Working

W
Working
ki to
t Extend
E t d Democracy
D
to
t All 
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V
Volume
V l
Volume
2, N
2
Number
b 5
5

May

M
M 2013
May
2013

OREGON PRISONERS DRIVEN TO
SUICIDE BY TORTURE IN SOLITARY
CONFINEMENT UNITS
By Kevin Rashid Johnson
Introduction
am not one prone to fits of temper. But
a few days ago I almost lost it. My outrage was prompted by witnessing the
steady deterioration of another prisoner,
resulting from particularly acute mental
torture inflicted in Oregon’s Disciplinary
Segregation Units (DSU), which duplicates almost exactly conditions of torture
first practiced at Philadelphia’s Eastern
State Penitentiary, that were outlawed by
the U.S. Supreme Court way back in the
1800s.1
The prisoner, who’d been housed in a
suicide precaution cell next to me in the
DSU of Oregon’s, Snake River Correc-

I

CONTENTS
Oregon’s Solitary Prisoners .....1
Help Women In Prison .............3
Black Incarceration Rates ........4
CA Assembly Reviews SHU.....5
Editorial Comments..................6
Letters ......................................7

tional Institution (SRCI), went into an immediate depressed state upon being put
into the DSU. Initially, he talked a little.
Then abruptly withdrew. He stopped eating, to which the guards were unanimously
indifferent. Several taunted him, “if you
don’t eat it I will.” He then stuffed toilet
paper and the cell’s mattress into the cracks
around the edges of the door, apparently to
seal off all outside sound and “barricade”
himself in.
He blacked out the camera in the cell,
and began talking to himself. He sat catatonic in the corner of the cell and naked for
days on end. He was confronted only twice
by mental health staff who indifferently left
his cell when he wasn’t responsive to their
half-hearted attempts to talk.
Only after I verbally protested the blatant
apathy of mental health and medical staff
to his condition, which was obviously due
to their collaborating in his mental torture,
was a nurse brought to the cell to physically
examine him. Whereupon his blood pressure was found extremely low and both the
nurse and accompanying guard expressed
his mouth and skin showed obvious symptoms of severe dehydration. In addition to
not eating, he’d also apparently not been
drinking water for several days, although
he was supposedly in a “monitored” cell.
The nurse had him immediately taken
out of the unit, likely to the medical department since he didn’t return. The next day
I was moved to another unit as well. That
was on November 14, 2012.

A High Tide of Suicide
I never learned his full name. The guards
and other officials called him only “Acosta” (presumably his last name). In the DSU
where we were confined together, there are
six suicide precaution cells. I was housed
next to one of them.
These precaution cells have in-cell video
cameras and prisoners confined to them are
generally given only a blue nylon smocklike garment to wear, a nylon blanket, and a
mattress. Throughout my DSU assignment
at SRCI these cells were always occupied
and a constantly changing rotation of prisoners were kept on watch as a result of
suicide attempts and ideations. In 22 years
of imprisonment, I have never seen such a
consistently high and continuous series of

suicide cases, which I immediately recognized to result from the extreme sensory
deprivation of DSU housing.
Compelling Idle Minds
Prior to my Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) assignment in February
2012, I’d spent 17 years in solitary confinement, enduring various extremes of sensory
deprivation. During that time I witnessed
numerous prisoners deteriorate mentally
under the conditions of solitary. But in most
cases, it took months to years because there
was a limited amount of access to in-cell
property and one could use the telephone
periodically. However, in Oregon’s DSU
no personal property is allowed, beyond a
pen, writing paper, and, if one can afford
it and has anyone to regularly correspond
with, a few mailing envelopes. One cannot use the telephone to communicate with
loved ones at all. One can’t have personal
books even. Not even law books.
In DSU a prisoner may only receive up
to three novels from a small rolling book
cart kept in the unit. Many of which are
missing bindings and pages. Such reading
per se does little to stimulate the mind and
denies one the opportunity and right to select his own subjects and fields of research
and study.2 The three novels may only be
exchanged from the cart once per week.
DSU prisoners are heard frequently complaining that having nothing else to do, they
complete the novels in two to three days,
and are otherwise left completely idle and
“bored out of their minds.” Meantime the
deterioration sets in: the constant cell-pacing or catatonic states, incessantly talking
to oneself, depression, irrational searches
for stimulation, and of course, self mutilation and suicide attempts.
Torture By Design
And ODOC officials know what they’re
doing. They consciously use acute sensory
deprivation (psychological torture) as a
behavior modification technique, with the
assistance of mental health staff whose professional role and concern are supposed to
be maintaining prisoners in healthy mental
states, not aiding in inflicting mental pain
and injury on them. This is no different
from the doctors and nurses who aided the
gruesome medical experiments and tortures of concentration camp prisoners in
Nazi Germany.
Indeed, I was moved from the DSU with
the suicide precaution cells, when I spoke
out in protest to and against one of the DSU
2

staff, D. Jennings, as she indifferently left
Acosta’s cell, asking why she was condoning his and all our mental torture under DSU conditions, referring to the high
frequency of suicide attempts in the unit;
and citing numerous studies of psychiatric
and torture experts on sensory deprivation
and its being a known form of psychological torture and one of the most hurtful and
damaging forms at that. Her response was
to walk away with guards laughing. She
then gave me a scornful stare as she left the
unit.
I’ve learned from ODOC prisoners, officials and ODOC’s own publicly accessible policies – the Oregon Administrative
Rules (OAR’s)3 – that ODOC officials very
deliberately use psychological torture as
a behavior modification technique, which
is one reason the DSU is designed as it is.
Those found in violation of minor or major prison rules are invariably sentenced to
months of mental torture in DSU: typically
four to six months at a time, which amounts
to prolonged torture as a deterrent to rules
violations.
Worse still is the ODOC’s Intensive
Management Unit (IMU) where I am now
confined. A housing status that lasts from
seven months to indefinitely, during which
a prisoner must pass through four levels
– which requires that he reveal his every
thought to his torturers.
Those housed in IMU who receive rules
infractions are automatically placed on
level one for a month, which is even more
restrictive and extreme in sensory deprivation than DSU housing. And for every
infraction he then receives, his level one
assignment is extended. Such conditions
often put prisoners struggling to maintain

