Prisoner Protest Restarts in California

Πηγή: New York Times
By Erica Goode
Sep 29 2011

SAN FRANCISCO — Corrections officials in Sacramento said Thursday that they would discipline inmates who participated in a renewed hunger strike to protest conditions in the state’s highest-security prisons, where some prisoners have been held in virtual isolation for decades.

More than 4,200 inmates at eight prisons have been refusing state-issued meals since Monday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The hunger strike, the second this year, is the latest problem to face state prison officials, who are under a Supreme Court order to reduce the state’s prison population by more than 30,000 people.

A memo was distributed to prisoners at the state’s 33 correctional institutions warning that if they took part in the hunger strike, they would be subject to disciplinary action that could include confiscation of canteen items like food they had bought.

Prisoners identified as leaders of the strike would also be removed from the general population and “placed in an administrative segregation unit,” according to the memo.

A hunger strike in July, which involved 6,600 inmates at its peak, ended after the department agreed to consider adjustments in the way inmates are assigned to the state’s three security housing units, where they are held in tightly controlled conditions that minimize human contact.

Scott Kernan, the under secretary of operations for the department, said that after the strike in July, the department “determined there was some validity to what the inmates’ concerns were.” The department is reviewing its procedures, he said.

But on Monday, inmates resumed the strike, saying that the department had not yet fully addressed their demands.

Those demands included modifying the practice of sending prisoners to security housing units for indefinite periods based on the judgment that they were involved in gang activities, and also abolishing the practice of “debriefing,” in which inmates are encouraged to gain release from the unit by renouncing their gang affiliations and providing information about them.

At Pelican Bay State Prison, in a remote northern region of the state, the average length of confinement for the 1,111 inmates in the security housing unit is 6.8 years, according to the department. Most inmates in the unit are confined in windowless cells, 7.6 feet by 11.6 feet, for 22 hours or more a day.

Donald Specter, director of the Prison Law Office in Berkeley, which provides free legal services to prisoners, said that given the standoff between the inmates and the prison officials, “I don’t really see how this can end happily or without tragedy.”

The California Prison System. The Pelican Bay Prison Hunger Strikers: We Are Human Beings!

Πηγή: Global Recearch

By Li Onesto, July 12, 2011


"What is of note here and something that should concern all U.S. citizens, is the increasing use of behavioral control, i.e. Torture units and human experimental techniques against prisoners, not only in California but across the nation. Indefinite confinement, sensory deprivation, withholding food, constant illumination and use of unsubstantiated lies from informants are the psychological billy clubs being used in these torture units. The purpose of this ‘treatment’ is to stop prisoners from standing in opposition to inhumane prison conditions and prevent them from exercising their basic human rights.”

Statement of Solidarity with the Pelican Bay Collective Hunger Strike on July 1st and announcement of participation by Corcoran SHU prisoners
(from California Prison Watch, californiaprisonwatch.blogspot.com)

On Friday, July 1, prisoners in California’s infamous Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison began a courageous and determined hunger strike. This then, very quickly, turned into a display of collective outrage and solidarity among prisoners throughout the state and beyond.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) initially tried to say the strike was fewer than two dozen prisoners. But they then had to admit that by their own count, more than 500 inmates refused food at Pelican Bay State Prison and that 6,600 prisoners in 13 different prisons participated in the hunger strike on the weekend of July 2-3.

This is an extremely significant and extraordinary development, something that challenges people on “the outside” to sit up and take notice. Many have been moved to support the prisoners in their just demands.

The Pelican Bay SHU is designed to subject prisoners to solitary confinement, isolation and sensory deprivation—indefinitely. Some prisoners have been kept in these completely inhumane conditions for years and decades. And the prisoners in the SHU write that they are fighting to let the world know the brutal injustices being done to them; and that they are risking their lives to send out a message that they are human beings! That they refuse to be treated like animals.

One of the ways prison officials maintain control is by pitting prisoners against each other by race and ethnicity, and exploiting and promoting other divisions among prisoners. But this hunger strike is crossing barriers that usually divide prisoners—building unity to fight the horrendous conditions they all face. The New York Times reported, “The hunger strike has transcended the gang and geographic affiliations that traditionally divide prisoners, with prisoners of many backgrounds participating.”