California needs to significantly change its policies and practices on solitary confinement, a noted broadcaster said before a group of San Quentin Prison journalists.
The speaker was Peter B. Collins, one of a growing number of journalists who report on issues that are important to inform the public about what is happening within America’s prison system.
He has also become known as an advocate for prisoners’ rights through activities including his liberal syndicated radio talk show.
“California’s treatment of prisoners in solitary confinement is just slightly better than Guantanamo Bay,” where terrorist suspects are imprisoned in Cuba, Collins told members of the San Quentin Journalism Guild recently.
Among the topics Collins talked about inmates who have been placed in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s security housing units (SHUs).
Collins said placement of someone in solitary confinement for 30 years is “cruel.”
He discussed a lawsuit filed by Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who works with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR-Justice.org).
“I support this lawsuit,” said Collins. “By putting you in the SHU, it’s a dead end cycle.” He stated there is no possibility of parole for anyone in a SHU serving a life sentence.
It’s “barbaric to lock men in the SHU 23/1, locked down, no contact” for years, said Collins. “How is 10 years acceptable?”
Collins called the way someone is placed in a SHU “almost arbitrary,” with few legal safeguards. He said prison staff can manipulate the system for private purposes. This is something he says needs to end.
Among the array of issues Collins addressed at the Guild was the high rate of suicides in the California state prison system, which is nearly twice the national average when compared to the United States’ 49 other state prisons.
“Overpopulation is not addressed,” said Collins, referring to California’s 33 state prisons housing men and women above and beyond facility design capacity.
Collins’ media credentials include work as a reporter, talk radio host, voiceover talent, producer, entrepreneur, and media consultant.
He has served since 1986 as board president of the Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit organization based at San Quentin. It was established to provide legal and investigative support for inmates who have been wrongfully convicted in California. Its advocacy has subsequently been transferred to the Innocence Project.
Collins has also worked with the Freedom Foundation to secure the release of inmates serving life sentences. He credits Gov. Jerry Brown for honoring 82 percent of Board of Parole Hearings decisions to give parole dates to lifers who are found suitable for parole.
It’s “going OK so far,” said Collins. However, he said there are many politicians who want to be “careful about Willie Horton,” the infamous 1987 Massachusetts case of a lifer who was released on a furlough and committed a brutal murder. It had a negative impact on then Gov. Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign the following year.
Collins said lifers have the lowest recidivism rate among prisoners released from prison in California. He said there is only one case where a paroled lifer violently re-offended by killing his mother.