their sanity in a catch-22, where coping
prompts resisting their torturing confinement, and that very resistance prompts infractions which intensify and prolong that
confinement.4
On the level one IMU status, the prisoner
may have only one novel per week, and
cannot even come out of the cell for fresh
air inside the walled-in enclosure, with
only a small patch of the sky visible, that
passes for an exercise yard.
hen, too, as a Security Threat Management (STM) lieutenant, Schultz, here at
SRCI, boasted in my presence on September 18, 2012, he personally imposes indefinite statuses on select IMU prisoners where
they are left in completely empty cells all
day, given bedding and linen from 10 pm
to 6 am daily, and are allowed writing supplies for no more than four hours per day.
He actually admitted to me this was torture
and violated the prisoners’ constitutional
rights, but proclaimed himself immune
from all liability (i.e. above the law), because ODOC policy empowered him to do
pretty much as he pleases to prisoners as an
STM official.5
I in turn sent Schultz a written request
that same day pointing out that he was
not in fact immune for violating the law
because he believes his policy-making superiors gave him authority to do so. I then
pointed out the sort of character he and
his colleagues are, who presume to punish
others by imprisonment for breaking laws,
when they in fact have no respect for the
very same laws themselves – and the highest law of the land that they are under oath
to uphold at that, namely the U.S. Constitution. And although ODOC rules required
that Schultz respond to my request within
seven days, he never replied.6 Yet, he sees
to prisoners being tortured for their violations of ODOC rules.
One prisoner who’s been confined in the
ODOC for some time – Damascus Menefee – informed me of an ODOC scandal a
few years back, where it was exposed in the
media that several DSU and IMU prisoners
had committed suicide, but were not discovered by officials for hours, because guards
weren’t tending their posts and refused to
make required security rounds in the housing units. As a result, the ODOC installed
electronic devices in the DSUs and IMU
that monitor and record the guards’ rounds
in the units. What was also exposed during
this scandal was that the conditions of the
DSUs and IMU were causing an extremely
high incidence of suicides and suicide atRock

tempts in the ODOC. However, nothing
was done to change these conditions that
still exist, and, as I have observed, continue
to drive prisoners at an extraordinary rate
into suicidal ideations and actions.
History Repeats Itself
As pointed out the DSU and IMU conditions replicate abuses outlawed over a century ago, at the Eastern State Penitentiary,
where solitary confinement was first tried
as a method of “reforming” criminals, but
only proved to drive them insane.
Whereas DSU and IMU level one prisoners are locked in solitary cells with only
novels, at Eastern State they were confined
in solitary with only a bible to read, where
they were expected to ponder and make
penance (hence the name “Penitentiary”)
for their wrongs. The actual effects of such
confinement, as the Supreme Court found,
were quite different:
“A considerable number of prisoners
fell, after even a short confinement, into a
semi-fatuous condition, from which it was
next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still,
committed suicide; while those who stood
the ordeal were not reformed, and in most
cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of subsequent service to the
community.”7
Unite to Fight Prison Torture
Today, as the world joins U.S. prisoners
in protest against ongoing solitary confinement in prisons across the country – from
the United Nations denouncing the practice
of torture8 to mass demonstrations in support of hunger striking prisoners protesting
solitary9 – the ODOC has managed somehow to remain under the radar, where the
most intense sensory deprivation is being
inflicted on prisoners, and prisoners are literally dying to escape it.10
And it’s known torture; of the same sort
inflicted in U.S. torture research labs like
at Guantanamo Bay, where U.S. military
personnel in collaboration with psychiatrists and psychologists, inflicted, studied
and refined various methods and effects
of psychological torture on detainees (especially sensory deprivation), which came
out in the U.S. military torture scandals of
2004 and led to ongoing mass protests to
close down Guantanamo. Professor Alfred
McCoy also wrote an extensive historical
study and exposure of U.S. military and
CIA involvement in refining techniques of
mental torture for decades.11
Volume 2, Number 5

Experts in the field know very well that
sensory deprivation causes suffering and
injury at least as extensive and often more
severe than physical torture and injury. As
psychiatrist and torture expert Dr. Albert
Biderman observed:
“The effect of isolation on the brain
function of the prisoner is much like that
which occurs if he is beaten, starved or
deprived of sleep.”12 Furthermore, studies
find that sensory deprivation inflicted in
solitary confinement even briefly actually
causes physical brain damage.
“EEG studies going back to the nineteensixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain
waves in prisoners after a week or more of
solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven
prisoners of war, released after an average
of six months in detention camps in the
former Yugoslavia, were examined using
EEG-like-tests. The recordings revealed
brain abnormalities months afterward: the
most severe were found in prisoners who
had endured either head trauma sufficient
to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement: without sustained social
interaction, the human brain may become
as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.”13
As said, these hypocrites running the
DOC are fully aware of what they’re doing. They know they’re engaged in torture
of prisoners as lawless as if they were water boarding and electrocuting us. That they
pretend to have a moral authority to punish
others for breaking laws they don’t respect
themselves is what fueled my outrage, as
I watched others around me retreat into
insanity, mentally deteriorate and literally
resort to self-destruction in efforts to stop
their suffering.

