Despite a virtual blackout on media coverage of prisons and prisoners in California, news of scandals involving prison officials give cause for alarm about what is happening behind bars. One inmate provides a view of 35 years of California prison history from the inside, and warns that an explosion is in the making. The writer, who is on parole and fears official retaliation, asks to be anonymous. A book on his experiences at the California Youth Authority has been published.

Recent news of scandalous behavior by guards at California prisons -- "gladiator" contests at Corcoran, killings at Pelican Bay and Susanville -- show how important it is to learn from history. As a witness to more than 35 years of California's penal policies from the inside, I know that current practices will fail both prisoners and the citizens of California.

In 1956, I was committed to the California Youth Authority (CYA) where I was beaten, raped, placed in solitary confinement for months, and generally preyed upon, not only by those incarcerated with me, but also by those entrusted to care for me. I was 14 years old.

When I was released at 17, I was a seriously disturbed young man, much more disturbed than before I was "corrected." I was angry. I hated everything and everyone, and determined to reap my revenge upon an uncaring society. In that process, I left behind hundreds of victims.

In 1961, just before my 18th birthday, I was arrested and convicted of burglary and sentenced to up to 15 years in state prison. During those years, the 1960s, violence prevailed in California prisons -- every day one or more convicts was murdered. Guards were also stabbed, beaten, often killed. There was a continuing battle for control of the system.

Finally, prisoners were unified in a way that the administration -- with all its resources -- could not prevent. From deep under the mire of cruel and inhuman conditions, came thousands of men, white, black and brown, standing together on the prison yards with clubs, knives, zip guns and pipe bombs to face those who stood high above them with guns and tear gas grenades.

There the convicts screamed, "No more!" There they demanded to be treated humanely. There they cried out for an end to the beatings, the forced injections of drugs, the shock treatments and lobotomies. There, utter frustration erupted into riots. There, the guards made prisoners lie face down, handcuffed their wrists behind them, and beat them -- some to near death, some to death.

This back and forth struggle for control went on for years, until the brutal conditions finally erupted in the public's consciousness with a series of killings of prisoners by guards and guards by prisoners.

Finally, under court order, the Department of Corrections granted an Inmate Bill of Rights, ending much of the abuse, the extreme cruel conditions, the routine brutalizing of prisoners. The prison population, wary at first, finally began to feel safe from guards as well as each other -- and so, slowly, prisoners allowed the administration to regain control.

Declaring victory, the CDC built super-max prisons at Pelican Bay and Special Housing Units (SHUs) in other prisons to provide maximum control, locking rule breakers and gang members into solitary confinement. And so it has remained.

Now, California Governor Pete Wilson and the CDC are turning back the clock. The Inmates Bill of Rights is gone. Rehabilitative programs are gone. Educational programs are gone. Recreational activities that release pent-up frustrations, like lifting weights, are gone. Personal grooming choices -- relating to clothing or hair length or facial hair -- are gone. Media access to prisoners is gone. Even law libraries are going.

The governor who hopes to reap electoral rewards for being "tough on crime" is leading the state back to the future. He has forgotten (or chooses to ignore) history. Men who were once satisfied with conditions that resemble humanness will not forever tolerate being systematically stripped of all humanity. Should they unite and choose to face possible death over conditions they consider intolerable, prisoners will die, guards will die, buildings will burn, cells will be destroyed. Leaders will rise up followed by great numbers of prisoners, and the battle will once again be waged for control of the prison empire.

While Wilson gears up to run for President of the United States, largely on the backs of the more than 150,000 men and women locked up in this state, the citizens of California must face the real possibility that they will pay the cost of his campaign -- a cost that will not only be measured in the billions of dollars, but in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives.