Hunger Strike by California Inmates, Already Large, Is Expected to Be Long
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
A solitary confinement unit at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. Solitary confinement is the focus of a statewide hunger strike that started this week.
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: July 10, 2013
LOS ANGELES — Nearly 29,000 inmates in California state prisons refused meals for the third day Wednesday during a protest of prison conditions and rules. The protest extended to two-thirds of the 33 prisons across the state and all 4 private out-of-state facilities where California sends inmates, corrections officials said.
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Thousands of prisoners also refused to attend their work assignments for a third day, and state officials were bracing for a long-term strike.
Once the state tallies the official number of participants, the hunger strike could become the largest in state history. A similar hunger strike over several weeks in 2011 had about 6,000 participants at its official peak, corrections officials said, and a strike that fall had about 4,200.
The protest is centered on the state’s aggressive solitary confinement practices, but it appeared to have attracted support from many prisoners with their own demands for changes in prison conditions.
Jules Lobel, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the lead lawyer in a federal lawsuit over solitary confinement, said he expected the strike to go on for much longer than previous ones because inmates would refuse to accept anything less than a legally binding agreement for immediate changes.
“Last time, they took promises of reforms, but they are not going to do that again, because two years later the reforms have not materialized in any real way,” Mr. Lobel said.
“This could become a very serious situation over time, because it seems we have a substantial group of people who are prepared to see it to the end if they don’t get real change,” he said.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not officially recognize a strike until inmates have refused nine consecutive meals; officials said the number of prisoners who had gone that far would not be tallied until Thursday.
California is facing the threat of being charged with contempt of court after a Supreme Court order in May 2011 to reduce its prison population by 10,000 inmates this year. The court said crowding and terrible conditions inside the prison system constituted inhumane treatment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. On Wednesday, the state filed for a stay of the court’s order to release prisoners.
Gov. Jerry Brown has repeatedly said that the state has gone as far as it can to release low-level offenders and reduce crowding at the prisons, and that it is providing adequate medical care for inmates. But last month, a federal judge criticized the system for allowing potentially lethal valley fever to spread through two jails in Central Valley and ordered the state to move 2,600 inmates at risk of catching the disease.
A small group of inmates in solitary confinement at the maximum-security Pelican Bay State Prison, in a remote area near the Oregon border, called for the protest months ago. They have complained that inmates are being held in isolation indefinitely for having ties to prison gangs. Some have been held for decades without phone calls, access to rehabilitation programs or time outdoors.
Ten inmates at High Desert State Prison in Northern California began their own hunger strike last week and were being monitored by medical staff for signs of distress, officials said. Their demands, made in a letter, include cleaner prison facilities, better food and more access to the prison library. Prisoners at several other facilities also issued demand letters, which were displayed on a Web site supporting the strikers.
The organizers timed the protest to coincide with the start of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, which began this week; state officials said that would make it more complicated to determine how many prisoners were fasting out of religious obligation rather than in protest.
Prison officials said the protests had not caused any major disruptions.
“These actions have been talked about for months,” said Jeffrey Callison, a spokesman for the corrections department. “We have been preparing to make sure that the rules are enforced consistently.”
After the protests two years ago, corrections officials promised to use new criteria in placing inmates in solitary confinement and to create a process by which inmates could get out of isolation. Corrections officials say that of 382 inmates who have been screened, roughly half have qualified to return to the general population. But about 10,000 inmates remain in solitary confinement units.
Carol Strickman, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners With Children who negotiated on behalf of inmates during the last hunger strike, said allies of the inmates had no way of verifying how many were taking part this time. During the last strike, officials prohibited participants from communicating with family and friends.
“Officials have this bunker mentality, but now it’s like a house of cards is falling down,” Ms. Strickman said. “There have been so many problems for decades, and now they are being forced to deal with them all at once.”
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