Here on the inside, the hypocrisy of
those in power is blatant. Because we “in
here,” so long as we remain disconnected
from those “out there,” are powerless in
the face of our armed captors, therefore our
torturers feel little need to sugar coat reality
and hide their true face as they do with the
outside masses.
Here in Oregon the public seems oblivious to the abuses carried out in their names
within its prisons; abuses that also unbeknownst to them they stand to suffer from,
because these tortured souls around me
will be returned back to those communities
from whence they came in a much worse
state than when they left them. So for the
sake of all concerned, it’s in these communities’ interests to end this prison torture
and hold those responsible to account. ■
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
All Power to the People

(Endnotes)
1. In re Medley, 134 U.S. 160 (1890).
2. As the courts have held: “Freedom of
speech is not merely freedom to speak; it
is often freedom to read. . . Forbid a person
to read and you shut him out of the marketplace of ideas and opinions that it is the
free-speech clause to protect.” King v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 415 F. 3d 634, 638
(2005).
3. All of the ODOC’s Oregon Administrative
Rules can be read at: www.arcweb.
sos.state.or.us. The OAR’s relevant
to this article are OAR 291-011 (Disciplinary Segregation), OAR 291-055 (Intensive
Management Unit), and OAR 291-069 (Security Threat Management).
4. On this phenomenon see, Dr. Atul Gawadne; “Hellhole: the United States holds
thousands of inmates in long-term solitary
confinement. Is this torture? The New Yorker, March 30, 2009.
5. See OAR on STM, op cit. note 3.
6. Per OAR 291-109-1020 (4) ODOC staff
are to reply to prisoners’ written requests
(“Kytes”) within seven days.
7. See, op cit. note 1 on page 168.
8. On October 18, 2011 UN torture expert,
Juan Méndez, denounced U.S. solitary confinement practices as torture and called on
all countries to ban its practice except in extremely exceptional circumstances and for
as short a time as possible. See “UN News:
Solitary Confinement Should be Banned in
Most Cases, UN Expert Says,” October 18,
2011.
9. On July 1 and September 29, 2011 six
thousand and 12,000 prisoners respectively
in California prisons went on hunger strikes
lasting three weeks both times, protesting,
among other things, long-term solitary confinement in Security Housing Units. Mass
support for these hunger strikes spanned
the country.

3

10. A prisoner confined next to me, as I write
this, witnessed two suicides occurring during or about May and July 2012 at Oregon
State Correctional Institutions – Segregation Units, in Salem Oregon. This witness
being Zachary Dickson.
11. Alfred McCoy, “A Question of Torture:
CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to
the War on Terror”, (New York: Henry Holt,
2006).
12. Albert Biderman, et al, “The Manipulation of Human Behavior” (New York, 1961)
p. 29.
13. Op cit. note 4.

JUDGE REJECTS
CALIFORNIA’S
BID TO REGAIN
CONTROL OF
PRISONS
By Sam Stanton and Denny Walsh
federal judge today rejected Gov.
Jerry Brown’s bid to regain control
of the state’s prisons from federal
oversight of inmates’ mental health care,
ruling that the state has not done enough to
improve conditions inside the prisons.
U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton, in a 68-page order, found that “systemic failures persist” in anti-suicide measures
and other mental health care needs.
The judge’s ruling came just over a week
after attorneys for the inmates and the state
squared off in a contentious hearing before
Karlton over whether California had done
enough to improve conditions inside its
prisons.
The Brown administration served notice
in January that it believed it was far past
time for California to regain control of the
prisons from federal oversight and filed
documents outlining improvements that
have been made in the system since the inmate lawsuit was first filed in 1990.
But the inmates’ attorneys contend the
state’s mental health care for inmates still is
woefully inadequate and cite suicide rates
among inmates as evidence of that.
They also charged that the state improperly gained access to their clients - the inmates - by having experts tour various prisons and talk to inmates about the state of
their care.
The inmate attorneys classified these
sessions as “secret” interviews that violate
inmate rights to have their own lawyers
present, something the state dismissed as
absurd.

A

4

The governor already has indicated that
he would pursue the matter to the nation’s
highest court, if necessary.
“I have no doubt that if we can get this
back before the Supreme Court it will
agree,” Brown told The Bee last month.
The mental health case is one of two legal battles the state is waging over federal
oversight. California also is seeking to get
out from under a federal court decree that
it reduce its inmate population to 137.5
percent of capacity by the end of the year,
which would require cutting population
by about 9,000 inmates to reach a total of
about 110,000.
The state’s prisons originally were designed to hold about 80,000 inmates, but
the Brown administration contends it already has reduced the inmate population
tremendously and that further cuts will endanger public safety.
A hearing on that issue, which will take
place before a panel of three federal judges
in San Francisco, has yet to be scheduled. ■
http://blogs.sacbee.com/crime/archives/2013/04/judge-rejects-state-bid-toregain-control-of-prisons.html

PRE-EMPTIVE
RETALIATION
AGAINST
CORCORAN SHU
2011 HUNGER
STRIKERS?

