July 15, 2001 
Going Insane in the SHU Box 
The LA Times 
ALEXANDER COCKBURN 

Alexander Cockburn writes for the Nation and other publications In an amazing 
feat of organizing, about 900 prisoners in solitary confinement in the 
infamous California prisons of Pelican Bay and Corcoran staged a hunger 
strike in the first week of July. 

The hunger strike was in protest of the corrections department's policy to 
remove and isolate those inmates designated, often capriciously, as prison 
gang members. 

These inmates are separated from the general prison population and kept in 
Security Housing Units, known as SHU--confined for 22 hours a day in 
8-by-10-foot windowless cells. SHU inmates are always shackled when they 
leave their cells; they exercise in a "yard" that is really a larger concrete 
cell with no exercise equipment and no view of the outside world. SHU 
prisoners receive all meals in their cells, are not allowed to participate in 
training or educational activities, are not allowed contact visits and have 
no phone access. The severe sensory deprivation of SHU causes some prisoners 
to go insane. 

Given the horrific nature of indeterminate confinement in the SHU, the nature 
of the evidence of gang activity can be vague, well beyond the point of 
malevolent absurdity. 

The most frequent way to incriminate a prisoner with gang associations is by 
way of an anonymous informant's fingerpointing. But other criteria the 
corrections department uses to justify "gang membership" include possession 
of literature or art construed as gang-related, writing to another prisoner's 
family, assisting another prisoner with legal work, signing birthday or get 
well cards to prisoners, exercising or otherwise interacting with another 
prisoner suspected of gang involvement. 

Prisoners are not allowed to present evidence or witnesses in their defense. 
There is no requirement that the information be current; a parolee returned 
to prison for a new offense after 10 years on the outside can be thrown in 
the SHU as a gangster based on information from his previous term in prison. 

Confinement in the SHU is for an indeterminate period. Before 1999, the only 
way for a validated gang member to be released from a SHU was to be paroled, 
die, go insane or become an informant on other prisoners. Since a rule 
change, a prisoner now can be released to the general inmate population if 
prison investigators determine that he has been free from gang activity for 
six years. 

The hunger strike was organized by Steve Castillo, an inmate at Pelican Bay's 
Security Housing Unit who has waged a legal campaign for years on this issue 
and whose suit led to the 1999 rule change. 

Here are some excerpts from a recent letter from Castillo explaining why he 
organized the hunger strike: 

"A hunger strike (besides the obvious) is generally a desperate plea for 
help. And it is a plea that usually follows the exhaustion of all other 
attempts to bring about the necessary change; when there exists no adequate 
or speedy remedy; or, when the required change is immediately needed. 

"Rarely in a lifetime do we ever witness a sane person go insane. And even 
more rare is it to witness such an occurrence happen more than once. . . . 
Here, I have seen such things more times than I want to remember. I thought 
that seeing a prisoner get shot by staff was a frightening and chilling 
event, but that in no way compares to seeing a prisoner calmly playing a game 
of chess with pieces made out of his own feces. Or, prisoners smearing their 
bodies and cells with their feces. Or, watching prisoners throwing urine and 
feces at each other through the perforated cell doors. And worse yet, since 
we are cell fed, we eat our meals under these conditions. 

"In sum, this place seems to lose all semblance of a prison and instead takes 
on a laboratory environment for human experimentation." 

The SHU inmates suspended their hunger strike after California state Sen. 
Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Joint Committee on Prison 
Construction and Operations, promised to probe the situation expeditiously. 
If their grievances are not addressed, the prisoners vow to resume their 
hunger strike in January. 

Fifteen years of 22-hour days alone in a small concrete box, after being 
stigmatized as a gang member for helping a fellow inmate sign a letter, or 
because a guard has it in for you? 

Californians have no right to lecture any country in the world on prison 
conditions while these horrors persist.