Feeling death at our heels: An update from the frontlines of the struggle

“This photo was taken a few days after the first hunger strike ended. I was about 178 pounds; I’d lost 42 pounds,” Heshima Denham wrote on the back. He added these wise words: “Progress requires sacrifice; give up your life for the people.”

From: SF Bay View
Jan 25, 2012
from the NCTT Corcoran SHU

“Death is impossible for us to fathom; it is so immense, so frightening that we will do almost anything to keep from thinking about it. Society is organized to make death invisible, to keep it several steps removed. That distance may seem necessary for our comfort, but it comes with a terrible price: the illusion of limitless time, and a consequent lack of seriousness about daily life. As a warrior in life, you must turn this dynamic around: Make the thought of death something not to escape but to embrace. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency? Cruel theaters staged by a czar are unnecessary; death will come to you without them. Imagine it pressing in on you, leaving you no escape, for there is no escape. Feeling death at your heels will make all your actions more certain, more forceful. This could be your last throw of the dice: Make it count.” – Robert Greene, bestselling author of “The 48 Laws of Power”

“This photo was taken a few days after the first hunger strike ended. I was about 178 pounds; I’d lost 42 pounds,” Heshima Denham wrote on the back. He added these wise words: “Progress requires sacrifice; give up your life for the people.”
Written Jan. 8, postmarked Jan. 18, 2012 – Greetings, brothers and sisters: A firm, warm and solid embrace of revolutionary love and solidarity is extended to each of you from each of us.

Since the last hunger strike ended, we have weathered wave after wave of retaliation from the state’s prison administrators that continues unabated to this day. But before I catalog these manifestations of weakness on the part of state prison administrators, we feel it’s necessary to recount why this struggle began and the nature of our resolve to see the five core demands realized.

We have been consigned to ever more aggressive sensory deprivation torture units for 10, 20, 30 and in some cases 40 years, based on an administrative determination that we are members or associates of a “gang” – a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

These administrative determinations are not due to some overt act of misconduct or pattern of rules violations. No, these “validations” are based most often on the reports, words or accounts of debriefers, rats, informants and other broken men who will say and do ‘most anything their IGI and ISU (Investigative Services Unit) handlers instruct them to, to avoid confinement in the SHU (Security Housing Unit) or carry some other favor from their masters.

After decades of fruitless legal challenges, after years of suffering the deprivations of conditions so inherently evil, inhumane and psychologically torturous that most of you simply cannot comprehend the reality behind these words, most of us came to realize an immutable truth: that the state’s mantra of “the only way out of the SHU is to parole, debrief or die” was something that they not only meant, but was in fact a key feature in developing a subservient and passive pool of prisoner commodities upon which the orderly fleecing of taxpayer dollars could be based.

Thirty years of successful propaganda, of dehumanizing underclass communities and the imprisoned, of lobbying that’s led to the dominance of the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association) in judicial and political elections and appointments – all to mislead an ill-informed public into submitting greater control of their lives and society to an industrial interest that runs counter to the public safety concerns they were vested to protect. Many of us watched this state of affairs progress unchallenged as our protestations fell on deaf ears, year after year, decade after decade, until advanced age and the decimation of our communities forced us onto “death ground,” where you may survive if you can resist, but you will most surely perish if you do not.

We took up a strategy which would pull back the curtain on the state’s practice of domestic torture which has been so well hidden from the people for so long, a strategy in which some of us may yet die: THE HUNGER STRIKE. We would rather starve ourselves, to risk inevitable death, than to be indefinitely subjected to the deprivations of the torture unit.

What must be understood is that existence here is, in many ways, a fate worse than death; and when advancing age brings that mortality into stark focus, the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, “Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day,” resonate. This simple observation defines our resolve in realizing our five core demands.

To say this is a protracted struggle is an understatement; this is a struggle in which we will win or we will die in the effort. Our actions thus far, and the awareness of this international community of their inherent righteousness, has made this adamantine resolve clear, so why then would CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) officials resort to petty retaliatory actions? The answer lies in the very nature of the tyranny and authoritarian power they represent.

Aggression is deceptive; it inherently hides weakness. Aggressors possess poor emotional control and little patience for challenges to their interests. The first waves of retaliation from these types of aggressors may seem strong to some; this is why so many non-SHU general population prisoners dropped out of the second hunger strike as those waves struck them. But, of course, we were unmoved; and the longer such attacks go on, the clearer their underlying weaknesses and insecurity become. It is an act of irrational desperation, but one they pursue out of sheer rote.

Since the second hunger strike ended, we have experienced perpetual retaliation – some overt, some carefully disguised – all designed to erode the minds and wills of those committed to resist. We were denied any medical treatment for our starvation and when we filed emergency 602s to receive renutrition treatment and hunger strike-related injuries, they were not responded to until some 40 days later.

For example, during the first hunger strike, I (Heshima) passed out due to malnutrition and dehydration; the account was detailed in a previous statement. But simply put, their own guilt and fear caused them to assemble some 26 officers before opening my cell and piling on top of my unconscious form in order to shackle my arms and legs in chains and put me in an ambulance.

Mind you, according to witnesses, they casually, even jokingly, left me lying on my cell floor for 35 minutes before jumping on my body. Since then I’ve had a sharp, constant pain in my right side at the base of my ribcage. Though I’ve filed two medical appeals, as of this writing I have still not been treated or even diagnosed for this.