“

We’ve been working for the past 2
days to put our cell back together after
they came in here and just tore it up.
It really looked like a bomb went off in our
cell. Hopefully you received my postcard
that I sent on the 12th, which is the day the
raid occurred.
If not, here’s a quick recap:
“They pulled us all out of the cells after
strip-searching us - then walked us through
metal detection wands - they then spent 7
hours tossing up our cells - in me and Zah’s
[his cellmate] case, they threw away all our
canteen, my deodorant, all my Bayview
newspapers and most anything they could
find having to do with our Human Rights
struggle.
“They then walked us all up to visiting
in plastic flex cuffs and walked us through
another metal detector. There were boot
prints on my bunk where they stood on it

to tear down our antenna wire and clithes
lines - tossed out most of our laundry and
so much more that it’s really pointless to
catalogue it all.
“Someone took the extraordinary step
of breaking our toilet so it won’t flush. By
sheer luck, a brother officer who came on
the next shift went into the pipe chases upstairs and downstairs and found what was
done and fixed it. Only our toilet was done
this way.
“It’s clear that this entire thing was an act
of pre-emptive retaliation leading up to the
July 8th protests, they cut off our hot water
then, and haven’t cut it back on yet. Please,
if you haven’t, notified [name omitted] and
the Coalition, as well as my family of what
has/is transpiring here.” ■
Shannon Heshima Denham J-38283
CSP-Cor-SHU 4B1L #43
P.O. Box 3481
Corcoran, CA 93212

WHY ARE WE SO
BEHIND?

I

n 1779 Thomas Jefferson proposed a
law that would mandate castration for
gay men and mutilation of nose cartilage for gay women. Considering that
homosexuality was a crime routinely punished by death penalty at the time, his was
actually a rather liberal position. The US
gay rights and the marijuana legalization
movements took off in the early seventies
in the US, as did the prisoners’ right movement. Estimates of the gay population vary
between 2 and 4% of the US population,
about the same number of people who are
behind bars or under some form of penal
supervision. Gay marriage is legal in nine
states and growing, while recreational marijuana is now legal in both Washington and
Colorado and medicinal use of the drug is
far more widely accepted.
Why are the relatively small gay and
drug user communities so successful in
overcoming the strong prejudices while
the prisoners’ movement just fizzled away?
Why has the gay and drug rights movements built so much political clout while
prisoners are still considered pariahs and
prison reform still retains its political toxicity? Why is it that millions of prisoners can
be disenfranchised and held in deplorable
conditions of state-sanctioned slavery and
nobody seems to notice?
The answers lie in the lack of any meaningful or organized effort on the part of
Rock

prisoners to make their case to the public.
This can only be done through the active
participation of prisoners, through peaceful struggle, as a sub-class of the social order. With passion, will and determination,
along with the right strategy, prisoners
can overcome even the deepest-rooted biases and the most entrenched institutional
injustices. The recipe for success is rather
straightforward: stand up, unite, mobilize,
organize, and participate. ■

THE COLORADO
DOC HEAD
KILLING

A

new potential motive has emerged
in last month’s killing of Colorado
prisons chief Tom Clements: According to The Colorado Independent, the
slain suspect Evan Spencer Ebel may have
committed murder less out of loyalty to
white supremacists, as has been suspected,
but rather out of mental anguish produced
by years spent in solitary confinement deprived of regular human contact. We’re
joined by Colorado Independent Editor
Susan Greene. A longtime reporter for The
Denver Post, Greene discusses the investigation, as well why she has left the corporate media to preserve and revitalize the
Independent as a vital source of political
and investigative journalism in Colorado.
Susan Green:
I’ve known a lot of prison chiefs. This
guy was different, in that the first time I
met with him, he said, when he took the
job—and he came as a sort of out-of-state
appointee by our governor, so he s new to
the system—one thing really shocked him.
And it was a statistic that 47 percent of inmates who were being released from solitary confinement were being released directly onto the streets. He said that number
haunted him. And he immediately reversed
policies, from a state that had been touting a poll saying solitary confinement is
actually neutral, sort of semi-OK psychologically for prisoners, to closing our most
recently built prison, which was entirely a
supermax, meaning it was entirely housed
by people in solitary. He closed that. It was,
I think, at the time, 18 months old. And he
started moving people out of solitary into
general population, and then also making
sure that people—less people were going
from solitary to the streets. He was worried about the kind of violence, what would
Volume 2, Number 5

happen to them emotionally if you just, after keeping them in a cell 23 hours a day
with no human contact, let them out on the
street.
Spencer Ebel was released exactly in a
way that Mr. Clements worried about. He
was released onto the street after years and
years of solitary, living in a box. And what
that means is, 23 hours a day, no human
contact except the food tray that comes—
you know, that a guard shoves through
your—through a slot or the mail. And then,
actually, in Colorado, we have this peculiar
thing where the 23rd hour of exercise happens indoors, not outdoors. So these guys
are not only alone all the time, but they’re
alone in our beautiful state exercising in a
room without any fresh air. ■

alleged), shouldn’t we examine his experiences in prison?
What forces so embittered him that he
would rather die than endure them again?
What, pray tell, must the conditions have
been like to charge a man’s heart so, that (if
initial reports are true), he slew three people in less than three months after release?
Questions unasked and unanswered.
Solitary confinement, experts tell us, is
torture that drives men mad.
One thing is certain. Evan Ebel resolved
to never return – no matter what. ■

THE WAGES OF
SOLITARY

By Ben Fox, Associated Press
onths of increased tension at the
Guantanamo Bay prison boiled
over into a clash between guards
and detainees Saturday as the military
closed a communal section of the facility
and moved its inmates into single cells.
The violence erupted during an early
morning raid that military officials said was
necessary because prisoners had covered
up security cameras and windows as part of
a weeks long protest and hunger strike over
their indefinite confinement and conditions
at the U.S. base in Cuba.
Prisoners fought guards with makeshift
weapons that included broomsticks and
mop handles when troops arrived to move
them out of a communal wing of the section of the prison known as Camp 6, said
Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a military
spokesman. Guards responded by firing
four “less-than-lethal rounds,” he said.
There were no serious injuries from the
rounds, which included a modified shotgun shell that fires small rubber pellets as
well as a type of bean-bag projectile, said
Army Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for
Miami-based U.S. Southern Command,
which oversees the prison at the U.S. base
in Cuba.
Tensions had been high at the prison for
months. Lawyers for prisoners said a hunger strike began Feb. 6 in protest over their
indefinite confinement and what the men
believed were tighter restrictions and intrusive searches of their Qurans for contraband. Prisoners offered to give up the Muslim holy book that each one is issued by the
government but officials refused, considering it a tacit admission of wrongdoing. ■

By Mumia Abu-Jamal
he story is quite recent, and therefore, much is not known.
A state prison system commissioner
opens his front door, and is greeted by
flame and bullets.
A grieving governor (John Hickenlooper-Dem.) laments the killing of his friend,
and initial reports suggest that the state’s
highest prison official met his end because
of a tiff with a disgruntled Saudi Arabian
citizen in his state’s custody.

