The Ten Worst Prisons in America

May 2, 2013 By 4 Comments

10 worst“The Ten Worst Prisons in America,” our eleven-part article, premiered yesterday over at MotherJones.com with the notorious ADX Florence federal supermax. A new worst prison will be published each weekday (with some dishonorable mentions at the end), so please check in from time to time for new postings. What follows is the introduction to the series.

“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment.

Doing time is not supposed to include being raped by fellow prisoners or staff, beaten by guards for the slightest provocation, driven mad by long-term solitary confinement, or killed off by medical neglect. These, however, are the fates of thousands of prisoners every year—men, women, and children housed in lockups that give Gitmo and Abu Ghraib a run for their money.

The United States boasts the world’s highest incarceration rate, with close to 2.3 million people locked away in some 1,800 prisons and 3,000 jails. Most are nasty places by design, aimed at punishment and exclusion rather than rehabilitation; while reliable numbers are hard to come by, at last count 81,622 prisoners were being held in some form of isolation in state and federal prisons.

Thousands more are being held in solitary at jails, deportation facilities, and juvenile-detention centers. Nearly 1 in 10 prisoners is sexually victimized, by prison employees about half of the time—more than 200,000 such assaults take place in American penal facilities every year (PDF), according to estimates compiled under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act. Suicides, meanwhile, account for almost a third of prisoner deaths, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, while an unknown number of fatalities result from substandard nutrition and medical care.

While there’s plenty of blame to go around, and while not all of the facilities described in this series have all of these problems, some stand out as particularly bad actors. We’ve compiled this subjective list of America’s 10 worst lockups (plus a handful of dishonorable mentions) based on three years of research, correspondence with prisoners, and interviews with reform advocates concerning the penal facilities with the grimmest claims to infamy. We will be rolling out profiles of the contenders over the next 10 days, complete with photos and video.

Read the rest at MotherJones.com.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, due process, featured posts, immigrants, juveniles, physical effects, prison health care, psychological effects, sexual assault, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: “Suicide Is Preferable to Long-Term Segregation” in Solitary Confinement

March 21, 2013 By 1 Comment
Monroe Correctional Complex. (Photo: Ambia-Inc.com)

Monroe Correctional Complex. (Photo: Ambia-Inc.com)

The following comes from a man currently incarcerated at Washington State’s Monroe Correctional Complex. The Washington State corrections system has been said by local media to use solitary confinement less than other states, with only 2.7 percent of prisoners (or ~400) in long-term solitary confinement. However, Solitary Watch has noted that the figure is actually twice this, when Administrative Segregation (which may last over a month) is taken into consideration. This prisoner, A.P., has reported that “the State’s Dept. of Corrections is expanding solitary confinement models to general population’s long-term lockdowns.” Incarcerated for a decade, he reports spending most of his prison time in solitary confinement, which he says is partly retaliation for his frequent litigation against the Washing Department of Corrections. He has advocated for accurate descriptions of solitary confinement by noting the types of disturbing behaviors that go on in isolation units, “‘Smearing feces on ones self or eating it’… rather than merely saying ‘Conditions are bad.’” -Sal Rodriguez

Out of the past ten years I’ve been incarcerated on two arson charges for burning two cars. I got 24 years for [it] (no one was hurt) while racking up repeated appeals, most of that has been in solitary confinement. I have a college degree and worked professionally for years before this mess came down. I’m now 53-years old; my family won’t communicate with me and most of all, my two sons won’t communicate despite my still never forgetting their birthdays and holidays with cards and such. Prison mail censorship has frustrated communications so much, most people simply give up trying to keep up.

I’ve seen prisoners in solitary degrade quickly and slowly, depending on their psychological strength and grasp on more in life than rap music no meaningful life experiences. Suicide is preferable to long-term segregation (and long prison sentences). Those who don’t kill themselves learn to compress their hatred that grows like cancer while being forced to suppress their true emotions, in a form of Stockholm Syndrome tactics, to survive. This promotes recidivism and violence. A person, like a dog at a kennel, can only be compressed so much before they either explode or implode. Either way, none is good. Prisoners teach deception to survive and force prisoners to become manipulative of DOC policies and staff because the truth and honesty only leads to negative treatment by D.O.C. staff. For example, to get adequate food, one must feint a medical condition requiring more just to get enough.

One can never be open with staff or even prison psychologists (help that hurts) because it is not confidential; is often interpreted and repeated by untrained staff and it is best to simply internalize and put on a fake (happy) front and never reveal any true feelings, or the prisoner will end up longer in solitary; in a strip cell (where they take away all your clothes, bedding, etc, and put you on a dirty, hands only diet) or some other adverse treatment.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: due process, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary, Washington Tagged With: , , ,

Judge Rules California Solitary Confinement Lawsuit Should Have Its Day in Court

March 19, 2013 By 7 Comments
Pelican Bay "exercise" yard, © Richard Ross, from "Architecture of Authority"

Pelican Bay “exercise” yard, © Richard Ross, from “Architecture of Authority”

On Thursday, March 14th, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken denied a motion by the state of California to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights against long term solitary confinement in the California prison system. The lawsuit, filed on May 31st, 2012, argues that California’s segregation of “gang-validated” prisoners in Security Housing Units (SHUs)for longer than 10 years constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.” The lawsuit also argues that the current process by which prison officials label prisoners gang members is a violation of prisoners due process rights. In California, as of late 2011, over 500 California prisoners had been in the SHU for at least ten years; 78 had been in the SHU for at least 20 years.

The SHUs, located at Pelican Bay State Prison, Tehachapi State Prison, Corcoran State Prison, and California State Prison, Sacramento, hold over 3,000 prisoners in segregated units. Prisoners are primarily held in solitary confinement in these units, which have been described by NPR as living in a “small, cement prison cell. Everything is gray concrete: the bed, the walls, the unmovable stool. Everything except the combination stainless-steel sink and toilet…You can’t move more than eight feet in one direction.”

Conditions in the SHU prompted two large scale hunger strikes in California prisons in July and September 2011. The hunger strikes drew national attention to the issue of solitary confinement, and prompted California legislative hearings in 2011 and 2013. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has implemented reforms to the system, including an allegedly more stringent gang validation system; CDCR has been criticized for validating prisoners and keeping others in isolation for possession of black nationalist literature and “cultural calendars” on the grounds that they constitute evidence of gang activity. CDCR has also reportedly begun a review of all current SHU prisoners under the new standards to determine whether or not prisoners should remain in the SHU.  According to the Los Angeles Times in February, 144 prisoners had been reviewed and 78 had been released to general population and 52 were placed in a new Step Down Program in which prisoners may transition out of the SHU over 4 years with increasing privileges.

People inside California’s prisons have been less enthusiastic about the reforms.

North Kern State Prison prisoner Terrance White is housed in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) pending an opening in the (full) SHUs.  White initially reported to the San Francisco Bay View that he was observing the prison sending prisoners in the ASU back to general population in December, but now says that “I see I’ve been duped by the lies of CDC. I got released back to the general population yard for 45 days and now they’ve brought me back to get validated. It’s sad to see law enforcement get away with monstrosities everyday, then come after us on the inside for becoming wise to their evils by educating ourselves.”

“They’re still validating people it seems every chance they get,” reports White, who has been validated as a Black Guerilla Family member. “I’m not alone as you are aware of, there’s a lot of us and poor Latinos, a few Natives, and poor whites have also been targeted these days. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here at North Kern, I’m waiting for the Office of Correctional Safety to send my packet back and then I will be endorsed to the SHU to finish my term.”

Pelican Bay SHU prisoner Paul Sangu Jones is optimistic that the public, who he refers to as “minimum security,” are at least “getting a clearer idea of how their tax dollars are being wasted on all of these unnecessary prisons.” But, he says, “my current thoughts are that we remain in limbo. We are locked into a cycle of torture. We keep hearing about how our situation is going to change but every day we wake up to the same old thing–talk about déjà all over again.”

Jones, who has been in the SHU for over a decade, has been labeled by prison officials as a member of the BGF. He was initially placed in the SHU following an anonymous prisoners claim that he was a high ranking BGF member. He has been subsequently kept in solitary confinement for, among other reasons, possessing a “Black Panther newsletter” and because other prisoners designated BGF had written him letters which were intercepted by prison officials.

Jones has reported that someone in his facility had been recently take out of the SHU and placed in the Step Down Program. “It’s my understanding that the prisons are clearing their Ad Segs [Administrative Segregation Units] of prisoners they were planning on ‘validating’ as gang members. I’m told that these prisoners are being placed in the Step Down Program, and the prisons are saying that they are releasing folks from the SHU. It’s certainly what I’d expect from CDCR–no one in the Short Corridor, where prisoners who have been in SHU 10,20,30,40 years have been released to general population,” Jones writes.

“The Pelican Bay State Prison administration is not going to do anything to ease the SHU torture unless forced to do so by the courts. That is the reality our SHU lawsuit is facing.”

Jones also referred to the declaration by the leaders of the 2011 hunger strikes that the prisoners will launch a statewide hunger strike and work stoppage in July if conditions do not improve. “Surely you’ve heard the talk of another hunger strike? That should say it all…”

Filed Under: California, due process, Eighth Amendment, lawsuits/litigation, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Twelve Years in Solitary, and “Still in Illegal Limbo”

January 24, 2013 By 4 Comments
Guest Post by Bret Grote

Click here to listen to an interview on Paul Rogers with advocate Lois Ahrens and sister Kharla Rogers.

rogers-x150Paul Rogers has spent more than 4,300 consecutive days – over 12 years –  locked behind a solid steel door in the bowels of a Pennsylvania prison. He spends twenty-four hours a day in isolation, occasionally punctuated by an hour in another cage for “recreation” purposes, or a trip to the shower. Inside a concrete and steel tomb that is his bathroom, bedroom, and workspace, Rogers eats, sleeps, dreams, defecates, reads, writes, and contemplates the prospect of spending the remainder of his life sentence in solitary confinement. According to Rogers, “It’s like mental torture and you slowly lose your mind.”

Rogers has once again been approved for release into the general population by the Superintendent of the State Correctional Institution (SCI) Smithfield. For most prisoners in the hole this would be sufficient for securing their release, but Paul is on the Restricted Release List (RRL), an indefinite, secretive and potentially permanent form of solitary confinement that can only be authorized with the approval of PA DOC Central Office. The final decision on Paul’s stauts rests with Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ (PA DOC) Secretary John Wetzel.

Contrary to the claim that solitary is reserved for the “worst of the worst,” Rogers has had an exemplary disciplinary record these twelve years, not once receiving a misconduct for a serious infraction. Despite making his best effort “to conform to DOC standards,” he was again rejected for release from the RRL during his February 2012 review, although he was provided “no specific reason” as to why he had to remain in solitary. “I have complied to a work plan, have no misconducts, and still wasn’t recommended for release off the RRL. I have been arbitrarily denied release off the RRL without being given a written reason or opportunity to defend myself.”

Echoing the symptoms reported by others subjected to the infamous “no-touch” torture of isolation, Rogers has experienced depression, heightened anxiety, difficulty concentrating, deterioration of social skills, and a an all too real fear of losing his sanity. As is customary in the PA DOC, mental health care is utterly lacking for those languishing in the Restricted Housing Units (RHUs). In correspondence to the Human Rights Coalition, Rogers wrote:

I don’t think my mental health is a concern of the DOC, and I have been trying self-help remedies to maintain my mental care. The health department visit me every 90 days at my cell door for less than a few minutes, and from past experience they don’t offer any assistance other than medication, which seems to make prisoners worse and psychotic. . . . [W]hen I try to get help for my problems, I was told being the RHU prevents them from offering remedies besides medication.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, due process, guest posts, life without parole, Pennsylvania, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , ,

NYCLU Files Suit Challenging Solitary Confinement in New York State Prisons

December 6, 2012 By 5 Comments

“Life in the box stripped me of my dignity, and made me feel like a chained dog,” said Leroy Peoples, a New York State prisoner and the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed today by the New York Civil Liberties Union. ”The ceaseless torment of being locked up every day in a tiny cell with another person is hard to describe.” It is also, according to the NYCLU suit, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, which bans cruel and unusual punishment and guarantees due process before anyone–even a prisoner–can be further deprived of liberty.

