Strickman: What people need to know, first off, is that long-term solitary confinement at Pelican Bay is horrible because the conditions are so extreme. So the prisoners' demands are significant--they are not just asking for little things, or just small changes.
The prison authorities agreed to some of the prisoners' smaller demands, and they've implemented some. They've provided prisoners hats for warmth, balls to bounce in the exercise area, and photos taken of themselves--things which were banned before the hunger strike, and allowed proctored exams for those who can pay for college courses. And when you're in the SHU, even a little thing is big.
by revcom
July 5 and 6: The Stop Mass Incarceration Network, Bay Area displayed a life-sized replica of a SHU cell in downtown San Francisco to build support for the California prisoners' hunger strike due to begin July 8. Nearly 4,000 prisoners are kept in solitary confinement in California SHUs, some for decades. Throughout the two days many different kinds of people, including whole families and tourists from around the world, came into the "SHU" cell. Ex-prisoners told of their experience and voiced their support for the hunger strike. Visitors to the "SHU" left with a new understanding of why the prisoners are going on hunger strike and many signed up to help, stay in touch, and took materials to spread the word about the strike. Photo: Special to Revolution
But in terms of the major issues--like changing rules for how someone gets into the SHU and the evidence used to put people there, or long-term solitary--there's been little done. They promised to revise their gang validation regulations--that's the main way people get sent to the SHU, being "validated" as a gang member--and they've done some things on that.
The prison system did say they were going to go around and evaluate those in the SHUs to see if they should remain, given that there's new criteria: under the new regulations, being a member of a designated group is cause for being sent to the SHU, but being an "associate" is not. And the CDCR needs a little more evidence to send someone to the SHU than they do now. They used to need three pieces of "evidence." But now they have a somewhat different formula under which various pieces of weighted evidence have to add up to 10 points. So they've set the bar a little higher, and they're going through and looking at associates and evaluating whether they should be in the SHUs. At Pelican Bay, for example, around 75 percent of those in the SHU are "associates" not "members." And the CDCR has reportedly determined that more than half of all SHU prisoners should be released to general population--and some have been.
The prison authorities are touting these statistics as showing their new program is really different. But what it shows is how bad the old system was. None of these changes would have happened without the 2011 hunger strike, and the prisoners' demands and support they got. So some people who have been in for decades are now getting out--but they never should have been in the SHU to begin with!
I'm not confident the new system will end up much different than the old one. The CDCR claims it's now behavior-based, not based on associations, but when "behavior" is simply having artwork in your cell that supposedly proves you're in a gang and then being locked up in isolation for it--well, we shouldn't have that kind of system. And they're still doing that--locking people up due to artwork. They may have moved a little bit because of the last hunger strike, but there's still a long way to go.
And in some ways, the new gang validation policy is worse, or potentially worse, than the old one. The previous validation policy targeted members or associates of seven prison gangs. Now the authorities say they won't limit themselves to those seven, but may also identify other "security threat groups"--which could have as few as three people. So a few prisoners--perhaps friends from the same neighborhood--could be identified as a "security threat group," labeled a street gang, and then sent into solitary confinement. As far as I know, the CDCR hasn't gone through the process yet to establish one or more new "STGs," but creating a means for doing so expands the net of those who could go into those horrible isolation units.
Everest: Are all the prisoners in the SHU through gang validation?
Strickman: Most are, but not all. Selling dope can send you to SHU--not on gang validation, but serving a "straight SHU sentence," for a fixed, not indefinite, period. The longest straight SHU sentence is five years for killing a guard, or three years for killing another prisoner.
Everest: Wait--You're telling me that if a prisoner kills a guard, they get five years in the SHU, but if they're "validated" as being a gang member--without committing any violent action against a guard or another prisoner--they can be sent to the SHU for decades?
Strickman: Exactly! Prisoners are in the Pelican Bay SHU for 20 to 30 years for nothing more than having drawn art which supposedly shows they're gang members or associates.
Everest: This hits me as such a striking example--that these SHUs are not about "crime prevention"; they're really a counter-insurgency program, aimed at different social groups or organizations--a counter-insurgency before the insurgency, so to speak. This is something Revolution has written about, as have groups like the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow.
Strickman: It's like the criminal justice system: They don't care if you're innocent or guilty. There's something about having this system--it's just a voracious system, and having the control as you say that is abusive and has nothing to do with truth or honesty. The whole thing is very distressing, the whole thing. It's so cruel, the living situation is so mean-spirited. Some prisoners say, I know you're going to keep me here, but you have to give me some way to live a meaningful life.
The CDCR wants people to think they've made significant changes, but the prisoners feel they haven't. It's not all that different than before. The authorities did not make the big improvements the prisoners were led to believe they would get. And the terrible conditions of confinement have hardly changed at all. Many are still facing decades of long-term solitary confinement. So that's the reason for the renewed hunger strike.
Everest: I recall after the last hunger strike the CDCR did punish, really retaliated against, the hunger strikers. And recently I've seen some of your emails concerning very troubling ways the authorities may be preparing to retaliate against the hunger strikers this time around. Could you talk about that?
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