T

Solitary confinement, experts tell us, is torture
that drives men mad.
Then, within hours, another narrative
emerged, but once again, the media concentrated on the sensational, missing the
story within the story.
The press sped to tell of an Evan Ebel,
the son of a friend and contributor to the
Colorado governor’s campaign. The son,
we are told, was close to a white supremacist prison gang.
Suddenly, we are knee-deep in speculation about white supremacist groups, as if
this was the motivation for the slaying of
the state’s prison chief.
Lost in all the hoopla is a comment by
state officials that Ebel left prison in January, 2013, after significant time in solitary.
Think about that.
If a man leaves prison, and in a mere
matter of weeks, embarks upon a killing
spree (again, we don’t know this, but it is

CONS, GUARDS
CLASH AT
GUANTANAMO

M

5

EDITORIAL 2-5

A

s many of you may know, I am
also the editor of the Prison Focus
newspaper, a position I’ve held
alone or jointly for the past thirteen years.
Prison Focus #39 was mailed out to readers in early March. This week California
Prison Focus received word from several
Pelican Bay prisoners that their captors had
rejected that issue. One man sent us the rejection form 1819 given to him. It says the
“pages which meet disapproval criteria”
are 8, 9, and 10, and the description of the
problem is “correspondence that contains
security concerns CCR 3006(c)(5) plans to
disrupt the order of any facility”.
What was on pages 8, 9, and 10 that
would undermine the order of the state’s
most secure prison? Why it was the Open
Letter to Governor Brown and the new corrections boss written by the Reps. The open
letter has been reported on in such lofty
publications as the Los Angeles Times, yet
I’ll bet that newspaper was not banned. The
Times even reported on an event that was
to take place on a certain future date, a date
this publication cannot mention lest we be
banned yet again. CPF is currently working
on a response to this heavy handed censorship, a banning based solely on the fact that
it contained a copy of a letter to public officials. As was the case with banned issues
of the Rock newsletter, Prison Focus #39
reached subscribers in every other facility
in the state.
On the good news front, the issue of solitary confinement is getting wider and wider support. Even conservative columnist
George Will has jumped on the band wagon. He recently wrote: “Tens of thousands
of American prison inmates are kept in
prolonged solitary confinement that arguably constitutes torture. Isolation changes
the way the brain works. The mental pain
of solitary confinement is crippling: Brain
studies reveal durable impairments and
abnormalities in individuals denied social
interaction.”
Now I would like to apologize to readers
for another lame issue of this newsletter. I
have articles from the Reps, all kinds of letters from readers, and other good information that I am not publishing this month as
a direct result of the censorship Rock has
suffered in the past. April’s issue did get
in, and so will this one because the content
is so watered down and contains a lot less
material than you have a right to expect.
The enemies of democracy and freedom of
6

speech have won, at least for this month.
As the number of subscribers/readers surpasses several hundred so does the amount
of material used to produce it, which at this
point is about four reams of paper at $5
each and close to a toner cartridge per issue
at $154 a shot. So far my old laser printer is
holding up under the load. The good news
is that this not a plea for stamps or money.
I have enough of both for now, thanks to
the generosity of Rock readers. I’m good
for at least a couple more months. If you
are a new reader who wants to subscribe,
however, the price is 30 stamps or $15 (or
else a good story, I’m pretty easy).
We up here in Seattle have been organizing against the SHUs, as are folks in San
Diego, LA, the Bay Area, Portland, and
elsewhere. Here we have union endorsements, churches, community activists, and
have many events planned. The closest one
is a hip hop educational to be held on April
29th. Our group, we call ourselves “Free
Us All”, has weekly planning meetings. On
May 18th we’ll be hosting a united front
meeting with representatives of immigrant
communities, gay and lesbian, union representatives, church leaders, and many others, for the purpose of developing support
for the struggle against Security Housing
Units. We are planning major demonstrations for July.
If you have people in the Seattle area
who might want to get involved, have them
e-mail this writer at ed@rocknewsletter.
com. If you have people in any of the other
cities mentioned, let me know and I’ll send
the contact information to the appropriate
folks.
That’s it for this month. Take care in
there and continue to stay strong. ■

Quote Box
“My fellow citizens, at this hour,
American and coalition forces are in the
early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend
the world from grave danger... My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country
and the world will be overcome. We will
pass through this time of peril and carry
on the work of peace. We will defend our
freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.”
George W. Bush - March 19, 2003
“Make the lie big, make it simple,
keep saying it, and eventually they will
believe it.”
Adolf Hitler
“People do not believe lies because
they have to, but because they want to.”
Malcolm Muggeridge
“A group of PEOPLE came from as
far as America with Tanks, Machine gun
& jets,killing innocent people in our villages. Yet they claim we are terrorist.”
Abed Rahmani
“What is morally wrong can never be
politically right.”
Lord Shaftesbury
“Defend EVERY ONE of your rights.
When any one is given up none of the
rest can last.”
Rick Gaber
“Over grown military establishments
are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”
George Washington
“The spirit of this country is totally
adverse to a large military force.”
Thomas Jefferson
“As People crushed by laws, have no
hope but to evade power. If the laws are
their enemies, they will be enemies to
the law; and those who have much to
hope for and nothing to lose will always
be dangerous.”
Edmund Burke

