On Thursday, March 14th, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken denied a motion by the state of California to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights against long term solitary confinement in the California prison system. The lawsuit, filed on May 31st, 2012, argues that California’s segregation of “gang-validated” prisoners in Security Housing […]
The following entry was submitted by California Prison Focus on behalf of Cesar Francisco Villa, 51, a “gang-validated” prisoner incarcerated in Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU). For eleven years, he has been held in solitary confinement in the SHU, subject to an indefinite term in solitary because, he says, he isn’t a […]
On Monday, February 25th, the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, chaired by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, held a hearing on the state’s Security Housing Units (SHUs). The hearing comes 18 months after the committee held a similar hearing prompted by a three-week long hunger strike in June 2011 that involved thousands of California prisoners across […]
Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times reported that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) had begun the process of implementing reforms the Department has crafted over the past year addressing the long-term solitary confinement of gang members in the California prison system. California currently holds over 3,000 inmates in segregation units due […]
The San Francisco Chronicle today ran an op-ed called “The Crime of Punishment at Pelican Bay State Prison.” The author is Gabriel Reyes, who has spent 16 years in solitary confinement (and whose artwork is featured on the left). The brief, powerful piece begins this way: For the past 16 years, I have spent at […]
Three “New Afrikan” prisoners in California Security Housing Units (Pelican Bay and Corcoran State Prisons) have recently written to Solitary Watch criticizing their continued isolation for being members of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF), the only black prison gang in California that will lead to placement in the SHU. According to Mutope Duguma (legal name […]
The following is an excerpt from testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Human Rights, and Civil Rights by Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit inmate Gabriel Huerta. He has been in isolation since November 1986; like most in the SHU, he was validated as a gang member on questionable evidence of gang […]
We have heard a lot about the gang “validation” in California prisons–the process by which inmates are identified as members of prison gangs. Validation can land a prisoner in solitary for five, ten, even twenty years, and was the main focus of the recent hunger strikes at Pelican Bay and other California supermaxes. We have also heard stories of prisoners who’ve […]
The following piece, and accompanying artwork, comes from an inmate in Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit. He is among the over 1,100 inmates at Pelican Bay to be held in isolation from general population. SHU inmates in California generally spend 22 1/2 hours in a cell alone, for an average of over 6 years. In […]
Prisoners in California’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) have offered their opinions of the recent reforms of the California prison system’s controversial gang validation policies. In correspondences with Solitary Watch, people held in SHU at Pelican Bay and Corcoran prisons have consistently been critical of the reforms, which among other things reform the gang validation point system […]
The following is a response by California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement (CFASC), an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the use of solitary confinement in California prisons, to the recent revision of gang validation policies. Gang validation is the primary means by which the over three thousand inmates in Security Housing Units (SHU) are […]