The lawsuit challenges, on 8th Amendment and 14th Amendment grounds, the “system-wide policies and practices governing solitary confinement that are responsible for the arbitrary and unjustified use of extreme isolation on thousands of individuals incarcerated in New York’s prisons every year,” according to a press release from the NYCLU.

Further excerpts from the press release follow. For more background on solitary confinement in New York State prisons, read the NYCLU’s report, Boxed In, and our article in The Nation, ”New York’s Black Sites.” Solitary Watch will continue to cover the lawsuit as events unfold.

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  The plaintiff, Leroy Peoples, spent 780 days locked in tiny, barren cell the size of an elevator with another prisoner for 24 hours a day as punishment for misbehavior that involved no violence and no threat to the safety or security of others…

The lawsuit maintains that Mr. Peoples’ grossly disproportionate punishment was caused by unconstitutional policies that similarly affect thousands of individuals incarcerated in New York prisons. It alleges that the frequency with which New York prisons use isolation as punishment is a direct result of official policies that permit staff to impose extraordinarily long isolation sentences regardless of whether the individual’s behavior demonstrated any danger to the safety and security of prison staff or other prisoners, with few guidelines or restraints, and with inadequate consideration of the physical and psychological risk that isolation may pose to a particular individual.

From 2007 to 2011, New York issued over 68,000 sentences to extreme isolation as punishment for violating prison rules. On any given day, approximately 4,500 people – about 8 percent of the entire New York State prison population – are locked down for 23 hours a day in isolation cells.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, due process, Eighth Amendment, lawsuits/litigation, New York, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Massachusetts Court Rules Against Solitary Confinement Without Due Process

November 30, 2012 By 2 Comments

On November 27, in a ruling that may have wider implications for the use and abuse of soliary confinement in American prisons, a Massachusetts inmate won a longstanding case against the prison that illegally held him in segregation, as well as the Massachusetts Commissioner of Corrections. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts found that the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center (SBCC) in Shirley, Massachusetts had violated inmate Edmund LaChance’s constitutional due process rights when it held him in solitary confinement for over ten months without a hearing.

In December 2005, LaChance received a disciplinary report for throwing a cup of pudding at a fellow inmate. After a disciplinary hearing, the prison gave him seven days’ detention in the “special management unit,” or SMU, as a sanction. According to prison officials, when LaChance learned of the sanction, he threatened the other inmate “with violence,” and for that offense he received an additional seven days. However, after his fourteen days were up, prison officials did not release him back to his housing unit, but kept him in the SMU indefinitely “awaiting action status.” Throughout his stay in the SMU, he was never given a hearing.

Although the regulations require a hearing for inmates held in the departmental segregation unit (“DSU”), which is for disciplinary purposes, they do not require a hearing for inmates held in the special management unit (“SMU”) for administrative purposes, such as inmates “awaiting action status.” According to the prison officials, the regulations only required that a prison official review LaChance’s status on a weekly basis, and provide him with the written notifications when the rationale for his detainment in the SMU changed as a result of a review. Ten months after LaChance completed his fourteen-day disciplinary sanction, the prisoner at whom LaChance had thrown the pudding had been moved, and the prison released LaChance out of the SMU and back to his previous housing unit.

Five months into his confinement in the SMU, in June 2006, LaChance filed a pro se complaint. The prison filed a motion to dismiss, which a judge in the Superior Court denied in June 2007. Then, LaChance obtained an attorney, Bonita Tenneriello, through Prisoner Legal Services in Boston. PLS filed an amended complaint that claimed that the prison had violated his rights under the regulations and his right to due process under the State and Federal Constitutions when they did not have a hearing, and also that, under DOC policies, the prison could not hold LaChance, who was a protective custody prisoner, in segregation on “awaiting action status” for more than ninety days–in other words, for administrative, not disciplinary, purposes. After several appeals, motions and cross-motions, the highest court in Massachusetts found that LaChance’s ten-month administrative segregation in the SMU on “awaiting action status,” during which he had the benefit of only informal status reviews, was unlawful.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, due process, lawsuits/litigation, Massachusetts, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , , ,

