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<div dir="ltr"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35834-erika-rocha-s-suicide-underscores-the-damage-that-prison-is-wreaking-on-youth"
style="font-size:12.8px" target="_blank">http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35834-erika-rocha-s-suicide-underscores-the-damage-that-prison-is-wreaking-on-youth</a>
<h2 class=""> Erika Rocha's Suicide Underscores the Damage That
Prison Is Wreaking on Youth </h2>
<span class=""> 28 April 2016 00:00 </span> <span class=""> By
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/52173">Colby
Lenz</a><br>
</span><br>
Erika Rocha was a 35-year-old Latina woman incarcerated at the
California Institution for Women in Corona. She was found
hanging in her cell on April 14, 2016, after 21 years of
incarceration. Erika was only 14 years old when she was charged
and convicted as an adult in Los Angeles County.
<p>I visited Erika in prison as a volunteer legal advocate with
the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://womenprisoners.org/?cat=10" target="_blank">California
Coalition for Women Prisoners</a>. She told me about the
abuses she suffered at the hands of the State of California
since she was 14. With no family by her side, Erika was
intimidated by police and threatened by prosecutors with a
double life sentence for attempted murder. This threatened
sentence was far beyond the charge, but Erika was scared and
confused. Police had interrogated her with no guardian
present. She waived her Miranda rights, without understanding
what that meant. The district attorney aggressively prosecuted
Erika, who had grossly inadequate legal representation. Under
pressure, she took the blame for the older kids involved and
pled to a 19-to-life sentence. When it came time for her
sentencing proceedings, Erika sat in court alone. The criminal
legal system is intimidating for a well-resourced adult.
Imagine what it was like for Erika.</p>
<p>Erika's story highlights how the criminal legal system
intimidates, coerces and traps people, especially low-income <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/images/policybriefs/policyreform/FR_YACJS_2012.pdf"
target="_blank">youth of color</a>. As a Latina youth, it
was <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/Latino_Brief.pdf"
target="_blank">43 percent more likely</a> that Erika would
be prosecuted as an adult and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/Latino_Brief.pdf"
target="_blank">40 percent more likely</a> that she would be
admitted to an adult prison compared to a white youth. As a
poor youth in a <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://kids-alliance.org/facts-stats/" target="_blank">foster
care</a> group home, Erika faced a much higher chance of
incarceration. Erika's mom died when she was young, and she
had recently learned that her dad was not dead but
incarcerated.</p>
<p>Erika was sent to a women's prison in Chowchilla at <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.nicic.gov/Library/031370.pdf"
target="_blank">16 years old</a>. Prison staff placed her in
solitary confinement to "protect her" until she was 17. At our
first visit, she told me that guards said they put her in
solitary to protect the prison because she was too young to be
there. They put a neon sign on her cage door that read "Do Not
Approach - Minor." This would be just one of Erika's four
indefinite solitary terms.</p>
<p>Erika was in a mental health unit when I met her. She spoke
openly about attempting suicide and about her extended time in
this unit and on-and-off suicide watch. Erika suffered from
dehumanizing treatment for mental health issues attributable
to her <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://jjustice.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/CAYCJ-treat-kids-as-kids-Oct-2014.pdf"
target="_blank">incarceration as a youth</a>. Her trauma was
worsened by the isolation of incarceration, added to by
further isolation in solitary (including suicide watch).
Formerly incarcerated leaders of the California Coalition for
Women Prisoners who supported Erika as a teenager in prison
have said she sought support for her trauma since the
beginning of her incarceration. Since the moment I met Erika,
I worried about her ability to stay alive, because of her
notable and stated vulnerability and because of the prison
system's proven ability to make her life impossible.</p>
<p>Erika was traumatized, but she also had a fighting spirit and
a sweetness and a youthfulness that I will always remember. We
made plans to fight for her release. She talked about wanting
to tell the world what she survived. She wanted to fight for <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.youth4justice.org/"
target="_blank">youth justice</a>, and when she trusted me
enough to start telling her story, she wouldn't stop talking.</p>
<p>This past weekend, Erika's sisters and stepmother (whom she
met shortly before she was arrested) shared some of her
writing with me from October 1996. Erika was 15 and locked up
in juvie when she wrote, "When I was very young people always
left me. I felt that they didn't even love me ... I care a lot
about people but they don't care about me and it hurts me. I
don't know, I'm just a confused kid just like everyone says."</p>
<p>Erika was more than confused -- she was neglected and abused.
The child welfare system, the District Attorney's Office and
the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
are all responsible for Erika's death. She took actions to end
her life, but the criminal punishment system killed her. These
institutions robbed her of any sense of her own future, even a
day away from her <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://fairsentencingforyouth.org/legislation/senate-bill-260-justice-for-juveniles-sentenced-to-adult-prison-terms/"
target="_blank">youth parole hearing</a>.</p>
<p>In the weeks leading up to her death, Erika was transferred
to suicide watch at least three times. The day before her
death, she was released from suicide watch and returned to a
mental health unit. The California Institution for Women
failed to save Erika's life the very next day.</p>
<p>Several of Erika's closest people are now on suicide watch.
The suicide watch unit at the California Institution for Women
is overcrowded and the prison has mental health crisis beds on
"overflow" in the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://solitarywatch.com/2014/11/05/a-girl-hung-herself-yesterday-deaths-at-california-institution-for-women/"
target="_blank">SHU</a> ("security housing unit"), further <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://solitarywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/fact-sheet-psychological-effects-final.pdf"
target="_blank">endangering</a> people's lives. In 2015, the
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://bit.ly/SuicidesCIW"
target="_blank">suicide rate at the California Institution
for Women</a> was more than eight times the national rate
for people in women's prisons and more than five times the
rate for people in California prisons. In January 2016, a
court-ordered suicide prevention audit by suicide expert
Lindsay Hayes concluded that the prison continues to be "a
problematic institution" with "poor practices" that fail to
prevent suicides.</p>
<p>This week the California Coalition for Women Prisoners
launched a <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://bit.ly/InvestigateCIW" target="_blank">petition</a>
demanding an end to the epidemic of deaths and attempted
suicides at the California Institution for Women. Impacted by
the trauma of incarceration, people are speaking out and
demanding an end to incarceration as a cause of death. In
honor of Erika, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners
also seeks support for the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.safetyandrehabilitation.com"
target="_blank">Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act</a> to
eliminate the power of prosecutors to directly file youth
under the age of 18 into adult court. We also support <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://womenprisoners.org/?cat=10" target="_blank">legislation</a>
to limit solitary confinement for youth and to ensure that
youth cannot waive their Miranda rights. Since we helped start
it, California should end the war on youth, with its race-,
class- and gender-targeted mass incarceration.</p>
<p>Erika's death was preventable. She should have been loved,
not caged.</p>
<span class="">
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:editor@truthout.org">permission</a>.</span>
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<div>
<h2><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/52173">Colby
Lenz</a></h2>
<div>
<p>Colby Lenz is a legal advocate with the California
Coalition for Women Prisoners. Colby has been working with
people imprisoned in California women's prisons for the
past 14 years. This work includes survival and release
support, building leadership power with currently and
formerly imprisoned people, and developing community-based
responses to violence that do not rely on or reinforce the
prison-industrial complex. Colby organizes with the
Survived And Punished project, a national organizing
project to end the criminalization of survivors of sexual
and domestic violence. Colby is a Ph.D. candidate in
American studies and ethnicity at the University of
Southern California where she studies criminalization,
imprisonment and social movements against life and death
sentencing. Colby is committed to collaborative
scholarship focused on refining and strengthening social
movement strategy.</p>
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