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Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Human Rights Hunger Strike in California Prisons (Pt. 1)

Written by Azadeh Zohrabi
On July 1, 2011, inmates in the Security Housing Units (SHU) of Pelican Bay State Prison and Corcoran State Prison began a hunger strike to protest a variety of inhumane policies and practices that take place in these units. A week later the number of hunger strikers reported by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) had peaked at 6,600. These men are joined in hunger and solidarity by hundreds of other men and women on the outside and in other prisons across the country. The unified action is centered around five core demands:

1. End Group Punishment and Administrative Abuse
2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria
3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement
4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food
5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates


Over the next couple of weeks I will offer a series of articles providing further insight into each demand. As a law student and advocate, I have studied and written about the CDCR, the SHU, and the policies that govern many of the transfers to the SHU. I have also experienced the SHU on a more personal level. While I have not spent a day of my life in the custody of the CDCR, I have spent countless days there as a visitor going to see loved ones. I have gone through hundreds of humiliating searches by the prison guards, I’ve spent thousands of hours in the visiting rooms of several of California’s prisons including the notorious Corcoran SHU, I’ve been denied entry dozens of times after driving all night to get to remote prisons; I’ve witnessed beatings, I’ve been verbally abused and subject to extreme intimidation tactics by guards, and I’ve seen how families are abused and torn apart by CDCR policies. I have also seen first-hand how easily and often prison guards abuse the wide range of discretion they have to validate people as gang members based solely on their political and cultural ideology. These gang validations, often happen without any actual gang “activity” and result in hundreds of people being sent to the SHU indefinitely.

In this introductory article, I will provide an overview of the Security Housing Units in California prisons. In subsequent articles, I will begin to explore other aspects of how and why people are assigned to the SHU. I welcome thoughtful dialogue and hope our readers find the articles useful for understanding the current hunger strike for human rights and why the five core demands are so crucial.

Life in the SHU

The Security Housing Units are essentially prisons within prisons - extreme isolation units in which people “remain isolated in windowless cells for 22 and 1/2 hours each day, and are denied access to prison work programs and group exercise yards.”[1] When they are allowed time out of their cells, inmates are given an hour to exercise in a concrete cage (see image) alone. Four of California's prisons (Pelican Bay, Corcoran, Tehachapi and Valley State Prison for Women) operate SHU units, while a handful more use Administrative Segregation Units, which are very similar. According to the CDCR’s most recent report, there are currently 3,238 people housed in the SHU units. Some of them have been in the SHU for over 20 years.

Placement in the SHU is an administrative measure that is completely within the discretion of prison staff and administration- not the courts. The placement can be for a set period of time or indeterminately if it’s based on alleged gang affiliation. People in SHU’s have very little access to their families and loved ones. They are not allowed phone calls, mail is often withheld, returned or “lost” and visiting is allowed only for one hour behind double layered plexi-glass on Saturdays and Sundays. Additionally, the largest SHU’s, Corcoran and Pelican Bay, are hundreds of miles from the communities that most people in the SHU are originally from, making it difficult for family members to travel to the prisons for visiting.

Madrid v. Gomez

In 1995, Federal District Court Judge Thelton Henderson issued a ruling in Madrid v. Gomez, a class action suit brought by Pelican Bay prisoners who alleged that they were being subject to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment. The court agreed that the prisoners had been victims of cruel and unusual punishment and excessive force at the hands of prison guards. The court also appointed a Special Master to oversee the changes to policy and practice and ensure that progress was being made. A few days later, Harvard psychiatrist Stuart Grassian, an expert on the effects of solitary confinement, appeared on 60 Minutes and commented, “in some ways it feels to me ludicrous that we have these debates about capital punishment when what happens in Pelican Bay’s Special Management Unit is a form of punishment that’s far more egregious.”[2] Grassian’s research has found that extreme isolation is “strikingly toxic” and that it actually causes a specific psychiatric syndrome, “SHU Syndrome” which results in hallucinations, paranoia and delusions among other serious psychosis-like symptoms.[3]

2011 Hunger Strike for Human Rights

In March 2011, Judge Henderson ended the Madrid case, believing that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation could maintain the changes without court supervision. Just months later, thousands of people in prisons all over California are refusing to eat in order to raise awareness about the torture they are being subjected to and to change the conditions. The demands are focused on health, human rights and the extreme abuse of authority and discretion by prison staff without any meaningful investigation or accountability. As of this writing, almost two weeks after the hunger strike started, CDCR has met with a mediation group representing the strikers, but has refused to meet with or negotiate with the strikers themselves.

The next article in this series will focus on the Hunger Strikers first demand: End Group Punishment and Administrative Abuse. I will also briefly discuss the current “hands-off” policy employed by most courts in regards to prison policies that are considered to be “administrative” despite the extremely punitive nature of these policies.

Please show your support for the hunger strikers by signing this petition and visit this website for updates and info on the strike.



[1]Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F.Supp 1146, 1155 (1995).
[2]Colin Dayan, The Law is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons 85 (2010).
[3]Terry Kupers, Prison Masculinities 193 (2001).

4 comments:

  1. Great Article! I too have had to drive to the boondocks to visit family in prison. My mother, who was searched thoroughly, was forced to take the wire out of her bra just to be able to visit her son. My brother was forced to shower while shackled and was injured after he slipped. It was impossible for him to get himself off the ground. He was in locked up with only about an hour of yard time a day...the list goes on!

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  2. Thanks for the support Andrew! We need to make sure we show our solidarity now more than ever. If you can, come through for the vigils outside Alameda county courthouse in Oakland every Thursday from 5-7pm until the strike ends.

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  3. Congrats on the blog, you have already produced more useful information than all of the other journals combined. :)

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