Zaharibu’s cholesterol, blood oxygen levels and blood pressure are so far outside of normal range he is at chronic risk for stroke, heart attack and diabetes – the nurses routinely “forgetting” to bring or administer his insulin when indicated.

Shortly after the second hunger strike ended, we were told, “One of the two pumps that delivers hot water to the institution is broken and we should have the part to fix it in two days.” That was over 50 days ago and we’ve had hot water for a total of three of those 50-plus days. In that intervening time, “due to the lack of hot water” we’ve been fed on paper trays, which ensures all meals arrive cold and grossly under-portioned. Because all we have to wash or shower with in these freezing cells is cold or lukewarm water, 80 percent of us housed in this 4BIL-C-Section short corridor have contracted a cold, upper respiratory tract infection or flu.

Despite numerous appeals and motions to the court, they have not run law library for any of us since August, making it impossible to access legal research, copying service or verified legal mailing, thus jeopardizing the viability of numerous legal pleadings in the courts.

We have often expounded upon the fundamental unreliability of reforms as nothing more than temporary pacification measures that can be repealed at the whim of administrators, and this analysis was again proven only weeks after the second hunger strike ended. Former Undersecretary of Corrections Scott Kernan made a big to-do about the concessions being made to improve the material conditions in SHU, including giving us action at a single special purchase order to purchase newly approved cold weather items by Dec. 31 – or those items would have to be included in annual packages.

Things like watch caps, thermals, tennis shoes etc. were all “approved” for SHU. Memos trumpeting this and Operational Procedure (OP) update chronos were issued to us all, only to be followed by a memo stating the warden of CSP-Corcoran-SHU was effectively repealing the single special purchase order for cold weather items without explanation. This was soon followed by another memo stating tennis shoes orders to SHU would not be allowed until after “Sacramento” made changes to the property matrix, something that was done by Scott Kernan back in October via emergency memo.

Rolling power outages have suddenly become routine here. The mailroom suddenly devised new regulations directing any phony orders to be directed to one post office box, while letters go to another, making it more difficult and confusing for those who care to see to the welfare of their loved ones here. Not to be left out, CDCR trust account officials have raised processing fees on electronic trust deposits called “J-Pays,” some 500 percent, from $1 to $5, increasing the financial burden on underclass families while maximizing their own profiteering.

All of those things are designed to fuse with the daily mental struggles of the reality of indefinite sensory deprivation confinement to have the cumulative effect of eroding the psychology of resistance, and if this were a situation where there was some psychological threshold to breach, they may well have found some here who capitulate. But that simply is not the reality.

This is not a situation where multi-spectrum retaliation – or coercive force of any kind – will somehow diminish the resolve of those of us committed to ending the perpetual torture inherent in these indeterminate SHU units. In fact, quite the opposite is true; such actions only serve to crystallize in our minds the simple fact that we cannot lose. The alternative is simply more unpleasant than the relatively quick sacrifice of death by starvation. They can ratchet up the intensity on these petulant retaliation moves a hundredfold and it will have no other effect than increasing our resolve a thousandfold.

We must win this struggle not simply because it is morally correct, upholds international standards of humanity, opposes governmental collusion in corporate exploitation of underclass people, and serves the interests – social, political and economic – of society as a whole, but also because it’s necessarily our survival. We are men in earnest; consequences have little meaning in the face of such conditions.

Some of you reading these words are no doubt grappling with the reality behind them, attempting to find some point of relatability, some common experience from which to draw a correlation. Unless you’ve experienced this firsthand, such an attempt is an effort in futility. But for the sake of this discussion, I challenge you to run an experiment: Go to your bathroom and close the door. Imagine that you will never leave that room. Your tub and shower, that’s your bed. Yes, your toilet is only a step or two away from where you lay your head. Your food will be brought to you here twice a day.

Stay there as long as you can. How long do you last? Twenty minutes? An hour? Six hours? Imagine you sit in that bathroom for a year, 10 years, 24 years, 40 years. You will never leave that bathroom unless you are released from prison, agree to be an agent for the same people who stuck you in that bathroom, or you die of old age and infirmity. How long would you last? How strong is your will?

Would you submit to snitchery, kowtow to your torturers and become a tool to condemn others to that same fate? Or would you fight, resist to the bitter end, give your life to expose such evil, greedy, draconian hypocrites for what they really are? Hold the mirror of social reality up to the face of every man and woman in U.S. society and force them to confront the human misery being carried to sicker and more depraved depths every day in their names? What would you do?

Some would characterize our effort as insane, as crazy. In “Hagakure: The door of the Samurai,” Yamamoto Tsunetomo quotes Lord Naoshige as saying the way of the warrior (samurai) is in desperateness. Ten or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.

None of us want to die, but all of us are prepared to do so to realize these five core demands. History dictates no less.

So we wait. We have been told the revisions and changes to the status quo in these torture units will be done this month or by February, but the relentless retaliatory blows we are absorbing as the sobering reminder of what we are dealing with: An entrenched labor aristocracy and political patronage of corporate speculators, who’ve grown rich and powerful off extorting billions from hapless taxpayers and criminalizing underclass people and communities, will resist any effort to curtail their wealth, privilege and socio-political status quo.

These vile and greedy people are extracting more of your tax dollars for their exclusive use than many nations’ gross national product by using us as scapegoats to frighten the people – when in fact many of us are servants of the people, political progressives who would willingly lay down our lives to advance the cause of freedom, social justice and economic equality in the nation.

