Oral arguments begin at 2 p.m. today in U.S. District Court in Oakland in the Pelican Bay State Prison solitary confinement case.
Ruiz v. Brown, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights last year on behalf of prisoners, alleges that long-term confinement of prisoners inside “secure housing units” (SHU) “is inhumane and debilitating” and psychologically damaging.
Some prisoners have been held nearly three decades in these small, windowless cells, where according to the Center they are alone about 23 hours a day — and sometimes 24 hours a day — are denied phonecalls and contact visits, and are served spoiled food and infrequent medical care. According to a previous news release from the Center:
More than 500 Pelican Bay SHU prisoners have been isolated under these conditions for over 10 years, more than 200 of them for over 15 years; and 78 have been isolated in the SHU for more than 20 years.
The suit also alleges the use of inadequate, unfair criteria for imposing solitary confinement upon a prisoner (gang membership seems to figure high on the list).
The abuses and torture alleged by prisoners and their advocates became national news in 2011 when prisoners at Pelican Bay staged a hunger strike. Soon, prisoners elsewhere in the state and country began hunger striking. See previous Journal coverage about the strike here, and about the lawsuit here. You can read the second amended complaint here.
This article appears in Unleashed.
Heidi Walters: “The suit also alleges the use of inadequate, unfair criteria for imposing solitary confinement upon a prisoner (gang membership seems to figure high on the list).”
Note the lack of use of the word “alleged.” Now read what CCR says:
California, alone among all fifty states and most other jurisdictions in the world, imposes extremely prolonged solitary confinement based merely on a prisoner’s alleged association with a prison gang. Gang affiliation is assessed without considering whether a prisoner has ever undertaken an act on behalf of a gang or whether he is – or ever was – actually involved in gang activity. Moreover, SHU assignments disproportionately affect Latinos. The percentage of Latino prisoners at the Pelican Bay SHU was 85% in 2011. The only way out of SHU isolation is to “debrief,” to inform on other prisoners, placing those who do so and their families in significant danger of retaliation and providing those who are unable to debrief effectively no way out of SHU isolation.
Someone being in a torture chamber of solitary confinement is not determined by what they were accused or convicted of doing. There is no court that sentences someone to (the SHU) such solitary confinement, extreme long term isolation, sensory deprivation, total lack of natural light, denial of any phone calls, denial of any programs in prison. As outrageous as it is, PRISON EMPLOYEES decide if someone will be put through that torture. And, by extension, if someone will ever get out, since ya can’t get paroled from the SHU.
If you’re on the outside (everyone who can read this comment online is, including “Brian”) please educate yourself.
Read the second amended complaint, linked to at the end of Heidi Walters’ article.
Support the Prisoner’s Five Human Rights Demands!
Check out prison [dot] org, the website for California Prison Focus, or PrisonerHungerStrikeSolidarity [dot] wordpress [dot] com, or RedwoodCurtainCopWatch [dot] net (search “solitary confinement”) to read the Five Core Demands and a lot of other important information.
All I asked is “why is Ruiz in prison “? It seems that nobody wants to answer that question. Life is about choices. If one chooses to be a street/prison gang member then be prepared to face consequences.
Support the Victims of Crime Five Human Rights Demands!!!!! There that sounds better.
Brian, I contend that it doesn’t matter why he is in prison. The consequences that one must face as a result of poor decisions and/or destructive, harmful actions, should never include torture. Any consequences imposed by society in the form of punishment or retribution must be through established processes of law, not through decisions of prison employees. Look up the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment” and see how prisons affect both the imprisoned and the imprisoners in extremely negative ways. Controls are required on both sides of the bars to prevent tragedies on both sides.
I content that is does matter. Selling some weed to a under cover cop is a LOT different than killing a innocent bystander in a gang shooting. Stealing a car is not the same as going to a school and killing children/teachers. When somebody goes to prison for drugs or theft they should not have to put up with prison gang members, who want to ass rape, kill and extort the new guy. Follow the rules, are go SHU.
Brian,
You seem to be under the assumption that it’s the gang-bangers who end up in the SHU. How would you feel if the people who ended up in the SHU were those who wanted nothing to do with gangs, but were forced to accept one or be under constant threat, and who didn’t dare debrief because of credible threats to their family?
