Hunger Strike At Pelican Bay Brings To Light Conditions in California’s Prisons

In May, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons were so bad that they violate the Eight Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In fact, the public is increasingly supporting a reform of the criminal justice system, primarily as a way to reduce costs. In short, Californians would rather have shorter prison sentences for non-violent offenders than foot the bill for rising prison costs.

According to a report from the ACLU, “This year alone, the state plans to spend $9.8 billion on the prison system, ranking it one of the state’s highest budget expenditures. Even with all this spending, California still has the highest recidivism rate in the country – with 70% of individuals who go to prison committing subsequent crimes. Clearly, more spending on prisons doesn’t equal a safer California.”

On July 21, the LA Times reported on a poll “Cash-strapped Californians would rather ease ‘third-strike’ penalties for some criminals and accept felons as neighbors than dig deeper into their pockets to relieve prison overcrowding.”

The Times continued, “The survey, by The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, shows a clear shift in attitude by residents forced to confront the cost of tough sentencing laws passed in recent decades.”

They continued, “The ailing economy far outweighs crime as the top concern for most people today, the pollsters said.”

What they find is that 60% of respondents, including majorities across all parties, “said they would support reducing life sentences for third strike offenders convicted of property crimes such as burglary, auto theft and shoplifting.”

Moreover, 70% support the early release of low-level offenders whose crimes were not violent.  Another 80% prefer to keep these offenders in county custody rather than prison.

The Times reports that “the pollsters noted that people don’t generally favor the release of convicted criminals.” But “when it comes to prisons,” said Linda DiVall of American Viewpoint, “voters are looking for solutions that don’t raise taxes or take money from other priorities like education.”

What is not getting covered in the wake of the Supreme Court decision is the actual conditions in the prisons.

Justice Kennedy, writing for the narrow majority, described “telephone-booth-sized cages without toilets” that prison officials have used to house suicidal inmates.

Suicide rates in the state’s prisons, Justice Kennedy wrote, have been 80 percent higher than the average for inmates nationwide.

A lower court in the recent Supreme Court decision said it was “an uncontested fact” that “an inmate in one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six or seven days due to constitutional deficiencies.”

“A prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society,” Justice Kennedy wrote.

The other shoe has now fallen, with prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison protesting the alleged over-use of “Security Housing Units” where inmates are housed in windowless and soundproof cells and kept in there 23 hours a day in an effort to isolate non-violent prisoners.

Wrote the LA Times on July 9, “The protest started July 1 at the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay, a prison near the Oregon border that houses some of the state’s most hard-core offenders. The isolation units there — part of a trio of such units statewide — are reserved for prisoners considered to be extremely violent, many of them with gang ties. The units have cells that are windowless and soundproof, to limit inmate communication. Prisoners are released for about an hour a day so they can walk freely in a small area with high concrete walls.”

They added, “Inmates involved in the strike have a number of complaints, including a need for better food, warmer clothes and improved educational opportunities.”

California Prison Focus lists five demands:

1. Eliminate group punishments. Instead, practice individual accountability. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race. This policy has been applied to keep prisoners in the SHU indefinitely and to make conditions increasingly harsh.

2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. Prisoners are accused of being active or inactive participants of prison gangs using false or highly dubious evidence, and are then sent to longterm isolation (SHU). They can escape these tortuous conditions only if they “debrief,” that is, provide information on gang activity. Debriefing produces false information (wrongly landing other prisoners in SHU, in an endless cycle) and can endanger the lives of debriefing prisoners and their families.

3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to longterm solitary confinement. This bipartisan commission specifically recommended to “make segregation a last resort” and “end conditions of isolation.” Yet as of May 18, 2011, California kept 3,259 prisoners in SHUs and hundreds more in Administrative Segregation waiting for a SHU cell to open up. Some prisoners have been kept in isolation for more than thirty years.

4. Provide adequate food. Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food that do not conform to prison regulations. There is no accountability or independent quality control of meals.

5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates. The hunger strikers are pressing for opportunities “to engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities…” Currently these opportunities are routinely denied, even if the prisoners want to pay for correspondence courses themselves. Examples of privileges the prisoners want are: one phone call per week, and permission to have sweatsuits and watch caps. (Often warm clothing is denied, though the cells and exercise cage can be bitterly cold.) All of the privileges mentioned in the demands are already allowed at other SuperMax prisons (in the federal prison system and other states).

The ACLU on July 19 issued a statement in support of “the striking prisoners’ demands to end cruel and inhumane conditions in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison.  These conditions include prolonged, solitary confinement in small, windowless concrete boxes with little to no human interaction and other severe physical deprivations.”

They continued, “Not only are such conditions inhumane and harmful, but they also jeopardize public safety.  Solitary confinement causes and exacerbates mental illness, and prisoners who are subjected to such extreme isolation cannot properly reintegrate into society, resulting in higher recidivism rates.”

Moreover, “An alarming number of prisoners are released directly from secure housing units into the community.  The CDCR must implement policies that enhance safety both within prisons and within our communities.  Current practices do not achieve these equally important goals.”

In short, “The ACLU calls on the State to re-double its efforts to engage in meaningful negotiations with the strikers to bring the hunger strike to a swift and peaceful conclusion.  In addition, the ACLU calls on Governor Brown and CDCR Secretary, Matthew Cate, to significantly curtail the use of the SHU at Pelican Bay and other California prisons and to provide all prisoners confined to the SHU items, services and programs necessary for psychological and physical well-being including warm clothing, out-of-cell time and participation in rehabilitative programs.”

Marilyn McMahon, Executive Director of California Prison Focus reported late this week that the prisoners had agreed to end the strike for now.

Secretary Cate began threatening to issue force-feeding orders to prisoners refusing to eat.

While leaders at Pelican Bay have confirmed that they have accepted an offer from the CDCR, “Hunger strikers in other prisons continue to refuse food  – in at least CCI Tehachapi, Corcoran and Calipatria.”

One of the blogs covering the situation reports “They confirmed CDCR’s announcement that immediate changes in SHU policy are the opportunity for some educational programs, provision of all-weather caps (beanies) and wall calendars.  More substantially, the leaders explained the CDCR has agreed to investigate changes to other policies including the gang validation and debriefing processes, and it is now up to supporters outside prison to make sure the CDCR upholds their promise.”

The report continued, “The prisoners see they’re ending the hunger strike in success:  the CDCR has been hauled out into the light of day – the torture in the SHU (Security Housing Unit) at Pelican Bay and other prisons has been made known to the people outside the prison walls – and the CDCR has been made to give its words there will be larger changes.”

The hunger strike brought statewide attention to the conditions in the prison, just as the Supreme Court case illustrated to the public the costs of current incarceration policies.

The next question, however, is whether any real change results from this.

—David M. Greenwald reporting