Rock

[Note: Names of letter writers will be
withheld unless the author of the letter explicitly approves printing of their name.]
Note From Mark Cook
I am Mark Cook, helping Ed with the
folding, stamping, labeling, etc of the Rock.
I formally met Ed in 1972 while I was doing prisoner support work. We have been
comrades since that day even though we
have critical difference. However, we stand
strongly together in this prisoner support
work as a class issue because we also were
prisoners.
Getting out of prison does not release
a felon from the oppressive conditions of
being a felon. There is a great loss of citizenship legal rights and privileges that last
for the rest of a felon’s life. Those oppressive conditions will not be overcome unless
we take a leadership role as prisoners and
felons. I have followed the struggle you
California prisoners have engaged in and
am awed and impressed. I will not use up
more of your valuable space in Rock but I
have to say with all enthusiasm; I look forward to you folks peacefully on [date omitted] to “Keep on kicking ass for the felon
class!”
Whose Dirt is Dirtier?
The drivel in the letters section of the
latest edition of Rock newsletter was disheartening. One gentleman writes that justice “sees no faces, races or colors…” and
later that, “This struggle is for the masses,
for all SOLID individuals, etc”. This same
individual purports to speak for me when
he writes, “… because the truth is that we
DON’T want to cell with other races.”
Aristotle would argue that Truth relies
on the actual existence of the thing which
a thought or statement is about. Well, the
comment that “WE don’t want to cell up
with other races” must be considered false
because it presupposes (or asserts) a truism
that would more better be labeled an opinion with a strong emotional bias.
I am a human rights activist who has
stood shoulder to shoulder with migrant
workers on a picket line. I have marched
with gay men and women to protest homophobic discrimination, and by the way,
I am heterosexual. I have attended rallies,
lending my support to women; disenfranchised people of color, etc.
Volume 2, Number 5

Walla or McNeil Island with a
friend of mine. I have long love
and tremendous respect for you
and bow deeply to your spirit
of activism. Anything Ed, and I
mean anything, that I can do to
help you, please let me know
and I would be more than honored to assist. Walk strongly and
take care.
[Name withheld by Ed]

LETTERS

LETTERS

I believe the majority of the men in the
SHU have been totally indoctrinated into a
pathological, racist, xenophobic, misogynist, and patriarchal mindset. Carl Jung
once wrote that the faults of others has the
tremendous potential to teach us things
about ourselves. On a deeper level we can
replace FAULTS with FEARS. See, it is
fear that imprisons these men from accepting a cellmate of another race.
Liberation will never come to a people
encased in primitive culture mores based
on a false, self-promoting warrior-aggressive ethos.
Remember my friend, these men who
you are supporting live a life of contradiction; because the very liberation they seek,
they violently deny to others by stabbing
and attacking people who are not SOLID
enough for their taste.
I have been on so-called ACTIVE mainlines for fifteen (15) years. I am not SNY
and find the distinction trivial. Because until we learn that the cause that unites us is
far greater than the racial and cultural diversity dividing us; we are doomed. Unless
we quickly develop a class consciousness
and get away from this “My dirt is cleaner
than your dirt” mentality, we will be forever dead in the water politically.
Trust and believe that not all of us are
afraid of progressive change, and change,
like birth, is a painful process. I would be
honored to accept a Black, White, Asian,
Hispanic or Other as a cellmate. Once we
learn to humanize our collective fears and
unite as a political class; the field of battle
will belong to us as a people.
I remember hearing your name years ago
Ed, I believe that you were either in Walla

[Ed’s Note: As I’ve written in these pages over and over again, mandatory interracial celling is not being called for, all that
is requested is that those who want to cell
with someone from another race or region
be allowed to do so without intimidation or
threats of violence. Yet I keep getting letters from fearful whites about being forced
to cell up with a child molester of some
other race, etc. Control your fear! Nobody
is going to force you to do anything. Just
allow other people the freedom to cell with
who they want. Isn’t freedom what this
struggle is all about?
On another subject, many letters I cannot
print in this issue, such as statements of solidarity with the Reps from both men’s and
women’s prisons, material issued by the
Reps, and so much more. This is of course
due to censorship.]
Kudos for Ed
We acknowledge receipt of the latest issue of Rock! Aside from a couple instances
of censorship the Rock has arrived on a
regular basis. There is only one subscription in this block but we make due and follow the motto: “Read and keep it moving.”
It’s been an indispensable source of information for us, in bringing clarity to the issues, separating fact from rumor, and keeping us updated on the latest events related
to our struggle (the “Red Meat” you serve
up on occasion is also always a plus).
[Portions of this letter are being omitted
because it references a date that cannot be
mentioned.] With [date omitted] rapidly
approaching the administration here are
scrambling to install pull up bars, which we
see as nothing more than another hollow
concession as it does not address the five
core demands. In closing we say Gracias
to you Ed, we recognize all the energy and
work you pour into this. Here are 74 stamps
from all of us here in 4B2L as evidence of
our gratitude.
Brian James, Corcoran SHU
7

