heard a jaw-dropping story. originally i came to jail february 21st, 1981, convicted in san bernardino county for murder/robbery. given a sentence of 34 years to life, randall was 18 at the time of his conviction. but his rap sheet started much earlier. i have been gang banging since i was 9 years old. coming from an impoverished neighborhood in southern california, my mother and father tried to move to pomona to establish a better life for us. by the time we moved there, it s mostly a middle-to-upper class neighborhood, being already bit by the gang bug, we just exported the gang life out there. randall s gang activity led to his incarceration at the youth facility and soon after, prison. there he joined a militant gang called the black guerrilla family. ended up in 15 years solitary confinement. tried to get back into the main line, but it was kind of hard.
pelican bay s worst riot was fueled by the inmates impulse for violence. and many of those inmates ended up here. the security housing unit, or the shu. inmates that were placed into the shu housing unit were placed in here for the most part because of violence. that violence could be against other inmates or against officers. it was here in pelican bay s most secure unit that we came across perhaps the prison s most dangerous inmate. my name is scanvinski hymes. i got the name from my mother. she wanted me to have the name no other black man in america would have. hymes was originally sent to prison for possessing a weapon in a youth facility. at the time our cameras profiled him in 2000, he had been locked up for more than 12 years, almost half his life. everything is the same. nothing really changes too much. i mean, wake up in the morning,
originally i came to jail february 21st, 1981, convicted in san bernardino county for murder/robbery. given a sentence of 34 years to life, randall was 18 at the time of his conviction. but his rap sheet started much earlier. i have been gang banging since i was 9 years old. coming from an impoverished neighborhood in southern california, my mother and father tried to move to pomona to establish a better life for us. by the time we moved there, it s mostly a middle-to-upper class neighborhood, being already bit by the gang bug, we just exported the gang life out there. randall s gang activity led to his incarceration at the youth facility and soon after, prison. there he joined a militant gang called the black guerrilla family. ended up in 15 years solitary confinement. tried to get back into the main line, but it was kind of hard. after facing walls for 15 years
i was cleaning blood off the walls and benches in here for a good hour. pelican bay s worst riot was fuelled by the impulse for violence and many of those inmates ended up here in the security housing unit or the shoe. inmates placed into the shoe housing unit were placed in for the most part because of violence and the violence could be against other inmates or the officers. it was here in pelican bay s most secure unit that we came across the prison s most dangerous inmate. i have been named and my mother wanted me to have a name no other black man in america would have. he was sent to prison for possessing a weapon in a youth facility. at the time our cameras profiled him, he was locked up for more than 12 years, almost half his
neighborhood, being already bit by the gang bug, we just exported the gang life out there. randall s gang activity led to his incarceration at the youth facility and soon after, prison. there he joined a militant gang called the black guerrilla family. ended up in 15 years solitary confinement. tried to get back into the main line, but it was kind of hard. after facing walls for 15 years and handcuffs everywhere i went, i didn t adjust too well. i still became more assaultive, more combative, more violent. after 25 years of incarceration, randall had plenty of violent episodes to share. i had threw a bomb in an inmate s cell and blew his toilet off the wall and blew a patch of his leg off. an officer came to my door. i made a zip gun out of some magazines and i shot him in the face. as the story unfolds about