In the case of the NCTT and those of like mind, ironically that’s why we were validated and consigned to these torture units in the first place. A common practice of corrupt political interests is to criminalize dissent and criticism. Who will care? We are prisoners; who will know these truths? They have already succeeded in lobbying to have media access to prisoners banned unless they consent to who will be interviewed. Again, who will care, who will know?

If you’re reading these words, you now know the only question that remains is: Do you care? Do you care that the very people who you’ve entrusted with ensuring public safety are in fact intentionally working against that interest to maintain a bloated prison industrial complex on your tax dollars and our souls? Do you care that the U.S., which is so vocally condemning other nations, is ignoring its U.N. treaty obligations and maintaining its own expansive domestic torture program in U.S. Supermax SHU prisons across this nation? Do you care that these evils, this blatant hypocrisy is being carried out in your name? Do you care? And if you don’t, exactly what type of society is this we’ve allowed to emerge?

If you are reading these words, you can no longer claim ignorance; to stand idly by now would be complicity. A wise man once said, “All that is necessary for evil men to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” We are under no illusions. The ultimate arbiter of our fate – and this society’s fate – is the people. YOU. YOU must rise up against this injustice and inhumanity. YOU must let the state know that substantive change at every level of society is something the people demand.

We have supported, and will continue to support, progressive people’s movements, from the Dream Act to the Occupy Movement, because we recognize the inherent unity of purpose in this single political motive force, the reality that we do not represent disparate social interests but a single determined democratic imperative to put an end to the stranglehold that this greedy elite and its tools currently have on every area of people’s activity in the U.S., to put an end to these exploitive relationships that diminish and impoverish the many for the aggrandizement of the few.

To treat us this way is wrong, evil and unsustainable socially. Stand with us. Lend your voices, your labor, and your ideas to this historical work. We can win, but only with you all by our sides. In the final analysis, this is a struggle to determine the nature of humanity itself. We are on the right side of history; we encourage you all to stand on this same side with us. Our love, loyalty and solidarity to all those who cherish freedom, justice and human rights and fear only failure. Until we win or don’t lose.

For more information on the California prison hunger strikes or the NCTT, contact:

• Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• Kambui Robinson, C-82830, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-49, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212.

Read these brothers’ previous stories:
“California prison hunger strikers propose ‘10 core demands’ for the national Occupy Wall Street Movement,”

“A brief hunger strike update from the front lines of the struggle: Corcoran-SHU 4B 1L C-section Isolation Unit” (second story in that post),

“From the front lines of the struggle,” and

“We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units.”

This story was typed by Adrian McKinney.

Feb. 20th: Occupy San Quentin! Flyers

Please check out the flyers here, print them and spread them!

National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners - Feb 20th 2012

From Occupy4Prisoners.org:
Please join everyone!

Summary

We are calling for February 20th, 2012 to be a “National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners.”

In the Bay Area we will “Occupy San Quentin,” to stand in solidarity with the people confined within its walls and to demand the end of the incarceration as a means of containing those dispossessed by unjust social policies.

Reasons

Prisons have become a central institution in American society, integral to our politics, economy and our culture.

Between 1976 and 2000, the United States built on average a new prison each week and the number of imprisoned Americans increased tenfold.

Prison has made the threat of torture part of everyday life for millions of individuals in the United States, especially the 7.3 million people—who are disproportionately people of color—currently incarcerated or under correctional supervision.

Imprisonment itself is a form of torture. The typical American prison, juvenile hall and detainment camp is designed to maximize degradation, brutalization, and dehumanization.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. Between 1970 and 1995, the incarceration of African Americans increased 7 times. Currently African Americans make up 12 % of the population in the U.S. but 53% of the nation’s prison population. There are more African Americans under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

The prison system is the most visible example of policies of punitive containment of the most marginalized and oppressed in our society. Prior to incarceration, 2/3 of all prisoners lived in conditions of economic hardship. While the perpetrators of white-collar crime largely go free.

In addition, the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that in 2008 alone there was a loss in economic input associated with people released from prison equal to $57 billion to $65 billion.

We call on Occupies across the country to support:

1. Abolishing unjust sentences, such as the Death Penalty, Life Without the Possibility of Parole, Three Strikes, Juvenile Life Without Parole, and the practice of trying children as adults.

2. Standing in solidarity with movements initiated by prisoners and taking action to support prisoner demands, including the Georgia Prison Strike and the Pelican Bay/California Prisoners Hunger Strikes.

3. Freeing political prisoners, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Lynne Stewart, Bradley Manning and Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, a Black Panther Party member incarcerated since 1969.

4. Demanding an end to the repression of activists, specifically the targeting of African Americans and those with histories of incarceration, such as Khali in Occupy Oakland who could now face a life sentence, on trumped-up charges, and many others being falsely charged after only exercising their First Amendment rights.

5. Demanding an end to the brutality of the current system, including the torture of those who have lived for many years in Secured Housing Units (SHUs) or in solitary confinement.

6. Demanding that our tax money spent on isolating, harming and killing prisoners, instead be invested in improving the quality of life for all and be spent on education, housing, health care, mental health care and other human services which contribute to the public good.

Bay Area

On February 20th, 2012 we will organize in front of San Quentin, where male death-row prisoners are housed, where Stanley Tookie Williams was immorally executed by the State of California in 2005, and where Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on death row, is currently imprisoned.

At this demonstration, through prisoners’ writings and other artistic and political expressions, we will express the voices of the people who have been inside the walls. The organizers of this action will reach out to the community for support and participation. We will contact social service organizations, faith institutions, labor organizations, schools, prisoners, former prisoners and their family members.

