Prisoners held indefinitely in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison have been granted class action status in a lawsuit to end what some call “torture” – the result of spending a decade or longer in isolation.
In Ashker v. Brown, federal District Court Judge Claudia Wilken granted the inmates class action status to move forward with a lawsuit that they hope will end the use of long-term isolation in prisons in California.
“This action focuses exclusively on the conditions of confinement within the Pelican Bay SHU,” said the court order granting the motion for class certification.
“We pose a fundamental question: Is it constitutional to hold someone in solitary confinement for over a decade?” asked Alexis Agathocleous, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“Class certification allows the case to include all Pelican Bay SHU prisoners who have been in solitary confinement for more than 10 years, as well as all prisoners who are serving indefinite SHU terms as a result of gang validation who have not been placed in a new step-down program,” reported the San Francisco Bay View newspaper.
“CDCR’s own regulations treat this group as a distinct class and provide a straightforward framework for distinguishing between class members and non-members,” court records said.
According to the Los Angeles Times, these prisoners say they have suffered “physical and psychological abuse” after long-term confinement in isolation cells.
Bay View reported plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that prolonged solitary confinement violates their Eighth Amendment rights — protection against cruel and unusual punishment — and that SHU placement without meaningful review violates their right to due process.
The class action motion was filed by 10 Pelican Bay inmates in the SHU, but the state has since moved five of them to other quarters. Wilken’s order allows the remaining five to represent “500 Pelican Bay prisoners who have spent more than a decade in isolation, and some 1,100 put into solitary because of alleged gang associations,” the Times reported.
“There is a clear and consistent pattern in the stories articulated by these 10 men about the psychological consequences of spending a decade or longer in the SHU,” court records said. “Plaintiffs allege that SHU inmates live in almost total isolation. They spend at least 22 and a half hours per day in windowless, concrete cells.”
“They are denied telephone calls, contact visits and vocational, recreational or educational programming. And, because SHU prisoners do not receive any meaningful review of their placement, their isolation can effectively be permanent,” Bay View reported.
Among the issues in the lawsuit, inmates are challenging the process the state prison system used to decide whom it confines in super-maximum security units “for an indefinite stay,” the Times reported.
“SHU assignments disproportionately affect Black and Latino prisoners. The percentage of Latinos in the Pelican Bay SHU, for example was 85 percent in 2011, far higher than their representation in the general prison population, which was 41 percent,” Bay View reported.
Attorneys representing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) say “isolation is necessary… to hinder gang activity inside and outside prison walls,” the Times reported.
Wilken did not allow the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the prison guard union, to “intervene in the lawsuit,” the Times reported.
Court records show that the CCPOA argued it has “an interest in protecting the safety of its members” by preventing prisoners from leaving solitary confinement. The guard’s union also argued that it “should be granted leave to intervene.”
“Neither of these arguments is persuasive,” Wilken wrote. “CCPOA has not explained why defendants cannot adequately protect the safety interests of CDCR officers in this litigation.”
Many inmates who are part of the lawsuit worked last year to organize a statewide hunger strike to call attention to the use of solitary confinement throughout the prison system.
