Conditions at Pelican Bay’s Segregated Housing Units are tortuous, according to men interviewed for KQED by reporter Michael Montgomery.
More than 1,000 SHU prisoners at Pelican Bay spend 22 ½ hours a day in a windowless 8-by-10 foot cell in the bunker-like facility, report states.
Each day, prisoners are given 90 minutes of exercise time in a small yard that has 25-foot walls and a view of the sky.
Civil rights groups say long-term isolation amounts to torture, while prison officials say SHU units are necessary and conditions are humane.
More than 500 state prisoners have been committed to SHU terms for 10 years or longer, the report states. Seventy-eight have been in the SHU more than 20 years.
San Quentin prisoner Dan Sanders has done a SHU term.
When asked if he considered the conditions tortuous, he said, “Yes.”
Pelican Bay SHU prisoner Jeremy Beasley was interviewed for the KQED report. Montgomery was Beasley’s first visitor since 1994. “I’ve seen guys lose their minds back here,” Beasley said.
A coalition of civil rights groups filed a class action lawsuit last year stating prolonged SHU terms are harsh, inhumane and debilitating – prisoners are denied telephone calls, contact visits and vocational, recreational and educational programming.
Prolonged torment of confinement has produced harmful and predictable psychological deterioration, according to the lawsuit.
Corrections officials maintain that SHU conditions are humane, and that prisoners are “segregated” but not “isolated,” and the purpose of keeping prisoners in SHU is to protect other inmates, staff and the public from men that have been linked to violent prison gangs.
Since last October, officials have reviewed 144 SHU cases and determined 75 should be immediately transferred to mainline prisons.
