 years since 1860. Between 1949 and 1969, the state went from 10 million people to 20 million.
Meanwhile, the prison system struggled to keep up.
As military operations wound down, the California Youth Authority facility was built on former military property next to the Paso Robles airport and California Men’s Colony opened on the former hospital section of Camp San Luis Obispo in 1954. Much of that facility still has the look of the former army base.
The state made a bigger investment in the facility at the end of the decade, and on May 20, 1961, the Telegram-Tribune had several photos and articles related to the newly opened medium-security East Facility. That’s the side that looks more like a traditional high-walled concrete prison.
The new facility cost $20 million to build, and the payroll in 1961 was expected to exceed $3 million.
Part of the county’s economy has for decades been supported by the payrolls at state institutions such as CMC. At least 450 jobs were added when the East facility came online.
Gov. Pat Brown took pride that the facility offered rehabilitative treatment and wasn’t strictly a punitive facility.
John Klinger, superintendent of the facility, wrote: “In the West Facility, which was established in 1954, the emphasis is on care and treatment for elderly prisoners, who are sent to Los Padres from the department’s two reception centers as well as from other institutions.
Apparently Los Padres used to be part of the original name of CMC.
“About one-half of the inmates in the West Facility are infirm to some degree either through advanced age or chronic ailments. The other half are selected for transfer to the Men’s Colony because they have the strength and skill to do the work required in such an institution and are believed to be trustworthy under the minimum custody situation which exists in the West Facility.”
Richard McGee, director of the state correctional department, hinted at the urgent need for expansion, mentioning that the East Facility was built on “an emergency basis.”
Four 600-man wings were designed to manage groups with the efficiency of scale but small enough that staff could get to know inmates.
A central utility core provides shops, schools, kitchens, services and administrative offices.
McGee wrote: “Success will not be decided by how many men it holds — but by how many men never return to it.”
Then, a decade after the East Facility was built, the original section was reportedly slated for closure, the Telegram-Tribune reported on Dec. 5, 1970, an order that apparently was never fully implemented.
Men’s Colony West Facility to phase out operations
As the California Men’s Colony West Facility is deactivated during the next three months, the population of the 150-acre prison compound will drop from about 1,200 to 170 men.
The cluster of World War II wooden military buildings, most of them connected by incredibly long enclosed corridors, has been used as a prison since 1954. The compound was formerly an army hospital — part of Camp San Luis Obispo.
Life at the minimum security correctional facility appears somewhat like that at a military installation, with the exception of the constant presence of prison guards.
The men live in dormitory-like buildings and walk around within the prison compound’s high fence. They line up for meals served in three mess halls.
The grounds are tidily landscaped and at this time of year, everything, including the hills all around the hilly prison site, is bright green.
When the population drops at the prison facility, the centers of activity — the tobacco factory where raw tobacco is processed for state institutions, the kitchens, the laundry, churches and crafts shop — all become silent.
There will be lots of room for the few men who remain to fight forest fires and maintain the buildings.
Prison authorities say the buildings will be maintained in case there is ever need for more minimum security prison space. Right now the state says it has too much of that kind of space, and that’s why the West Facility is closing.