Former Hostage in Iran Reports on Solitary Confinement in California

October 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Photo: James West

Not to be missed is Shane Bauer’s article in the November/December issue of Mother Jones, now available online. Bauer was one of the three American hikers arrested on the Iran/Iraq border and held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for 26 months. In his article “No Way Out,” which is both highly personal and factually detailed, he compares his own experience with that of the thousands of prisoners in solitary confinement in California. The article begins this way:

It’s been seven months since I’ve been inside a prison cell. Now I’m back, sort of. The experience is eerily like my dreams, where I am a prisoner in another man’s cell. Like the cell I go back to in my sleep, this one is built for solitary confinement. I’m taking intermittent, heaving breaths, like I can’t get enough air. This still happens to me from time to time, especially in tight spaces. At a little over 11 by 7 feet, this cell is smaller than any I’ve ever inhabited. You can’t pace in it.

Like in my dreams, I case the space for the means of staying sane. Is there a TV to watch, a book to read, a round object to toss? The pathetic artifacts of this inmate’s life remind me of objects that were once everything to me: a stack of books, a handmade chessboard, a few scattered pieces of artwork taped to the concrete, a family photo, large manila envelopes full of letters. I know that these things are his world.

“So when you’re in Iran and in solitary confinement,” asks my guide, Lieutenant Chris Acosta, “was it different?” His tone makes clear that he believes an Iranian prison to be a bad place.

He’s right about that…We were held incommunicado. We never knew when, or if, we would get out. We didn’t go to trial for two years. When we did we had no way to speak to a lawyer and no means of contesting the charges against us, which included espionage. The alleged evidence the court held was “confidential.”

What I want to tell Acosta is that no part of my experience—not the   uncertainty of when I would be free again, not the tortured screams of   other prisoners—was worse than the four months I spent in solitary   confinement. What would he say if I told him I needed human contact so   badly that I woke every morning hoping to be interrogated? Would he   believe that I once yearned to be sat down in a padded, soundproof room,   blindfolded, and questioned, just so I could talk to somebody?

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Filed Under: California, civil liberties/civil rights, due process, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Unlock the Box: The Fight Against Solitary Confinement in New York

October 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Photo: Francisco Quinones

An important new report on solitary confinement was released today by the New York Civil Liberties Union, titled Boxed In: The True Cost of Extreme Isolation in New York’s Prisons. Based on a year of research, correspondence with more than a hundred prisoners, and multiple open records requests, this report offers a detailed and powerful picture of how solitary confinement is used and abused in New York; it is a must-read for anyone concerned with this issue. A new Boxed In website also features video and documents, and a listing of events happening in New York City this week (including a Town Hall meeting in Harlem with elected official, advocates, and survivors of solitary, moderated by SW’s Jean Casella).

To mark the release of the report we published an article today on the website of The Nation, which discusses not only Boxed In, but also the rise of activism around solitary confinement in New York on both the state and city levels. Some excerpts from the article appear below.

On the first chilly morning in September, several dozen demonstrators gathered in front of a limestone skyscraper on Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan. Some wore orange jumpsuits, and two of them held a broad banner with the hand-painted words, “Solitary Is Torture.”

The subject of the protest was the abuse of prisoners—not at Guantanamo, Bagram, or some distant black site, but on Rikers Island, less than ten miles away. The protesters, members of a new advocacy group called the New York City Jails Action Coalition (JAC), argue that conditions there–particularly solitary confinement—constitute torture in their own backyard. The target of the protest was the New York City Board of Correction, which oversees conditions for the 13,000-odd men, women, and children who inhabit New York City’s jails on a given day, and whose monthly meeting was taking place inside.

According to the City’s own figures, the number of isolation cells at Rikers has risen to more than 1,000 and is still growing. The JAC also points to the existence of special solitary confinement units on Rikers Island, designed to hold teenagers and people with mental illness.

“This type of treatment is cruel and inhumane to any human being, especially growing adolescents,” said Lisa Ortega, mother of a 18-year-old with psychiatric disabilities who was placed in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement on Rikers for weeks at a time, amounting to several months, when he was 16. “The damage done is irreversible.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, due process, featured posts, New York, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

New Report Calls for End to Use of Solitary Confinement in Immigrant Detention

September 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“Are you broken yet?” Each day Rashed spent in solitary confinement at the Tri-County Detention Center in Illinois, the warden asked him this question.

