[Pnews] Lawsuit calling isolation in California prisons torture moves forward

[Prisoner News]

  Lawsuit calling isolation in California prisons torture moves forward


By Sharon Bernstein Reuters

4:47 p.m. EDT, June 4, 2014

*http://www.vagazette.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-california-prisons-20140604,0,5196989.story*

SACRAMENTO Calif. (Reuters) - A lawsuit contending California's practice 
of keeping prisoners in near-solitary confinement for years is 
unconstitutional is set to move forward on Wednesday at a hearing to 
clarify the issues that will be heard and set dates for an upcoming trial.

The suit is the latest in a series of moves by human rights activists to 
end or curtail the use of near-isolation in California, which keeps 
inmates with ties to prison gangs in small concrete cells for a minimum 
of 22 1/2 hours per day, according to court documents.

"It really is the most stark kind of warehousing of human beings that 
you can imagine," said Rachel Herzing, a spokeswoman for activists 
supporting the prisoners. "There are hundreds of people in these 
conditions right now in the prison system."

The lawsuit, filed in 2012, alleges the solitary confinement of inmates 
in California violates the U.S. constitutional prohibitions on cruel and 
unusual punishment and torture.

Last summer, inmates protested the indefinite detention by starting a 
hunger strike 
<http://www.vagazette.com/topic/crime-law-justice/california-prison-hunger-strike-%282013%29-EVGAP00080.topic> 
in July that lasted two months and at its peak attracted 30,000 
prisoners. Several of the leaders of the strike, including inmate Todd 
Asker, are plaintiffs in the lawsuit being heard on Wednesday.

Of the roughly 120,000 inmates in the California system, 4,054 were held 
almost 24 hours a day in poured concrete rooms no larger than 100 square 
feet (9.3 square meters) as of last October, according to testimony at a 
legislative hearing at that time. About 100 inmates have been in the 
units for more than 20 years, and an undisclosed number have been kept 
there for 30 years or more, officials said at the hearing.

Since then, the state has implemented new procedures for deciding which 
inmates must live in these security housing units, and begun the 
sometimes years-long process of allowing some to rejoin the general 
prison population.

Some prisoners in the units are allowed to live in their cells with 
roommates, although in these cases both inmates are kept in the cells 
together for 22 1/2 hours or more per day and fed meals through a slot 
in the door, as are the ones who are in the cells alone.

On Monday, federal Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that inmates who have been 
in the units for more than ten years, or who are there on indefinite 
sentences, at the state's notorious Pelican Bay prison near the Oregon 
border can be part of the suit as a class action.

She divided them into two groups - those who have the right to sue under 
the Eighth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and 
unusual punishment, and those who may sue under the 14th Amendment 
contending that they have been deprived of their due process rights.

Deborah Hoffman, a spokeswoman for the California Department of 
Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the state was reviewing Monday's 
order, and had no comment.


(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Jim Loney)
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