National and International Outreach

We will reach out to Occupies across the country to have similar demonstrations outside of prisons, jails, juvenile halls and detainment facilities or other actions as such groups deem appropriate. We will also reach out to Occupies outside of the United States and will seek to attract international attention and support.

We have chosen Monday, February 20, 2012 at San Quentin, because it is a non-weekend day. Presidents’ Day avoids the weekend conflict with prisoners’ visitation, which would likely be shut down if we held a demonstration over the weekend.

CA prisoners trapped in Riot at North Fork (OK): Private prison exchanges security for profits

In: SF Bay View, January 10, 2012
by Anthony Robinson Jr.

“We will now criticize the unjust with the weapon.” – Comrade

Written Nov. 1, 2011 – In our struggle for freedom, that weapon has been and will continue to be Truth. I am a California prisoner who was sent involuntarily to NFORK CCA (the Corrections Corporation of America’s North Fork Prison), a private prison in Oklahoma, where I have been for over a year. California thought they could more effectively silence my protests and lawsuits by hurling me hundreds of miles away.

I am once again calling on the Bay View, i.e. Voice of the People:

On Oct. 11, 2011, a riot kicked off where Black inmates were fending off inmates from every other demographic. We faced insurmountable odds and some people were in critical condition afterwards, but the biggest odds against us has yet to be pointed out and is now working diligently to manufacture cover stories to conceal their liability; the odds I speak of is the role of CCA NFORK and COCF (Sacramento-based California Out-of-State Correctional Facility, a unit in CDCR, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) in setting the stage for such a catastrophic event to take place.

For years CCA NFORK has been operating under-staffed and unprofessionally with no consequences brought to them, even though, in the contract between CCA and COCF, it states that they are to maintain a sufficient number of staff to ensure the safety and security of inmates and staff, or they face indemnity and breach of contract.

The day of the riot it was apparent that they didn’t have the staff to curtail the aggression. They were so desperate for manpower they were using nurses to hold spray cans on those of us who made it out of the chow-hall and were being placed in restraints. In my 10 years in California prisons, I have never seen an MTA or nurse touch a spray can during or after a riot. The nurses couldn’t even carry out effectively their assigned duties and tend to the wounded because they had to adopt the role of security force against the people.

The memos they passed out soon after the riot provided insight into the cover story they are manufacturing. During feeding, inmates are to be instructed to go to the back of the cell and sit on the bunk, while two officers come around to feed, placing our food on the floor. They are trying to infer and imply that there was a more pressing need for staff safety as an explanation as to why it took over an hour to get to the injured and wounded. Failure to protect is an understatement! Tacked on to this is their deliberate indifference as they have falsely concluded that the Black inmates intentionally started a riot with Southern inmates, whose numbers consume nearly 60 percent of the inmate population.

How is such a racial disparity created in a facility, a reasonable person might ask? Intentionally, of course. In Alpha North, where I am housed, there are 29 Black inmates to 80 or so Southerners. And nearly every building is set up as such.

The beginning of this year they removed all the Northerners off the line and replaced them with nearly all Southerners. The stated reason was potential tension, gleaned through informants and kites, of a riot between Southern and Northern groups. After talking with the chief of security, lieutenants etc. about the increased racial disparity that is intentionally being catered to, I wrote a grievance to Warden F.E. Figueroa letting him know in no uncertain terms that there is an implicit failure to protect liability in the racial disparity alone.

It became obvious after my appeal was ignored that CCA NFORK and COCF have exchanged security for profits. The less staff a private institution has to hire, the more it profits. When that institution is allowed to operate understaffed, they guarantee a profit by not hiring the staff it would take to cover the gap to become properly staffed.
CCA NFORK and COCF have exchanged security for profits. The less staff a private institution has to hire, the more it profits.

For those of us like myself who have been sent out here involuntarily so that California can fabricate on the books a decrease of overcrowding, we have implicitly been asked to exchange comforts like Xbox, Playstation, hobbies and crafts for security. And the guise would probably still seem impenetrable, but for this riot.

Even though we are on lockdown and in our confined cells, we may be more vulnerable than ever if left in the hands of corporate think tanks and an obviously draconian COCF machine that would like nothing more than to quietly put back together their Frankenstein puzzle of quite a “functional” CCA/COCF institution.

The Milgram experiment (“a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience,” according to Wikipedia) is seen all over again in regards to the prestige given the prison industrial complex that disables people’s right to question and demand the basic human necessity of rehabilitation.

The people have been taught to look at America’s prisons as such a necessity that an inherent legitimacy grows, in which legislatures, wardens, corrections unions etc. are allowed to treat prisoners as inhumanly as it takes to turn a profit or break what is seen as a rebellious spirit. The Greek concept of civil death has been resurrected in regards to prisoners.

Have our sentences ushered us out of the definition of what it means to be human? Has the privilege of humanity been taken off the list like an item on our commissary?
Have our sentences ushered us out of the definition of what it means to be human? Has the privilege of humanity been taken off the list like an item on our commissary?

In Solidarity!

Send our brother some love and light: Anthony Robinson Jr., P-57144, NFORK AN-247, 1605 E. Main, Sayre, OK 73662. He is the author of “Incarcerated Tears: Book of Poems, Volume 1.”

Black and Brown must unite against our common enemy, the system

by Marcus Dalton

This is in regard to the unjust conditions and unsafe environment of a facility that is not capable of operating or containing a full scale riot. On Oct. 11, a riot between inmates occurred. The riot started in the kitchen and spread to almost every part of the facility.

