30,000 California Prisoners Hunger Strike Against Long-Term Solitary Confinement

[Katashi_itto]

Source: Think Progress

An estimated 30,000 California inmates refused all three meals yesterday, in an announced hunger strike to protest prolonged solitary confinement that can last upwards of a decade.
The strike focuses on practices at Pelican Bay, an infamous facility that one of the American hikers held hostage in Iran called as bad or worse than the treatment he experienced in Iran.

A lawsuit last year alleged that more than 500 inmates have been held in solitary confinement for 10 to 28 year, and that 78 prisoners have been held in solitary for more than 20 years. Overall, recent estimates suggest some 80,000 inmates have been placed in solitary confinement, for as long as 42 years. Since then, corrections officials have begun reviewing isolation determinations and released nearly half of the 400 prisoners reviewed, according to the LA Times.
Confinement typically involves isolation for 23 hours a day in a small, often windowless room with a steel door. When prisoners are let out of the cell for showers at least 3 times a week, they are taken to another small, isolated space where they are sometimes locked for extended periods of time.

In an in-depth exposé for Mother Jones, formerly imprisoned hiker Shane Bauer subjected himself to solitary confinement at Pelican Bay last year, revealing the arbitrary, secret, and virtually irreversible manner in which individuals are placed in solitary confinement by an institutional gang investigator.
A common justification is to isolate those thought to be “associates” in prison gangs, and the types of evidence deemed to prove that fact have included possession of black literature, left-wing materials and writing about prisoner rights as evidence. What’s more, a California court ruled in January that Pelican Bay has been improperly using race as a proxy for gang membership, and subjected different races to varying treatments.

Defenders of the system point out that an internal appeal process exists. But when Bauer asked “for an example of an appeal resulting in a reversal of a gang validation, they couldn’t produce a single case. Gang investigator Barneburg, who has worked at Pelican Bay for 15 years, has never seen a validation appeal succeed either—evidence, he says, of his team’s thoroughness.”

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/09/2271221/30000-california-prisoners-hunger-strike-against-long-term-solitary-confinement/

[JimDandy]

1. Good for them. The conditions of solitary in CA

and the unfairness of general population prisoners being sent there based simply on weak or hearsay evidence is outrageous. The state needs to get a handle on this and stop or reduce their use of private prisons/contractors.

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. It's not just California, though

it's the USA, generally. The US Bureau of Prisons has over 12000 inmates in solitary confinement. See here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/gao-report-solitary-federal-prisons

[truedelphi]

2. Please keep this kicked and rec'ced.

Prisoners are arbitrarily being transferred into these solitary confinement, maximum prisons, and I believe a lot of it is done merely for profit. These maximum security prisons cost a lot of money to build, and to keep up and running.
Without an endless supply of warm bodies to keep them filled - the private companies running these prisons would be losing the money they thought they would be getting.

Rolling Stone detailed the life of one prisoner who was so transferred. He had not done that much wrong - he had been part of an armed robbery when initially sentenced. For no given reason, one day he was simply transferred from the regular prison he was in to a maximum prison where he was kept in solitary confinement. He went stir cray while in confinement, and even now, years after his release back into society, still has PTSD from the confinement experience.

Many prisoners figure out how to kill themselves. Others start mutilating their bodies beyond recognition - as they have gone nuts.

[felix_numinous]

3. Kick

[patrice]

4. K&R

[rhett o rick]

5. I wonder if we will see anyone from "the group" comment in this thread. nm

[ZombieHorde]

6. I wonder if they will tortured via force feeding. nt

[Katashi_itto]

7. Solitary isn't bad enough?

[ZombieHorde]

8. I don't want them to be forced fed.

I just wonder how this situation will be dealt with.

[Katashi_itto]

9. Ooo

[Gregorian]

10. It's time to knock off the stupidity. Low interest rates gave people the ability to build these crap

prisons.

And those days are over.

Not to mention that it's cruel, and counterproductive.

[Peace Patriot]

11. K&R! What a disgrace this is! nt

[HardTimes99]

12. Kick - nt

[WheelWalker]

13. K & R

[brett_jv]

14. Excellent idea ...

It's time this practice was stopped. Solitary Confinement for extended periods is a form of torture. People go irretrievably insane on a very regular basis, and arguably the worst part is that it's NOT done by a Judge, it's done by prison officials, often on highly arbitrary grounds. IOW, it's not 'the worst of the worst' offenders receiving an extra-harsh sentence for an ultra-evil crime. It's people that the Warden thinks are 'uncooperative' or 'gang members', or that they simply just 'don't like', with no serious reviews being done.

Something not mentioned in these blurbs is that these cells are VERY often being filled with the mentally-ill ... so instead of getting the help they need, they're being locked into tiny cells all by themselves for years on end. Yeah, THAT'S going to end well. Not. This is done because the Wardens don't want to PAY for their costly mental health care (gotta love for-profit prisons!) these people need, so they make up some BS about how the inmate is a 'danger' to regular population, and ship 'em off to places like Pelican Bay. It's a friggin' travesty is what it is. Any Warden that has EVER done that, for monetary reasons, deserves to be arrested and imprisoned himself. That should be a CRIMINAL act.

Also, the effects of long-term solitary have also been studied VERY little, and what few studies that DO exist back up what I'm saying. Human beings are NOT built to be subjected to the type of sensory deprivation inherent in these incarceration conditions. It even often damages people's eyesight permanently, because inmates are never focusing on anything that's at a distance like a person needs to do to keep the eye muscles from atrophying. And that's the tip of the iceberg.

This is a despicable practice, not fitting of a civilized people. We need to figure out another way to keep a lid on the 'dangerous ones' aside from long-term solitary. All we're doing is damaging these people worse than they already are. When they eventually get released, they'll be far more dangerous as a result. The only ones who benefit are the for-profit prisons. Society sure as hell doesn't.

[Bonobo]

15. Not a Human Right's record to be proud of USA...

You may be better than China, but it is no longer comparing apples and oranges. More like apples and somewhat smaller apples.

[malthaussen]

17. Fall through the cracks, we'll break your backs.

Problem is, the cracks keep getting wider and wider.

-- Mal