Old West Prison & Justice

The Yuma Territorial Prison was a brutal place for criminals to be sent. The first seven inmates entered the Territorial prison at Yuma, Arizona on July 1, 1876. They were locked into cells that they had constructed with their own hands. In the coming 33 years, a total of 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, lived in the prison. Their crimes ranged from murder to polygamy, with grand larceny being the most common. During that time, 111 of the prisoners died, mostly from tuberculosis, but even so, the stories indicate that some of them never left this place, even in death. Prison officials considered the punishments they imposed on the prisoners to be very humane for the time and mostly consisted of the “dark cell”, a place of isolation for the rule breakers, and a ball and chain for those who tried to escape. By 1907, the prison was severely overcrowded. The convicts constructed a new facility in Florence and the last of them were transferred away from Yuma by September 1909. Because of the situation with my brother, I’ve been a frequent visitor of prisons around the United States. The federal facility in Beaumont, Texas was only slightly worse than the prison in Leavenworth, Kansas and both places are worse than any Old West prison I’ve researched and that includes the Yuma Territorial Prison. It has been seven years now and I still cannot come to terms with what has happened to Rick. Over the last two years, I’ve prayed that I would die rather than endure anymore of the heartache. Nevertheless, here I am. I work nonstop on a series of western books and have found at times it’s the only thing that keeps me going. Today I’ll focus again on the book about Sam Sixkiller and outlaw Jack Powers. Justice comes a lot more swiftly to the people I write about than it does to the bad in real life.