California Officials Deny Amnesty International’s Findings on Isolation Units

 

California corrections officials are proving—simply by opening their mouths—that long-term exposure to a cruel and dysfunctional prison system causes a detachment from reality.

 

In response to Amnesty International's (AI) September 2012 report on the state's inhumane treatment of prisoners in solitary confinement, one official with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) flatly denied the report's findings, in spite of overwhelming empirical evidence.

 

According to Terri McDonald, the head of state prison operations, conditions in CDCR's security housing units (SHU)-which hold about 3,100 prisoners in extreme isolation-"follow the national standard."

 

"They are clean. They are secure," McDonald told the Los Angeles Times. "We have not been inhumane."

 

But AI's 63-page report, which presents findings from various sources, including tours of the Pelican Bay, Corcoran and Valley State prisons, concludes that SHU conditions "breach international standards on humane treatment," and bear the brunt of responsibility for CDCR having the highest rates of prisoner suicides in the nation.

 

"Under California regulations," AI reports, "the SHU is intended for prisoners whose conduct endangers the safety of others or the security of the institution." Yet, two-thirds of CDCR's SHU population is serving "indeterminate" terms in solitary confinement—not because of violent behavior, but because they've supposedly been "validated" by prison authorities as being gang members or associates. The only way out of SHU for most is via a "step down" program that includes becoming an informant.

 

The arbitrariness of CDCR's isolation practices, according to AI, has led to an average stay in Pelican Bay's SHU of 6.8 years. At least 500 prisoners there have spent more than 10 years each in solitary confinement, where the conditions "would crush you," according to Tess Murphy, an AI observer who toured Pelican Bay. And, disturbingly, nearly 60 prisoners there have been held in SHU for more than 20 years, many of them since Pelican Bay first opened in 1989.

 

That's more than two decades in a windowless, 7- by 12-foot cell, with scarce interaction with others, and without access to work, vocational training or rehabilitative programming. The Pelican Bay SHU is intentionally designed, in fact, to "minimize human contact and reduce visual stimulation," according to AI's report.

 

Each SHU cell block is divided into an eight-cell pod, with an exercise "pen" at one end—to which prisoners are theoretically given 90 minutes of access each day—and a shower at the other end. Besides visits or the rare trip to the law library or for medical attention, "prisoners need never leave the confines of the pod."

 

It is a model of torture, the report noted, modeled on the Arizona prison system's Special Management Unit (SMU), which AI deemed "cruel, inhuman [and] degrading" and "in violation of international law" in an April 2012 report.

 

"You lay there in your concrete tomb trying to block out the cold, especially in the winter when this place is like a morgue," reads one letter written to AI by a prisoner who's been held in Pelican Bay's SHU for 16 years as an alleged gang associate. "The wall I lay next to is an exterior wall. [I]t's like sleeping next to a block of ice. [S]ometimes the floor is warmer and there I will sleep."

Such conditions in extreme isolation drive many prisoners into deep depression, severe mental illness and, often, to suicide. According to CDCR data, isolated prisoners represent about 2% of the state's total prison population, but they accounted for 42% of all CDCR suicides between 2006 and 2010, during which the state averaged 34 prison suicides per year–well above the national average.

 

According to prison psychiatry expert Terry Kupers of San Francisco's Wright Institute, the SHU environment "breeds despair."

 

"The suicide rate is one of the stunning facts we have," Kupers told the Times, adding that even prisoners who survive extreme isolation are "damaged by the experience."

 

In October 2011, Pelican Bay's administrative segregation unit (ASU), which, with less recreation time and without outlets for TV or radio, is considered even harsher than SHU, claimed prisoner Alex Machado.

 

Machado, 40, was given 80 years to life for a robbery and shooting, and had served 11 years in relative anonymity–occasionally helping other prisoners with appeals–until he was "validated" as a gang member and transferred to Pelican Bay in February 2010.

 

In ASU, where Machado was told he would remain indefinitely, he became paranoid, suffered from anxiety, sleeplessness and panic attacks, and heard voices. He was eventually diagnosed with a psychotic disorder before complaining to prison officials of "bugs and cameras" in his cell, smearing feces on his walls, and tying strips of a so-called "no-tear" mattress to form a noose in June 2011.

 

Five months later, and just 30 minutes after he complained to Pelican Bay staff of heart palpitations, Machado hanged himself and died.

 

"(AI) finds it deeply disturbing that any prisoner suffering from (Machado's) mental health problems... should continue to be housed in an isolation cell," AI's report argues. "(Machado's) case appears illustrative of an ongoing pattern of failure by CDCR to address the health care needs of mentally ill and potentially suicidal (prisoners)."

 

In response, CDCR official McDonald claimed that extreme isolation is necessary to reduce violence, even though supposed gang members, she admitted, still send coded messages ordering murders and riots from inside solitary confinement.

 

"It is a complicated problem for us," McDonald said. "This is a world that people don't understand."

 

But AI apparently does understand, after touring SHU and ASU facilities, interviewing prisoners and reviewing official CDCR records. As a result, the AI report recommends that CDCR limits the use of isolation "so that it is imposed only as a last resort" on prisoners "whose behavior constitutes a severe and ongoing threat to the safety of others or the security of the institution."

 

AI also called for improved conditions in solitary confinement, including more access to exercise and opportunities for programming, as well as "immediate removal from isolation of prisoners who have already spent years in the SHU under an indeterminate assignment."

 

As of October 2012, CDCR officials were set to begin a trial program that would allow "compliant" SHU prisoners out of isolation after four years, further illustrating how out-of-touch with humanity the CDCR must be.

 

Sources: "The Edge of Endurance: Prison Conditions in California's Security

Housing Units," Amnesty International, September 2012, www.amnesty.org, Los Angeles Times, www.latimes.com

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