INTERNATIONAL
BODY SLAMS
U.S. SOLITARY
CONFINEMENT
PRACTICES
By Ian Kysel, Aryeh Neier, ACLU 4-9-13
here are more than 80,000 people in
solitary confinement in the United
States. Last week, the widespread
misuse and abuse of solitary confinement
in jails and prisons across the country drew
international condemnation when the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights
criticized the United States following
weeks of hearings on human rights practices across the Americas region.
Before the hearings started, the United
States government declared itself a “strong
supporter” of the commission and stated
that “[p]reserving the [commission’s] autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.” The U.S. must live up to
this commitment by making sure prisoners
across the country have their basic human
rights protected.
At a hearing on solitary confinement, the
ACLU testified about the excessive use of
solitary confinement in the U.S. and submitted testimony alongside a coalition of
human and civil rights groups. The ACLU
informed the commission that in the U.S.,
children, persons with mental disabilities,
and non-citizens in immigration detention
are held in solitary confinement, often for
weeks and months. The ACLU suggested
that the commission immediately recommend that the U.S. government and all
members of the Organization for American
States strictly limit the use of solitary confinement on all individuals and prohibit its
use on persons below 18 years of age and
persons with mental disabilities.
In its concluding statement, the commission stated that: based on the fact that the
prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman,
and degrading treatment may not be abrogated and is universal, the OAS Member
States must adopt strong, concrete measures to eliminate the use of prolonged or
indefinite isolation under all circumstances
… [T]his practice may never constitute a
legitimate instrument in the hands of the
State. Moreover, the practice of solitary
confinement must never be applied to juveniles or to persons with mental disabilities.
At a hearing on the United States, the

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8

commission heard from human and civil
rights groups – as well as U.S. government
officials – about how children across the
U.S. are charged as if they are adults, held
in adult jails and prisons, and put at serious risk of physical and sexual assault. The
ACLU, jointly with Human Rights Watch,
detailed how officials in adult facilities use
solitary confinement to supposedly “protect” children from adults, and to punish
them when they break rules. The ACLU
urged the commission to engage the United
States about the issue, and has called on Attorney General Holder to ban the solitary
confinement of children in federal custody.
In its concluding statement, the commission specifically criticized the United
States for its mistreatment of children, expressing:
deep concern over the practice in the
United States of incarcerating children under 18 years of age in prisons for adults,
without any effective separation between
the two. It is also cause of concern to the
Commission the abuses, sexual rape and
cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,
such as solitary confinement. The Commission urges the United States to identify and
urgently implement a federal mechanism
to identify anyone under the age of 18 as
a child, to keep them from being tried as
adults or incarcerated alongside adults.
The world has again taken note that
abuses in U.S. jails and prisons can’t be
squared with our human rights commitments. On solitary confinement, the U.S.
should demonstrate its leadership and
prove that change starts at home. ■
http://www.aclu.org/print/blog/prisoners-rights-human-rights-criminal-law-reform/international-body-slams-us-solitary

JUDGES
THREATEN GOV.
JERRY BROWN
WITH CONTEMPT
OF COURT
Federal jurists demand Brown
and the state quickly produce
a plan to remove thousands
of convicts from California’s
packed prisons. They reject
Brown’s bid to end courtordered restrictions on the
prisons.
By Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times
panel of federal judges Thursday threatened to hold Gov. Jerry
Brown and other state officials in
contempt of court if they do not quickly
produce a plan to remove thousands of
convicts from California’s packed prisons.
In a blistering 71-page ruling, the jurists
rejected Brown’s bid to end restrictions
they imposed on crowding in the lockups.
The state cannot maintain inmate numbers
that violate orders intended to eliminate
dangerous conditions behind bars, they
said.
Brown and other officials “will not be
allowed to continue to violate the requirements of the Constitution of the United
States,” the judges wrote.
“At no point over the past several months
have defendants indicated any willingness
to comply, or made any attempt to comply,
with the orders of this court,” they said. “In
fact, they have blatantly defied them.”
The judges gave the state 21 days to submit a plan for meeting the population target
by the end of the year. Administration officials said they would appeal the decision
to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The order arrived amid escalating tension between Brown and the judges, who
have handled a series of cases involving
California prisons, and is a setback for the
governor.
In January, Brown declared the prison
crisis over and launched a legal and public
relations crusade to end court oversight of
inmate healthcare, which has been in place
since 2006, calling it unnecessarily costly
and otherwise burdensome.
But his efforts have been rebuffed. In
a related case last week, one of the three
judges said mental healthcare in prisons

A

Rock

had not improved enough to end oversight
in that area.
On Thursday, all three jurists stood behind the population caps they previously
ordered — and the U.S. Supreme Court
upheld — as a remedy for what they have
called substandard conditions due to overcrowding, resulting in unconstitutionally
poor inmate care.
The judges specifically criticized Brown
in their ruling, saying he had provided “no
convincing evidence” that overcrowding is
no longer a problem. They said his recent
actions raise “serious doubts as to the governor’s good faith in this matter and in the
prison litigation as a whole.”
They said the governor must comply
with the court’s decisions even if he disagrees with them, and “the rule is applicable to Governor Brown, as well as the lowliest citizen.” The judges wrote that they
had “exercised exceptional restraint” by
not holding contempt proceedings already.
Deborah Hoffman, a spokeswoman for
the California Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation, criticized the judges’
decision in a prepared statement.
“The truth of the matter is that California has invested more than a billion dollars
to transform its prison health care system
into one of the best in the country,” her
statement said. “Our prisons now provide
timely and effective health care to inmates
that far exceeds what the Constitution requires.”
Currently, the prisons hold 119,542 inmates, or 149.5% of the number they were
designed to hold, according to a report released this week by the corrections department.
The jurists — U.S. District Judges Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento and Thelton
Henderson in San Francisco and Stephen
Reinhardt of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals in Los Angeles — have ordered
the state to reduce crowding to 137.5% of
capacity. About 9,500 inmates would have
to be removed to meet that goal.
The original deadline for the reduction
was June, but the judges granted a sixmonth extension.
California has been trying to reduce its
inmate population by keeping low-level
offenders in local jails instead of sending
them to state prisons. State officials say the
worst problems are over and inmates are no
longer housed in gymnasiums and activity
rooms.
Progress toward meeting the cap has
Volume 2, Number 5

