In the years after the prison opened, staff noticed that birds were dying along the perimeter fence with unusual regularity. The electrified fence designed to prevent escape was also killing birds that landed on it or flew through it — a secondary consequence that no one had anticipated in the facility's design. An ornithologist was brought in to assess the problem and ultimately redesigned the fence configuration to reduce the electrocution risk for wildlife. It is an oddly tender detail in an otherwise austere institutional context: a maximum-security prison in the Imperial Valley adjusting its perimeter infrastructure to protect migratory birds. The Salton Sea and its surrounding wildlife refuges are just miles away, and the Pacific Flyway passes directly overhead.

Calipatria has housed some of California's most notorious criminals. Angelo Buono Jr., convicted of the Hillside Strangler murders alongside his cousin Kenneth Bianchi, died at the prison in September 2002 at age 67 — reportedly of heart failure, having spent two decades incarcerated there. Patrick Kearney, known as the Trashbag Killer for his method of disposing of victims, was also among those held at Calipatria. These men arrived at a prison that had barely been open a decade, and their presence gave Calipatria a particular weight in California's institutional history. The prison does not publicize its notable inmates. The work of the facility is containment and, in theory, rehabilitation, conducted in a place where the temperature outside can kill an unprotected person within hours.

In August 2005, a riot broke out inside Calipatria that injured 25 inmates and 25 staff members. Riots in California's prison system have a complex sociology — they often track racial lines enforced by the gang structures that operate inside facilities, and the triggers can be mundane provocations that ignite tensions built up over months. The 2005 disturbance at Calipatria was serious enough to draw statewide attention and prompted investigations into conditions within the facility. California's prison overcrowding crisis was at its worst in these years; the state's correctional system held nearly twice the population it was designed for, and facilities like Calipatria operated under pressures that made violence more likely and rehabilitation less possible.

The prison employs a significant portion of Calipatria's civilian workforce, and the economic relationship between correctional facilities and rural California communities is complicated. The jobs are stable, the benefits are good, and the work is relentless. Calipatria State Prison operates 365 days a year in conditions that make physical comfort difficult for staff and inmates alike. The desert offers no seasonal relief — winters are mild, summers are brutal, and the dust from the exposed Salton Sea playa drifts into the valley with the prevailing winds. For the people confined inside, the landscape is invisible. For those who work there, it is simply the backdrop of a difficult job in a place that exists, partly, because someone had to put a prison somewhere, and the desert was available.