[Pnews] Men In California Prisons Continue Fight To End Unconstitutional Use Of Solitary Confinement

[Prisoner News]

blackstarnews.com
<http://www.blackstarnews.com/us-politics/justice/men-in-california-prisons-continue-fight-to-end-unconstitutional>
Men
In California Prisons Continue Fight To End Unconstitutional Use Of
Solitary Confinement
October 29, 2021
------------------------------


*Oakland, CA ‒ Men who spent a decade or longer in solitary confinement
charged that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
(CDCR) is violating a landmark settlement agreement and continuing to
undermine their constitutional rights in a court hearing Thursday. *

As part of the case Ashker v. Governor of California
<https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/ashker-v-brown>, the
men’s attorneys asked a district court judge to extend the monitoring
period of the settlement for a second time and to order remedies for
continued rights violations.

“I suffered through decades in solitary confinement. The trauma we endured
continues to impact the mental, emotional, and physical health of all the
men California tortured for so long, even those like me who are now out of
prison. This court must prevent more torture and also must end the abusive
use of confidential information, because there is undisputed evidence
showing officials have misused it at disciplinary proceedings,
classification hearings, and parole hearings, etc.,”said Paul Redd,
<https://sanquentinnews.com/rebuilding-his-life-after-44-years-of-incarceration-from-1170d/>
a plaintiff in the case who suffered decades of solitary confinement and
was released from prison last year.

The 2015 settlement agreement resulted from a class action case that had
begun as a lawsuit filed on their own behalf by men held for decades in
solitary at Pelican Bay State Prison
<https://solitarywatch.org/resources/multimedia/photography/inside-pelican-bay-state-prison/>
in Crescent City, California.

The settlement mandated specific reforms and a two-year monitoring period
intended to end indefinite solitary confinement and the use of specious
findings of gang affiliation as a justification for isolating prisoners.
But at the end of the monitoring period, Judge Claudia Wilken, the district
court judge in the case, ordered an extension, finding that the CDCR was
systemically violating due process rights and “effectively frustrating the
purpose” of the settlement agreement. That decision is on appeal.

However, Thursday’s argument was over a magistrate judge's denial of a
request for a second extension. Last year, that judge found civil rights
violations were not continuing, despite evidence to the contrary presented
by prisoners, and that the case should therefore end.

Jules Lobel, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, stated, “The Ashker case
began over a decade ago, as people in prison organized to end the inhumane
practice of warehousing human beings in solitary confinement for decades on
end. While we have succeeded in forcing California to transfer thousands of
men into less restrictive units, there is so much left to do, and
California has shown itself unwilling to make those necessary changes
without court oversight.”

CDCR is still using fabricated, exaggerated, or inaccurately disclosed
confidential information to return men to solitary confinement, plaintiffs
say. Imprisoned men are pressured to provide information in exchange for
favors and better treatment, and prison officials treat obviously false
information as reliable, taking no steps and enacting no safeguards to
ascertain the facts. Further, men are often isolated for alleged safety
concerns even when an investigation does not conclude they have violated
prison rules. At the same time, CDCR continues to impose a de facto bar on
parole for men with alleged gang affiliation, providing parole boards with
purported evidence of gang affiliation obtained through the
unconstitutional process described above. Finally, CDCR places and retains
certain men in a restricted unit in the general population without adequate
procedural protections. All of this, prisoners and their advocates say,
violates their right to due process.

They will ask Judge Wilken both to extend the monitoring period again and
to order reforms to guard against violations of their rights, including:

   - Audio-recording all confidential interviews when prisoners implicate
   other prisoners in rule violations;
   - Establishing an independent monitor;
   - Prohibiting the transmission to the parole board of unreliable
   information about alleged gang affiliation; and
   - Implementing additional layers of review and opportunities for men in
   prison to appeal certain decisions that result in continued isolation.

“We are asking the court to address ongoing rights violations,” said Carmen
Bremer of Bremer Law Group, co-counsel in the case. “One of the top
concerns for the people we represent is the ways the system encourages the
use of unreliable information to further punish them ‒ we need safeguards,
and we need an independent monitor to ensure all the reforms, new and old,
are carried out.”

Ashker v. Governor of California amended a lawsuit filed by then-Pelican
Bay prisoners Todd Ashker and Danny Troxell, who represented themselves.
The class action suit charges that prolonged solitary confinement violates
the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, and
that the absence of meaningful review for placement violates the prisoners’
rights to due process.

It is part of a larger movement sparked by hunger strikes by thousands of
prisoners protesting conditions in Security Housings Units in California
prisons. The named plaintiffs in Ashker include several leaders and
participants from the hunger strikes.

Co-counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights are Legal Services for
Prisoners with Children, California Prison Focus, Siegel & Yee, Weil
Gotshal & Manges LLP, Bremer Law Group, Ellenberg & Hull, the Law Offices
of Charles Carbone, and the Law Office of Matthew Strugar.

For more information, visit the Center for Constitutional Rights’ case page
<https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/ashker-v-brown>.

*The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat
to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and
strategic communications. Since 1966, the Center for Constitutional Rights
has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism,
gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. Learn
more at ccrjustice.org <https://ccrjustice.org/>.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20211030/f80c8786/attachment.htm>