An observant Muslim, Rashed had tried to advocate on behalf of another Muslim who could not speak English well. That was the “offense” that earned him his second stint in solitary, where he remained for 30 days. The first time, Rashed had asked the guards at the Dodge County Detention Facility in Wisconsin to excuse him from meals so that he could fast for Ramadan. Instead, they placed him in solitary for the remainder of the month-long observance.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had placed Rashed in detention when he arrived in the United States from his native Yemen, seeking asylum. For three years he remained in detention, transferred among several ICE-contracted facilities, as he awaited resolution of his asylum claim.

Both times Rashed was sent to solitary, it was without any formal charges being filed, any hearing, or any opportunity for review from a higher authority. “It was crazy,” he said in a press teleconference on Tuesday. He had fled Yemen to escape persecution, only to arrive in the United States and face more persecution.

This is but one of the instances of abusive and discriminatory use of solitary confinement described in a new report produced in partnership by the Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Invisible in Isolation: The Use of Segregation and Solitary Confinement in Immigration Detention asserts that the use of solitary confinement for ICE detainees is unnecessary, costly and harmful to detainees’ physical and psychological health. It calls for an end to the practice of solitary confinement for immigration detainees.

In preparing the report, investigators interviewed detainees in segregation and solitary confinement at 14 of the 250 detention facilities, state and federal prisons, and county jails where the Immigrant and Customs Enforcement branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security detains more than 400,000 individuals per year. Many ICE detainees are actually lawful permanent residents and asylum-seekers awaiting adjudication of their cases. Their numbers include survivors of human trafficking, LGBT individuals, the elderly, and people with mental health conditions. Many do not speak English.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, due process, federal prisons, immigrants, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , , , ,

Solitary Confinement Policies in California Revised Again, As Inmate Leaders Promote End to Racial Hostilities

September 24, 2012 By 1 Comment

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has recently circulated a memo regarding the most recent revised edition of its Step Down Program (SDP) and Security Threat Group (STG) Program proposal. The revised policies come one year after a series of statewide hunger strikes by inmates in the Security Housing Units (SHU) in Pelican Bay and other California state prisons.

In California, one is placed in the SHU most commonly for being deemed a member of an STG–or, one of seven gangs known to be involved in criminal activity. These gangs are the Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerilla Family, Nuestra Familia, the Mexican Mafia, Northern Structure, Nazi Low Riders and the Texas Syndicate. Currently, inmates deemed to be member of these gangs are sentenced to an indeterminate SHU term, which usually entails years of solitary confinement in either a SHU unit at one of three California prisons (Pelican Bay, Corcoran, and Tehachapi) or any of California’s Administrative Segregation Units (ASUs) until a SHU cell opens up.

The process of being labeled a member of the STGs, however, has been controversial. Inmates have reportedly been validated as members of STGs for, among other things, possessing calendars with certain artwork or making references to George Jackson (an African-American inmate who co-founded the Black Guerilla Family). The revised policies purportedly aim to strengthen the criterion for gang validation. However, critics such as attorney Charles Carbone counter that the proposed policies are more of the same. It has been noted that the revised policies include consideration of tattoos and artwork as contributing factors to a SHU term.

“Us in AdSeg arrived from county jails and are going through process to get transferred out of here to a SHU,” writes T., a SHU-bound inmate at North Kern State Prison, “my validation is just like everybody else falsely accused. Anytime you do certain things like speak Swahili or read and study our history as New Afrikkkan’s we get validated.” T. has been in the ASU for four years pending an opening of a SHU cell. “Our program is simple. Handcuffed everywhere, yard and shower three times a week, in waist and leg chains,” he writes.

Further, the revised policy plans to implement a Step Down Program in which inmates could hypothetically transition out of the SHU and back into general population in four years. This policy would be based on a series of steps with increasing numbers of privileges and ultimately involving greater social interaction. Currently, inmates sent to the SHU for STG membership must prove that they have been inactive in any gang for six years. Due to this standard, over 500 SHU inmates have been in solitary confinement for more than 10 years and nearly 80 for over 20 years.

This is the seventh time the policies have been revised since March. The memo provides highlights of CDCR’s policy proposals, including the following:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: California, due process, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,
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