slowed, however, and officials have been
reluctant to consider other ways to ease
crowding. Hoffman said further steps to
free up space in prisons would “unnecessarily jeopardize public safety.”
The judges disagreed. “Releasing comparatively low-risk inmates somewhat earlier than they would otherwise have been
released has no adverse effects on public
safety,” they wrote.
Donald Specter, director of the Prison
Law Office and the lawyer leading the lawsuit that resulted in the population cap, said
he expected the order to be upheld, calling
it “airtight.”
“The decision demolishes any argument
the governor has to get out from under the
prison population cap,” Specter said. ■
Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy
contributed to this report.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/
la-me-prisons-20130412,0,6359134.
story?track=rss

HELP END
TORTURE

O

n Tuesday, April 23, the California Senate Committee on Public
Safety will host a hearing to consider Senate Bill 61(Yee), a bill that would
limit the harmful practice of solitary confinement of youth in the juvenile justice
system in California. The hearing marks
a critical opportunity for people of faith to
express support for ending solitary confinement of young people in California. We
urge you to take action today by expressing
your support for S.B. 61 to members of the
committee using the sample email we have
prepared.
Research consistently demonstrates that
the long-term psychological effects of solitary confinement, particularly among children, are devastating, resulting in hallucinations, paranoia, and increased rates of
self-mutilation and suicide. SB 61 seeks to
curb the overuse and abuse of solitary confinement in juvenile facilities in California.
It is in keeping with efforts in many states
to ban or limit the use of solitary confinement—a practice widely defined as torture
due to the long-term effects on the mental
health of the confined.
Write to the California Senate Public
Safety Committee today!
As people of faith, we recognize that
solitary confinement denies the essential
developmental need for community and

is damaging to the psychological and social development of youth. We urge you to
raise your voice in support of S.B. 61 today
to ensure greater access to flourishing for
California’s young people.
Thank you for your commitment to end
torture in U.S. prisons. ■
Laura Markle Downton
Director of U.S. Prisons Policy
Religious Campaign Against Torture

PELICAN BAY
INMATES’ SUIT
CAN PROCEED
Bob Egelko, S.F. Chronicle, April 10, 2013
federal judge has given the goahead to a suit by inmates of Pelican Bay State Prison on California’s North Coast who are held in isolation
for a decade or more in windowless, concrete cells, with no way out, they say, except the potentially lethal choice of turning
informant.
The inmates’ allegations, if proved,
could show that conditions in the prison’s
Security Housing Unit violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Chief U.S. District Judge Claudia
Wilken of Oakland said Tuesday.
She said the inmates may also be able to
show that prison officials deny them due
process of law by placing them in the housing unit based on secondhand allegations of
gang affiliation and by keeping them there
until they agree to “debrief” by admitting
their gang ties and becoming informers.
State officials say they no longer require
debriefing as a way out of the housing unit.
Under a pilot project that started in October, they say, inmates in high-security
housing around the state are having their
cases reviewed individually, and 86 prisoners, including 35 at Pelican Bay, have been
approved for transfer to the general prison
population.
Wilken noted that the project is scheduled to end in October 2014 and rejected
the state’s request to put the case on hold
until then. At a hearing last month, she said
the inmates’ complaints about debriefing
might be removed from the suit if the new
review process became permanent.
Solitary debated
Charles Carbone, a lawyer for the inmates, said the ruling showed that “the
handwriting’s on the wall” for “long-term
solitary confinement. ... It violates the U.S.

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9

Constitution and it violates the bounds of
common decency.”
There was no immediate comment from
the state Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation, which had asked Wilken to
dismiss the suit. The department has denied
that inmates in the Security Housing Unit
are kept in solitary confinement, noting that
they have contact with guards and can see
visitors on weekends through a Plexiglas
screen.
The suit was filed by 10 prisoners as
a proposed class action on behalf of the
1,000 inmates in the Pelican Bay Security
Housing Unit, the largest unit of its kind in
California. It seeks changes in conditions
and release procedures, and a 10-year limit
on placements in the security units.
Harsh allegations
The inmates said they are held in their
cells at least 22 1/2 hours a day, are fed
through a slot, have no access to vocational
or educational programs, sleep on a concrete bed with a lumpy mattress, and can
be punished for trying to speak to other inmates.
As of 2011, the suit said, 78 inmates had

been held in the unit for more than 20 years.
State law denies security-housing inmates the sentence reductions other prisoners receive for good behavior or prison
employment. In addition, the suit says,
housing unit inmates serving potential life
terms are uniformly denied parole under an
unofficial but binding state policy.
The inmates say most of them have never
been charged with gang-related conduct behind bars, and instead are classified as gang
“associates” based on a tattoo, a drawing
of a gang-related symbol, an exchange of
greetings with a gang member or the word
of an undisclosed informant.
Those allegations would have to be
proved at a trial that is at least a year away.
But Wilken said an inmate’s “prolonged
social isolation and lack of environmental
stimuli,” resulting in psychological and
physical harm, can amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
She said the state may be violating inmates’ right to due process of law by “assigning inmates to the SHU indefinitely
and then allegedly denying them realistic
opportunities for release.” ■

Ed Mead, Publisher
Rock Newsletter
P.O. Box 47439
Seattle, WA 98146

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