Submit Comments About STG/SDP Regulations by April 3, 2014

Dear Human Rights Activists,

We need your help. Can you write a quick email or fax a note? The California prison system’s Security Threat Group/Step Down Program (STG/SDP) is getting close to being implemented. These regulations govern placement into and release from the SHU (Secure Housing Units), California’s long-term solitary confinement cells. The STG/SDP policies will perpetuate California’s over use of torturous isolation.

We are soliciting your help to weigh in and speak out against these regulations. Please submit a comment and ask your friends, family, neighbors, pastor, school class, place of worship, and organizations to write also.

For a comment to have impact it must address some aspect of the proposed regulations. To help, we’ve made a FACT SHEET and LIST OF PROBLEMS with the STG/SDP regulations. (The footnote below gives a link and a partial index to the officially proposed regulations we’re commenting on 1) Take an issue or two -or more- and express your feelings, it doesn’t have to be long or fancy, but it does have to talk about the STG/SDP regulations.

 

Anyone may submit public comments (mail, fax, or email) regarding the proposed regulations. Submit comments to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by mail at: CDCR, Regulation and Policy Management Branch, P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento, CA 94283-0001; or by fax at (916) 324-6075; or by email at m_STGRegulation@cdcr.ca.gov
If you send an email please cc: PeoplesARC@gmail.com.

The public comment period is open now; it closes April 3, 2014 at 5 PM.

In many respects the STG/SDP is worse than the current practice. The STG/ SDP program is based on the U.S. Bureau of Prisons model, subject of great criticism in 2012 by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary,  Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights & Human Rights. California uses solitary confinement far and away more than any other government entity on the planet – the most absolute numbers and the highest percentage of prisoners in solitary. On any given day California, conservatively, has 11,000 adult prisoners in some form of isolation. 2

Thank you for everything you do.

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition

footnotes below:

1^  http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Regulations/Adult_Operations/docs/NCDR/2014NCR/14-02/Text_of_Proposed_Regulations.pdf

Partial Topical Index to Proposed Regulations:

• Privileges in each step – pages 6-8
• Process to certify new groups – pages 30 -34
• Point system for validation – pages 34-38
• Process for validating individual prisoners – pages 83-41
• Disciplinary Matrix – pages 43-49

2 ^ These figures are from Prof Keramet Reiter of UC Irvine.