The California system has been brutal, corrupt, and near dark ages for more than a century.
There is a great book on the 1900-1920s era. Jack Black, You Can't Win. He starts off as kid stealling and doing railroad heists in Idaho and Utah, then moves to San Francisco to pull upscale jewelry jobs in the fancy stores downtown. When he lands in his first California prison, he gets scared. They nearly kill him by putting him in a `strait jacket' for his own `protection'. The straps are tighten to suffocate him, but he manages to somehow live. I never realized you could do that with a strait jacket, but it certainly makes sense.
Once out of jail Black gets a brief career in print in Atlantic or Harper's back east during some fleeting prison reform movement that soon disappears, as he does when his money runs out...
CG