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| Rationalized torture in California prisons |
| By redbluffdailynews.com - Richard Mazzucchi |
| Published: 08/22/2011 |
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Last month prisoners in 13 state institutions staged a three week hunger strike to bring awareness to the cruel treatment of over 20,000 of their peers locked up in solitary housing units (SHU). The strike began at Pelican Bay State Prison, near Crescent City, where more than 1,000 prisoners are housed in windowless 80-square-foot soundproof cells under incessant fluorescent light for 22 1/2 hours a day. With the exception of the steel plumbing, all the surroundings - the bed, the walls, the unmovable stool on which one can sit - are made of gray concrete. Twice a day, a corrections officer pushes a plastic tray of food through a slot in the solid metal door. The prisoner can hear only some of what is going on outside - the shouts of other inmates, the rattling of keys, the flush of toilets, but can see no one. They leave their cells only to shower and to exercise, alone, for 90 minutes in a small high concrete walled enclosure. California prison officials say they use solitary confinement to control gang activity by letting prisoners out only if they provide information on gang members. But in classic Catch-22 fashion inmates refusing to debrief serve a minimum of six years in solitary confinement or are returned to the general population where they are sure to be attacked for ratting out. Read More. |
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