We Can't Reform Torture - CA Senate Hearings on the SHU

CA Senate Hearings on The SHU:
We Can't Reform Torture

September 15 -- MIM and RAIL activists attended the hearings on Security Housing Units (SHU) in California prisons, held in Los Angeles by Senator Romero, Chair of the Select Committee on the California Correctional System. The SHUs are control units by another name, a form of long term solitary confinement that now exists in prisons across the country. Long term isolation has been criticized as a form of torture by many individuals and governments, as well as by the United Nations. There is conclusive evidence that these conditions cause mental and physical deterioration. In this era of "tough on crime" rhetoric, it is unusual for a government official to even question prison programs, and in this context we can hope to effect some improvements in the lives of prisoners.

We attended these hearings with no illusion that the California congress can legislate substantial change in the criminal injustice system. As a part of our campaign against the SHU in California, and control units across the country, we attended the hearings to put forward the perspective that the SHU must be shut down, not just reformed into kinder gentler torture. We were also looking to hook up with other control unit activists and friends and family members of prisoners to expand our campaign against control units in this state and across the country.

The five California SHU's - Pelican Bay State Prison SHU, Valley State Prison for Women SHU, California State Prison at Corcoran SHU, California Correctional Institution at Tehapchapi SHU and Corcoran SATF - are the lynchpin for the California Department of Corrections' (CDC) prison system. Currently housing about 2700 people (about 40 in the wimmin's prison), they are the most brutal prisons in the system and principally target those prisoners who show the most resistance. They are designed to break inmates' spirit. The SHU is a threat which hangs over the head of all CA prisoners. At Pelican Bay prisoners are kept in windowless cells for a minimum of 22 1/2 hours a day. There is no education, no job training, no work, no religious services, or hobby materials. Prisoners are subject to strip searches upon departure from and return to their cell when they have not come in contact with any other individual.