Taft TMCCF & Taft Federal - Taft, CA
First I thought, “Why does Taft City Hall need to house so many people (period) and in such a small space (secondly).” It looks way worse than Taft Federal Correctional Institution (bottom right).
First let’s start with the federal institution, the first privately run one I found. The Bureau of Prisons says
The majority of BOP inmates in private prisons are sentenced criminal aliens who may be deported upon completion of their sentence.
I can’t tell if the owners of Taft Federal Correctional Institution are actually legit but they’re saying the right things on their website, pro-education, pro-training, social integration, etc. Sounds good.
Eventually find that Taft Modified Community Correctional Facility has an interesting history (more here) of being opened in order to relieve overcrowding (AB 1591), closed by realignment (AB 109) and then reopened under contract with the CDCR, I’m assuming because of recent crowding.
Still thought it’s weird that the small, community jail is so much smaller than the federal prison. More googling… and I find way more information on Taft than any other facility I’ve looked at so far. First I find a number of blogs of prisoners, which sounds good, paired with the fact that the private owner might actually be running some helpful programs.
Then I found this and this then that Taft federal prison is where Jordon Belfortshared a cell with Tommy Chong, where Jordon was “hiring other inmates to do his chores for him.” More that I can’t help but quote:
“We were part of the elite gang,” Chong says… they ate meals “Goodfellas-style” with another famous inmate, the PGA Tour caddie Eric Larson… Larson “worked in the garden, and he grew these fresh, delicious vegetables, and he used to cook them,” Chong says. “We had these beautiful vegetarian, healthy meals every night, and Jordan was part of the gang. We had a nice little hierarchy there, intelligent famous guys hanging out together.”
Great, so the only prison where I easily found information about good programs is the rich people prison. If you zoom in on Google Maps satellite view you can see baseball fields, soccer fields, tennis and basketball courts, and then more over here, which I haven’t seen at others.
I also found a page of friends and partners talking about the prison. Lots of people writing about family getting sent from one prison to another, and having to get reapproved for visits each time, because heaven forbid that be standardized or centralized and records be consistent. So let’s wrap up with this, which just crushed me at the end of the night, reminding me that the dots are people. (emphasis mine)
What are the public transit options for getting to Taft CI from Bakersfield? I don’t have a license, and I’d be visiting from Canada (flying from Vancouver to Phoenix to Bakersfield) if my man is sent there. The hotels/motels in Maricopa and Taft seem really sketchy and unsafe for a petite 25-year-old like me… so I’d be staying in Bakersfield, but I need to know how I would get to the prison without a vehicle. Any info?
Yea, that’s what we do to prisoners and families here, welcome to America, my Canadian friend.
[original map]
