Last week, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) released its plan pertaining to how prisoners are placed in Security Housing Units (SHUs) and how prisoners can be released from the SHU back into prison’s general population. Download and read the full 40-page document (pdf).
This plan, which will result in new regulations in a number of months, is in part the CDCR’s response to the CA hunger strikes, however they do not fully address the torturous conditions prisoners were protesting. According to attorney Charles Carbone, the new policies could expand the number of people classified as “gang members” and increase the number of people imprisoned in SHUs. Read or listen to an interview with Charles Carbone on CDCR’s proposed changes here.
Also, make sure to read Amnesty International’s public statement: “California’s prison isolation units remain inhumane despite department’s proposals to amend policies”.
Listen to an interview with reporter Michael Montgomery summarizing the proposed changes here.
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity 
It deeply saddens me that those men who bravely put their lives on the line for their basic human rights will be given these 40 pages from CDCR as a step towards what they believe is progress. I guess what angers me the most is what about those men that have ALREADY served 10-20 plus years in the SHU…according to this SDP they will still have to endure another 4 years at least before being considered eligible for a mainline. What positive changes came from this revised SDP? I see nothing but mere propaganda that CDC will promote to insinuate that they are making some necessary improvements. What a shame that more of our taxpaying dollars will be wasted on people who can’t make a sound decision on what is or isn’t constitutionally right. Speaking for myself and loved one this new SDP is a joke!!
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It is pure propaganda. Instead of actually looking at the problem, the validation process, and the perpetual cycle of pulling in more “alleged” gang members based on “debriefers”, all CDC did was stretch it further! We need to stand in the street a thousand deep and protest for them so their voice isn’t lost and their hearts are warmed in their cells, NOT FORGOTTEN! I just wrote a book called Underdog, The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike to add my voice.
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After thousands of years of prisons, we not only haven’t found a better way, but are regressing to the point that people a century ago would be horrified. Maybe if California did something about ridiculous overcrowding and treated inmates like human beings there wouldn’t a need for segregation. If people are placed in prison, the state has an absolute obligation to provide humane conditions. Conviction of a crime does not make a person less than human. Prisoners have the same needs and emotions as anyone else. Prison is punishment enough without the heartless attitude of most of the people employed by the penal system. Any average citizen who treated someone the our prisons treat people would be charged with a crime and locked up.
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