Thousands-strong strike is the latest chapter in the state's unfolding prison crisis
July 16, 2013 3:47 PM ET
For more than a week, the California prison system has been gripped
by the largest hunger strike in its history. Today, campaigners say
that some 12,000 inmates continue to refuse food in roughly two-thirds
of the state's 32 facilities. That's down from the 30,000 who kicked
off the strike, but still more than twice the number who participated
in a similar action two years earlier.
The strike – which began with a group of men held in isolation in
Pelican Bay State Prison before spreading across the state – was
principally motivated by California's aggressive use of solitary
confinement. In many cases, the strikers' demands are simple: one photo
a year, one phone call per week, permission to use wall calendars.
"The prisoners are not on a suicide mission," says Roger White,
campaign director of a Bay Area coalition called Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity. "If they didn't
have hope that things could change and that CDCR [the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] could actually implement
the demands, they wouldn't be striking."
In 2011, a United Nations torture rapporteur called for an absolute and international ban on indefinite and
prolonged solitary confinement, arguing that just a few a days
locked up alone in a cell has been shown to produce lifelong mental
health problems. In California, hundreds of Pelican Bay prisoners have
spent a decade or more in solitary confinement – some for as many as 20
or 30 years.
The same year the UN rapporteur called for the abolishment of
solitary confinement, prisoners at Pelican Bay launched their first
hunger strike. "The point that they're trying to make is that back in
2011, CDCR made a number of promises around the demands that the
[prisoners] put forth," White says. "CDCR spent the last two years
basically ignoring and playing games with their agreements."
The prison system in California is in utter disarray. Earlier this
month, an investigation uncovered evidence of dozens of
incidents in which nearly 150 female prisoners were pressured into
unauthorized sterilizations. The month before that, a federal court ordered thousands of prisoners in two facilities
relocated because they were at risk of contracting a potentially
lethal disease called valley fever. The state refused, arguing it would
cause race riots. And just last week, a federal judge ruled that the
prison system was failing to provide even the most basic medical needs for prisoners,
including clean water.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that overcrowding and poor
living conditions in California prisons violate the Eighth Amendment
ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But Governor Jerry Brown has
aggressively resisted court orders to reduce the state's prison
population. Federal judges have accused the state of being
"deliberately indifferent." Brown believes "the prison crisis is over in California."
The solitary confinement concerns that led to the hunger strike are
directly linked to over-crowding. In 2011, violent prison gangs in
California were linked to over 1,700 in-house homicides, attempted
homicides and attacks on other prisoners or guards. In states across
the country, prison officials have responded to gangs by removing
violent members and placing them in isolation. California, however, has
taken the extra step of throwing anybody who can be remotely linked to
a gang activity into maximum security and isolation facilities. In the
process, hundreds of prisoners – some of them non-violent offenders –
have found themselves swept up and moved into isolation, often over the
tenuous accusations of another prisoner, the possession of artwork or
simply reading the wrong book. They now reside in the cramped,
windowless rooms of Pelican Bay's infamous Security Housing Unit (SHU).
According to a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of 10 Pelican Bay
prisoners, the primary reason prisoners stay in the facility's maximum
security and isolation chambers is failure or inability to "debrief" on
the gang activity of other prisoners. Critics say this produces a
situation in which the only way prisoners can end their isolation is to
provide information they may or may not have – which may or may not be
true – and potentially pull other inmates into unwarranted isolation or
put themselves at risk of retaliation.
The California prisoners who are currently refusing to eat have drawn up five demands that they hope will
bring about more humane conditions and put an end to abuse. Prisoner
Hunger Strike Solidarity has posted the prisoners' demands online, "in
their own words." They include:
1. End group punishment and administrative abuse.
The inmates argue that Pelican Bay officials punish groups in order
to address individual rule violations. "This includes the
administration's abusive, pretextual use of 'safety and concern' to
justify what are unnecessary punitive acts," the prisoners say. The
inmates charge that the policy has been used to justify "indefinite"
status in isolation units and restriction of privileges.
2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify gang status
criteria.
According to the prisoners, the debriefing policy "is often demanded
in return for better food or release from the SHU. Debriefing puts the
safety of prisoners and their families at risk, because they are then
viewed as 'snitches.'"
3. Comply with established recommendations concerning the
use of solitary confinement.
The 2006 U.S. Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons
lays out a number of recommendations for California's department of
corrections that the hunger striking prisoners would like to see
implemented. This includes insuring that inmates "have regular
meaningful contact and freedom from extreme physical deprivations that
are known to cause lasting harm" and that they are given "the
opportunity to engage in meaningful self-help treatment, work,
education, religious, and other productive activities relating to
having a sense of being a part of the community."
The prisoners also support the commission's recommendations to
release immediately return all prisoners who have been indefinitely
held in isolation for 10 to 40 years back into the general population
and provide quality health care and treatment.
4. Provide adequate and nutritious food.
Inmates say food is used "as a tool to punish SHU inmates." They
demand that the prison system "cease the practice of denying adequate
food, and provide a wholesome nutritional meals including special diet
meals, and allow inmates to purchase additional vitamin supplements."
5. Expand or provide constructive programming and privileges
for indefinite SHU inmates.
The hunger-striking prisoners have laid out a list of a dozen
privileges and programs they would like to see implemented. They ask to
be allowed one phone call per week and to receive one photograph each
year. They would like to be able to hang wall calendars. They want "art
paper, colored pens, small pieces of colored pencils, watercolors,
chalk." They want to be able to take correspondence courses with
proctored exams. For those in units that have television, they would
like some more channels.
SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!
Free All Political Prisoners!
www.jerichony.org
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