Prison protests center on isolation, food, family visits (30,000 start hunger strike)

[morningfog]

California officials don’t plan until Tuesday afternoon to update the situation in prisons throughout the state, where 30,000 inmates on Monday began refusing meals.

The mass protest was called for months ago by a group of inmate leaders in isolation at Pelican Bay State Prison over conditions in solitary confinement, where inmates may be held indefinitely without access to phone calls or rehabilitation programs, or outdoor exercise beyond a concrete pen.

But inmates in at least five other prisons have provided their own lists of demands. They seek such things as warmer clothing, cleaning supplies, and better food, as well as changes in how suspected gang activity is investigated and punished.

Lawyers for a group of Pelican Bay hunger strike leaders, who also are suing in federal court over what they contend are inhumane conditions, are to meet with their clients Tuesday.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will not officially recognize the protest as a hunger strike until inmates have missed nine consecutive meals, a point that will not be reached until late Wednesday.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/political/la-me-pc-ff-prison-protests-center-over-isolation-food-family-visits-20130709,0,7876253.story

[rdking647]

1. the strike leader

is serving 25-life for murder. pelican bay is a super max for the worst of the worst,ordinary prisioners dont end up there. no sympathy for him.
he;s still alive. his victim has been in a smaller coffin for the past 28 years

[morningfog]

3. There should be no such thing as a super max prison in the US.

I strongly disagree with your post. Even convicted murders deserve that the government treat them with human dignity.

[rdking647]

4. what if they continue killing in prision?

what if they organize prision gangs,or white supremacist groups?

there are some bad people who need to be locked up 24 hours a day

[morningfog]

5. Those convicted of murder have the lowest recidivism

of any crime. They are also the least likely to reoffend with the same crime, murder. Over 90% of all prisoners will be released. Solitary and inhumane conditions increase recidivism, and restrict access to mental health and treatment programs. It makes us less safe. No one is served by solitary, not even the prison itself. It requires more resources and increases violence an animosity against the correctional officers.

[rdking647]

6. but some do kill again

and will keep killing unless kept in isolation

[morningfog]

7. Some? How many kill repeatedly while in general incarceration?

How do you know which will kill again?

[haele]

9. It's not about the strike leader, it's about the conditions in all the prisons.

California has a seriously aggressive "zero tolerance, throw them into solitary" policy where you don't just have to be a major gang member to get thrown into solitary, and people are being put in there for the length of their sentences - people who aren't serving life sentences, who haven't murdered anyone, and who will be getting out when they're in their forties - yet they're not getting any sort of rehabilitation or any other help to straighten their lives out while they are in solitary.

There are over 10,000 prisoners currently in solitary confinement, and perhaps only half of them are murderous gang-bangers or prison-yard thugs who are serving life. The other half are petty gang-bangers and prison trouble-makers who are serving five to fifteen or five to twenty-five. Thank you, War on Drugs!

Not only that, the state Prison Complex has reneged on many of the promises they had made to prisoner advocacy and rehabilitation groups, as well as ignoring California and Federal supreme court rulings to address the very serious issues of prison health care and policies concerning treatment of prisoners. The Correctional Officer's union is the most powerful union in the state, so if you pissed off a guard, they'll find any reason they can to throw you into solitary for a long time, just to teach you and other prisoners a lesson. Prison Manufacturing and Prison Call centers are big business here in California - when the maquiadoras began to charge "too much", many technical component manufacturers turned to prisoners to make electronics parts for $1.20 a day.
The prisons no longer want troublesome prisoners who can't or won't work.

Yes, your infamous Gangsta Thug Head strike leader has ulterior motives here, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there are some very real problems in the California Prison system that have been going on for a very long time. The fact that over 36,000 prisoners across "gang affiliations" and those who aren't in gangs are going on strike, including the over 7000 trustee prisoners who are refusing to "work" for what passes as good money, says this is something people should pay attention to.

After all, who knows when you or someone you know (or love) is picked up for a stupid mistake in California, and find themselves doing five to ten in a state prison. That's happened to three people I've known and liked - a daughter of a co-worker of mine (drunk, just over 18, bipolar, attempted suicide by cop), a co-worker (bar fight with an off-duty police officer over a girlfriend), and a shipyard welder who worked with my team a lot (former gang member picked up on a drug sweep in a bad area, looking for "keep me awake" drugs due to 12 hour shifts - third strike for being picked up around the wrong people with only enough to use).

And if you do get picked up and put away, there's around a 2% chance that you or that person will piss off a guard, a gang-member, or a brown-nosing trustee and end up in solitary confinement for the rest of that term. Being in solitary for a year or two doesn't help you one bit when going up for that parole hearing...so you'd really be screwed by the system.

Haele

[haele]

8. The hunger strike is not just on the conditions, but the way prisoners get into solitary confinement

My boss does pro-bono for the appeals courts on the side, and from second-hand, he knows of someone in on drug and burglary who has been in solitary for seven years now, based on a couple of drawings of tattoos in a letter he sent to his girlfriend - and because he successfully talked back to a guard.
The drawings were the evidence they used that this guy was supposed to have been a gang member - one of the tattoos was a gang tattoo, even though there was no other gang evidence and he didn't associate with any members of any one gang in particular while he had been in general population.

Mouthy or troublesome prisoners are being "sentenced" into solitary for decades on the slightest situations - whether or not they are a danger to the population or themselves. The prisoners are not asking to not be sent into solitary confinement, or to turn it into Club California, they are asking for limits on the time spent and better oversight on how the determination to put someone into solitary is made and how they are treated while in solitary confinement.
There are more and more non-gang members/non-lifers who are in solitary - people who are finishing out a "3-strikes" or have 10/20 year sentences for "stupid shit while drunk or high" and get put into solitary because they're "too mouthy" or have "too much 'tude" and subsequently go stir-crazy there because they've been stuck in a hole by themselves with nothing but monitored TV for almost a decade. These are people who become unable to function around others - and then the State lets out without any time or taking any trouble to re-orient them into society.

That's what the hunger strike really is about. How we make prison the holding pen for disposable people.

Haele

Is that what "prison" is for?