California Prisoners on Hunger Strike Again to Protest Solitary Confinement

[struggle4progress]

Oct 3rd, 2011
Posted by Rebecca McCray & Tanya Greene, Center for Justice at 3:46pm

In July, hundreds of prisoners confined in Pelican Bay State Prison and nine other California correctional facilities protested the heinous conditions of their confinement with the only means they had: their ability to peacefully refuse food. After the prisoners starved for three weeks, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) agreed to a policy review of its solitary confinement, or Security Housing Units (SHU), where prisoners are confined alone in tiny, windowless concrete cells, often for years on end. With that agreement, the prisoners ended their hunger strike.

But two months later, the CDCR still hasn’t addressed the prisoners’ five core demands. Left with no choice, prisoners in at least six California prisons are once again refusing meals.

The prisoners’ demands include a request that the prison implement the recommendations of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons (CSAAP) to end the damaging, unnecessary and counterproductive conditions of severe isolation. The findings of CSAAP’s 2006 report indicate what the prisoners at Pelican Bay know firsthand: solitary confinement exacerbates mental illness and significantly reduces the odds of successfully reentering society upon release ...

p://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/california-prisoners-hunger-strike-again-protest-solitary-confinement