And do you feel the law should just be changed to make it clear that, if convicted of certain crimes, you will end up in conditions considered torture by most nations?
While you’re answering, maybe you could explain to us why California’s incarceration rate is so much higher than that in most places.
Thanks.
You are the one assuming. Let’s just put them all in the same yard and let them have at it. I’m assuming that’s what you want. Because there are no right answers. The reason California has a higher incarnation rate is because we have a higher population than most state. Of course the useless war on drugs doesn’t help.
And no, Brian, no one is suggesting letting them “have at it.” The CCR is simply pointing out that imprisonment should not include torture.
The directors of other states’ prison systems, even Texas’, say California’s prison system is an emergency, inhumane, unacceptable.
So what is your plan anonymous? Texas leads the nation in executions..
No, Brian, my plan is not to execute people who haven’t been sentenced to death.
Perhaps you actually have this idea that the alternative to the SHU is gang-fights in the prison yards. That’s not the alternative.
For starters, an alternative could be allowing SHU prisoners in each “pod” to have contact with one another, in a bare room in the “pod”, for a few hours a day, upon request.
The actual court documents (read them, perhaps you’ll learn something) call for:
i. the release from the SHU of those prisoners who have spent more than 10
years in the SHU;
ii. alleviation of the conditions of confinement of prisoners in the SHU so that prisoners no longer are incarcerated under conditions of isolation, sensory
deprivation, lack of social and physical human contact, and environmental
deprivation;
iii. meaningful review of the continued need for confinement in a SHU of all
prisoners currently housed in the SHU within six months of the date of the
Court’s order; and
iv. meaningful review of SHU confinement for prisoners housed in the SHU in the
future;
Texas executes people who haven ot been guilty of crimes committed, so what’s YOUR point, Brian? I cannot answer for Ruiz but it seems there is a lot of clarity on the table for you to be allowed to enjoy eating your words with relish
Gee where to begin. PO’D, you don’t see the irony of Anonymous using fucking Texas as a standard to judge California’s prisons?
Anonymous, sure let the “prisoners” (call them that to their face and see what happen if make the mistake of turning your back) “have contact with one another”, “for a few hours a day” and when the cons start killing each other who are you going to blame then? The Unions? Of course we all know it’s not the “inmates” fault.We can’t have people being responsible for their own actions. So let me ask my original question. Heidi why is Ruiz in prison? Or is that asking to much?
My point Brian, is not that Texas is outstanding, but that even Texas recognizes that the administration of the California prisons does not meet the required standards any civilization would insist upon.
Have you bothered to read the court documents, or are you worried facts might interfere with your belief system?
If you want to have empathy for thugs and gang members you go right ahead anonymous.
The point, Brian, is not to empathize with thugs and gang members MORE THAN with everyone else. The point is that thugs and gang members, alleged or actual, are human beings just like the rest of us, and if a society wishes to call itself civilized, it has to have the same floor of human rights for all human beings.
I assure you, I’m as horrified by what some of the people in the Pelican Bay SHU have done as you could possibly be. You might be surprised to discover, if you allowed yourself to relax your righteousness for a moment, that not everyone who has committed a horrible crime is necessarily the complete and total monster you probably imagine.
But even assuming everyone in the Pelican Bay SHU were guilty of inhuman atrocities, if we are to remain decent ourselves we have to treat them with the care due every human being. At a minimum, we should not be subjecting them to recognizable torture.
I’m sorry to tell you this. But that world you want does not exist. Like l said before, there are know right answers.
Brian- we don’t change who is in SHU and for how long for them. We do it for ourselves, to have a society that is civlized and does not allow torture. And what Heidi describes meets the threshold of torture and then some. No way anyone should be consigned to more than maybe some weeks in a SHU without due process and a chance to appeal. I’m ashamed of our state for allowing these conditions to exist.
Like I said, there are no right answers. What do we do as a society with the psychopaths/sociopaths that walk among us… good luck.
One more thing, I to am ashamed of California’s so called justice system. It doesn’t work, and never will.