This facility has operated understaffed for two years and the day of the incident, they were so understaffed that they used OJT (on the job trainees) who have not been properly trained as C/Os (correctional officers), C/Os from other facilities, C/Os on their day off and nurses to try and control the situation. It took over an hour and 30 minutes to do so, and at the height of the assaults some buildings were overrun by inmates with no thought on their mind but to kill anyone from the other side. The odds were overwhelming, and the staff who are assigned to insure our safety and security were confused and lost.
The day of the incident, they were so understaffed that they used OJT (on the job trainees) who have not been properly trained as C/Os, C/Os from other facilities, C/Os on their day off and nurses to try and control the situation.

The majority of us were forced out here (to CCA’s North Fork Prison in Oklahoma) by the aggressive “Involuntary Transfer” policy adopted by CDCR in response to the overcrowding in the CDCR prison system. By CCA being a private organization, profit is its top priority and everything else is second.
Prisoners in the exercise yard at North Fork Correctional Facility, Oklahoma - Photo: Corrections Corporation of America
Thousands in damage was done to the facility, which Black inmates are being blamed for. It’s impossible to hold us responsible, as we were fighting for our life. But it seems to be easier to blame us because we’re all “savages” anyway.

The cover story they sold the media was that it happened over food conditions, but why would inmates riot with each other over food conditions? The food conditions were protested by our hunger strike in support of the California hunger strike two weeks prior, which many may not know took place because of the “sweep it under the rug” tactics used by CDCR and North Fork CCA so as to not affect its profit margin and image as a functional facility.

I have been here from the opening of this facility in 2008 to California inmates. My cellie, Anthony Robinson Jr., has continued to file Form 22s and 602s against this facility since his arrival in protest to the lack of preparedness, understaffing and political tricks being used to keep this facility running by the warden, the head of security and Oklahoma auditors.

The fact that inmates were able to take over buildings and controls to doors and were opening them to hurt inmates who were behind them is more than enough of a reason to bring light to the situation. Injuries ranged from minor to serious. Some inmates, including Kevin Hicks and Jabar Walton, were in critical condition. They say that the FBI has started a criminal investigation, but to what effect?

The facility seems to be more concerned about punishment and profit or loss. The main kitchen was partially destroyed, which made them cut back on food portions. They refuse to allow food purchases from canteen and the family package program in retaliation.
They say that the FBI has started a criminal investigation, but the facility seems to be more concerned about punishment and profit or loss.

The reason for the riot may never be known, but the more important issue is that this came at a time when we should be coming together. There are more serious concerns. Black and Brown relations need to come together! We have one common enemy which is the system!
Black and Brown relations need to come together! We have one common enemy which is the system!

Send our brother some love and light. Marcus Dalton and Anthony Robinson are cellmates, so Marcus can be reached in care of Anthony.

Why California's prisoners are starving for solitary change

Californian prisoners have repeatedly gone on hunger strike over the solitary confinement in which some spend decades

By: Sadhbh Walshe
In: The Guardian, Wednesday 11 January 2012

[photo:]
Corcoran State Prison, California, where prisoners have been hunger striking to protest solitary confinement conditions. Photograph: Ben Margot/AP

On 19 December 2011, three prisoners at Corcoran State Prison wrote a letter to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) threatening to go on hunger strike if improvements were not made to their living conditions. Evidently, they received no response from the CDCR: the hunger strike began on 28 December.

This latest hunger strike, the third in less than six months, is small potatoes compared to the previous two, which were state-wide and involved thousands of inmates. According to Terry Thornton, a CDCR spokeswoman, it may already be over. But the fact that Californian prisoners have once again resorted to starving themselves to protest the conditions of their confinement does suggest that something is rotten in the Golden State's penal system.

The first hunger strike began on 1 July 2011, and ended three weeks later when the CDCR agreed, in theory at least, to address the participants' five core demands, which amounted to better living conditions, adequate food and clothing, an end to group punishments and most importantly, an end to the gang validation policy that sentences inmates to endless terms in solitary confinement cells, known as SHUs.

One of my correspondents, Anthony, who has an indeterminate SHU sentence (meaning, there's no end in sight), described to me in a letter what it is about the SHU environment he and his fellow inmates find hard to tolerate.

"We're entitled to receive 10 hours of 'outdoor exercise' a week, but lucky if we get half that. At times, we're cooped up an entire week in our cells before the opportunity of expanding our lungs with fresh air. 'Outdoor exercise' consists of being placed in a dog kennel-like cage, no bigger than our cells. We're prohibited from all recreational and exercise equipment, compelling most to pace idly back and forth.

"Blinding bright lights remain on 24 hours a day within our (windowless 8ft x 10ft) cells as we have been denied control over them. Our lavatories are electronically installed, allotting each cell two flushes every 15 minutes."

The SHU residents are not alone in finding these conditions intolerable. On 18 October 2011, after inspecting such facilities, Juan Mendez, a United Nations expert on torture, called for all countries to ban the use of solitary confinement except in exceptional circumstances, and even then, for no longer than 15 days.

Personally, I don't think I'd get through 15 hours locked up in a concrete box, with no window, bright lights glaring 24/7 and a toilet that won't stop flushing, but 15 days would certainly be an improvement on 15 years, which is about the average length of time the men who have been writing to me from California's SHUs have been locked up in these sensory deprivation units.

The CDCR's Thornton confirmed that many inmates have spent several decades in the SHU (the record so far that I know of is 35 years), but made the point that most inmates earned their stay for acts of violence from which prisoners in the general population deserve to be protected. A valid argument, certainly, but how can you tell if an inmate is still a threat to the mainline population after he's been locked in a box by himself for 20 plus years?

The problem for SHU inmates is that once they get sent to the box, it's almost impossible to work their way out of it. Their options are to either "debrief, parole or die", which as it turns out are non-options. Debriefing, or "snitching", on other prisoners can provoke retaliation; parole is rarely granted and dying … well, suicides are certainly not rare in solitary confinement, but it turns out many SHU inmates still have the will to live.

The first hunger strike, which involved more than 6,000 inmates, brought little meaningful reform. After three weeks of starvation, the prisoners found that what they had gained amounted to little more than the right to purchase sweatpants and coloring pencils. Less than two months later, despite threats of disciplinary action by the CDCR (pdf), the hunger strike resumed with almost double the number of original participants (pdf). It all got a bit ugly for a while: mail and visiting privileges were suspended; attorneys for the hunger strikers were banned from entering the prison; participants received behavior violation write-ups; and according to several testimonies, the alleged leaders of the hunger strike were placed in freezing cold cells without proper clothing and forced to remain there for 15 days.

Eventually, a deal was reached, with promises from the CDCR to address the prisoners' demands and to set about instigating a "step down" program, which would allow alleged gang members to earn their release from the SHU – without having to debrief. Laura Magnani, a member of the mediation team representing the prisoners, says the CDCR appear to be negotiating in good faith and progress is being made.

If this turns out to be the case, it's good news. If not, more hunger strikes seem inevitable as does the possibility that deaths will occur. One would hope it will not take the creation of martyrs to bring about the changes that anyone with a conscience knows are overdue.

From: The Guardian (UK), Jan. 11th 2012

California Prisoners on Lockdown in Mississippi

From: UnPrison:
Jan. 5th 2012, by Bruce Reilly

Another reminder that the holiday season is not a global love-fest: this report from All of Us or None:

“I was contacted by a number of family members whose loved ones are incarcerated in Tutwiler, Mississippi. They informed me that there has been a race riot in Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, where some California prisoners are housed. Days ago the Jail exploded in violence. This is one of those private prisons where the primary purpose is to save this state money and to secure a profit for a private prison corporation. Prisoners’ safety and rehabilitation comes second to pursuit of the almighty dollar. I have been informed that it took over two hours to regain control of the environment and to end the misplaced violence, but the frustration remains extremely high during this current lock down.”

The free world can be puzzled by former prisoners who are emotionally conflicted when holidays come along. What they need to understand is that holidays in prison are typically spent on lockdown. Tempers get shorter. Depressions grow deeper. While prisons cut back on staff and pay triple-time to the guards who show up. Some prisons let people out for a 10 minute phone call, and that is the limit of getting out of one’s cell; and if nobody to call, it is all day in the cage. California is widely known for separating prisoners based on race. Arguments can be made for both integration and segregation, but what approach does CCA take to race relations? Most prisons stoke that fire, even if only in a subtle manner, as guards come to work with their own prejudices and occasional need for reality television excitement.

Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility sounds like a public prison incarcerating the locals, yet it is not. It is owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), widely known to investors on Wall Street as CXW, and currently trading at $21 per share. They make money by contracting with state and federal agencies to transfer their prisoners. Profit is made by the difference between the rental price of a cell, and how much they spend to keep the prisoner alive. Tallahatchie has 2800 cages and two primary “customer bases”: the local county and the state of California (who send 2500 prisoners). They collect about $65 per day per prisoner from the taxpayers of California; who also pay for transportation costs.

Oakland, CA is 2,170 miles from the prison. Any family member seeking to visit a loved one would likely need to fly in to Memphis, then rent a car for the two hour drive to Tallahatchie. The separation of families by prisoner-peddling carries stark consequences. Family reunification, and staying in touch throughout a prison term, is widely touted as the number one path for successful reintegration. California is under court order to reduce its prisoner population, as they have long-since reached an overcrowded level of inhumane conditions. Renting space elsewhere, although costly, is their answer. They have over 10,000 prisoners currently out of state… and climbing.


Read the rest and check out Unprison blog here.

California Bill Would Increase Media Access to Prisoners

From the website of SolitaryWatch:
Jan. 6th 2012
by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

The nation’s supermax prisons and solitary confinement units are virtual black sites, off-limits and therefore invisible to both the public and the press. While laws vary from state to state, the media are for the most part barred from touring these facilities, and forbidden to conduct in-person interviews with prisoners being held in solitary confinement. These rules are made by the prisons themselves, in the name of safety and security, and with few exceptions the courts have acquiesced, ruling that the freedom of the press stops at the prison gate.

A bill introduced in the California State Assembly seeks to challenge the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations ban on interviewing prisoners in its notorious Security Housing Units (SHUs) and ease restrictions on interviews with other prisoners. Assembly Bill 1270 was introduced by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano of San Francisco. Ammiano chairs the Public Safety Committee, and held hearings on California’s SHUs in August 2011, following the historic inmate hunger strike that began at Pelican Bay State Prison in July.

According to a fact sheet released by Ammiano’s office, AB 1270 seeks to restore the media’s ability to conduct pre-arranged in-person interviews with specific prison inmates…It would allow the media to provide more balanced information about our prison systems to keep the public informed and our institutions both transparent and accountable.” (The full fact sheet appears at the end of this post.)

The fact sheet notes: “Media is even more restricted access to the most controversial correctional facilities such as the secure housing units (SHUs). It goes on to describe the extreme isolation of the SHUs, and mentions findings that link solitary confinement to mental illness and suicide.

According to the bill, the interviews would take place “under the discretion of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,” which could choose, for safety reasons, to deny a media request to interview a particular inmate. However, “Any responses denying a request must be accompanied by a written explanation for the request denial.” According to the text of the bill, it would also “forbid retaliation against an inmate for participating in a visit by, or communicating with, a representative of the news media.”

Earlier this week, the bill was referred to the Committee on Public Safety, which will decide whether it goes any further.

ID errors put hundreds in L.A. County jails: Wrongful incarcerations totaled 1,480 in the last five years, a Times inquiry finds

From: LA Times, via RealCostofPrisons.org:

More bad news for LA County Sheriff Lee Baca who is asking the county for $1.4 billion to build new jails...

News story, then the editorial. For more LATimes jail scandal coverage, see: Jails under scrutiny: http://www.latimes.com/lajails

ID errors put hundreds in L.A. County jails
Wrongful incarcerations totaled 1,480 in the last five years, a Times inquiry finds.

By Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times

December 25, 2011
Hundreds of people have been wrongly imprisoned inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jails in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized those arrested were mistaken for wanted criminals, a Times investigation has found.

The wrongful incarcerations occurred more than 1,480 times in the last five years. They were the result of a variety of factors, including officials' overlooking fingerprint evidence and working off incomplete records.

The errors are so common that in some years people were jailed because of mistaken identity an average of once a day.

Many of those wrongly held inside the county's lockups had the same names as criminals or had their identities stolen - problems that took days or weeks for authorities to sort out.

In one case, a mechanic held for nine days in 1989 on a warrant meant for someone else was detained again 20 years later on the same warrant. He was jailed for more than a month the second time before the error was discovered.

In another instance, a Nissan customer service supervisor was hauled by authorities from Tennessee to L.A. County on a local sex-crimes warrant meant for someone with a similar name.

In a third case, a former construction worker mistaken for a wanted drug offender said he was assaulted by inmates and ignored by jailers.

"I'm with criminals, and I was a criminal to them," said Jose Ventura, 53, who had never been arrested before.

The problems continue because of a breakdown not just by jail officials but by police who arrest the wrong people and by the courts, which have issued warrants that did not precisely identify the right people.

Sheriff's officials said they make every effort to avoid detaining the wrong suspects. They pointed out that the number of people wrongly identified as wanted criminals makes up a tiny fraction of the 15,000 inmates in the county's jails at any given time. The Sheriff's Department produced the tally of people who were jailed because of misidentification in response to a Times Public Records Act request.

The errors occur in jails up and down the state, and many of the misidentified inmates in the L.A. County sheriff's jails were arrested by law enforcement agencies outside the county.

In California, criminals are assigned a unique nine-digit number matched to their fingerprints. Some warrants issued by judges fail to include those identifiers, making it more difficult for police and jailers to determine whether they have the right suspect.

When those fingerprint numbers are included, police agencies sometimes fail to determine why the arrested person has a different number or no number at all. In those cases, authorities could catch the error by obtaining the wanted criminal's fingerprints from the state Department of Justice and comparing them with those of the person in custody.

"It's bureaucratic sloth and indifference," said attorney Donald W. Cook, who has represented more than a dozen clients mistakenly held on warrants issued for other people. "They don't want to take the heat for letting someone go who a cop has decided, no matter how tentatively, is the subject of a warrant."

Those mistakenly arrested told The Times that they were ignored when they pleaded with police and jail staff about their innocence. In the county jails, the Sheriff's Department has a policy to launch investigations when inmates protest during booking that they are not the wanted people. But records show the department conducted investigations for only a small fraction of the number of people who courts eventually ruled were not the right suspects.

Sheriff's officials said they are bombarded with false innocence claims from inmates. It would be impossible to check every claim, they said, and jailers' authority to release an inmate ordered detained by a judge is limited.

"People lie to us about who they are all the time," said sheriff's Cmdr. David Fender.

Victims of mistaken identification typically go through several rounds of checks before they land in L.A. County Jail. Arresting officers use the name, birth date and driver's license number of the person they stop to check for warrants. The first fingerprint check is usually done when officers bring the people they arrest to the police station where they are booked. From there, inmates are taken either to court or directly to county jail.

Once inmates arrive at the jail, officials there review the fingerprints again and compare what's on a warrant to the personal information for the inmate. But sheriff's officials maintain that their top priority is to hold people awaiting court hearings rather than questioning the validity of the arrests.

"It's not our position or authority to check the work of every police agency in the county," said sheriff's Capt. Mike Parker.

The number of mistaken identifications has been declining, but the department is still on pace to record nearly 200 wrongful detentions this year. For those who are jailed, the experience can be harrowing.

Ventura, the former construction worker, was pulled over on a traffic stop by Chino police and arrested on a warrant meant for someone else. Jailers stripped him and escorted him to a large shower area when he arrived at the L.A. County Jail.

Another inmate, he said, pushed him over so he could use Ventura's shower, leaving Ventura naked on the ground with back pain. Later, another inmate snatched his pair of jail-issued shoes and forced Ventura to apologize.

"Psychologically, I was already dead," he said.

Two days later, Ventura, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, arrived in court. He preached to other inmates in his holding cell as they waited for their hearings.

Once in court, Ventura, a native of El Salvador, watched as his lawyer told a judge that police had arrested the wrong man. The 1994 warrant was for a Mexican national accused of drug possession at a time when Ventura's passport showed he wasn't even in the country, the attorney said. A Los Angeles Police Department official brought the actual suspect's fingerprints to court and concluded that Ventura was the wrong person.

"Mr. Ventura, our apologies," a judge told him as he ordered Ventura released. "Good luck."

Once released, those arrested have little recourse. State and federal laws generally protect law enforcement agencies from lawsuits over such detentions as long as officers were acting on a valid warrant and had a reasonable belief that they were arresting the right person.

Sheriff's deputies pulled over Phillip Reed, a South L.A. youth sports coach, who was on his way home from the grocery store in 2009.

A warrant listed Reed's name, date of birth and driver's license number, but Reed knew he was the wrong man. His younger brother, Marcus, had used Phillip's identity in the past, Reed said in a deposition. Reed had previously obtained a court document showing that another warrant had wrongly named him before.

He said he presented the document to the deputies who pulled him over - a claim that one of the arresting deputies later disputed. Authorities booked Reed even though the person listed on the warrant had a unique fingerprint number and Reed had no number.

That night, inside a county holding cell, Reed said he begged deputies to look inside his wallet, where he kept the judge's form.

In the corner of his cell, Reed recalled in an interview, he began to weep and pray: "I know this is not me. I don't know what else to do. God help me."

It wasn't until the next day that authorities discovered the error and released Reed.

In some cases, warrants contain only names, dates of birth and basic physical descriptions that can apply to multiple people. Many times, officers will encounter people who match most if not all of those details.

In 1989, Santiago Ibarra Rivera spent a week in jail before officials figured out that he was not the man wanted on a warrant for a deadly drunk driving accident. Rivera had no criminal record but shared a similar name and the same birthday as the man for which the warrant was meant.

When he was freed, authorities gave Rivera a court document showing that he had been exonerated. Years later, he lost the record when his wallet was stolen.

The warrant became a distant memory until March 2009, when San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies stopped Rivera while he was riding in a co-worker's car that was missing a front license plate. Deputies ran his name and the warrant appeared.

Rivera pleaded that he wasn't the wanted man and that he'd been wrongly jailed for the warrant once before. He told one of the deputies that he had other court papers at his home to prove it. But the deputies, he said, refused to stop there. According to one of the arresting deputies, Rivera's knowledge of the warrant only served to make him appear guilty.

Rivera said he complained first in San Bernardino County Jail and later in L.A. County Jail, where he was transferred, but was ignored in both lockups.

A review of Rivera's criminal history based on his fingerprints, readily available in law enforcement databases, would have showed that in 1989 he had been arrested and exonerated on a vehicular manslaughter case.

The old court file that contained the real suspect's fingerprints was in the court archives. Rivera languished behind bars as officials searched for them. He implored officials to find his records "as soon as possible because I have to return to my work."

When it was eventually confirmed that Rivera was the wrong person, Superior Court Judge Kathryn Solorzano apologized. "Mr. Rivera, I'm very sorry. I don't know how many daysŠ"

"I think close to a month," Rivera's attorney interrupted, according to a transcript.

"That's terrible," the judge said.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wrongid-20111225%2C0%2C7157038.story

******************
In L.A. County: Innocent but in jail
A Times investigation has revealed that more than 1,400 people over the last five years were wrongfully incarcerated.

Last week provided yet another reminder of just how serious the problems are in the Los Angeles County jails. As if reports of assaults on prisoners by sheriff's deputies were not disturbing enough, a Times investigation has revealed that more than 1,400 people over the last five years were wrongfully incarcerated. Some were held for days, others for weeks. All were cases of mistaken identity, in many instances made worse because protests of innocence were disregarded. In one case, a construction worker with no prior arrests said he was assaulted by inmates and ignored by deputies. In another, a man whose identity was stolen by his brother pleaded with deputies to check his wallet, where he kept a judge's order indicating that a warrant with his name on it had been wrongly issued. But his jailers refused. He was booked and his fingerprints scanned. Deputies found no matching prints, even though the warrant indicated that prints were on record, according to his lawyer. Yet he was held for days.

Those are cruel deprivations inflicted on innocent people, and they should spur Sheriff Lee Baca and his department to adopt safeguards for ensuring that they have the right people behind bars.

To be fair, the problem isn't limited to Baca's department. Similar mistakes occur in jails throughout the state. And in many cases, suspects who arrived at Los Angeles County jails had been arrested by other law enforcement agencies and undergone previous rounds of checks, including confirmations of name, date of birth and other identifying information used in warrants. What is clear, however, is that the department's rules for dealing with such claims are deficient.

The department's written policy requires that deputies investigate claims of innocence involving warrants issued by judges. But it does not set strict time lines or establish rules for handling such claims in cases that do not involve warrants. The Times' investigation concluded that deputies followed the rules in only a fraction of cases in which wrongfully jailed individuals were eventually released by courts. Baca has pledged to form a task force to investigate the problem.

That's fine, but the proliferation of task forces examining problems in the county jails - there's already one looking into allegations of deputy abuse - in an important sense misses the point. For years, monitors and others have highlighted failings in the management of the jails. What Baca needs now is not another task force to help him see what's wrong; it's to revisit the recommendations for improvement and aggressively implement them.

January 1, 2012
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-jails-20120101,0,2987148.story