How Solitary Confinement Modified in CA After a 2013 Starvation Strike

One morning in July 2013, tens of hundreds of California prisoners made historical past after they refused to eat. They have been taking part in a state-wide starvation strike, protesting insurance policies that saved folks locked in solitary confinement indefinitely. A whole lot of individuals in Pelican Bay State Jail, the state’s supermax facility close to the Oregon state line, had been in isolation for over a decade.

Most have been despatched to solitary, referred to as the Safety Housing Unit (SHU), for being labeled gang members. However that designation may very well be based mostly on proof as skinny as studying a sure guide, realizing somebody in a gang, or sketching an Aztec warrior, incarcerated folks and attorneys reported.

After 60 days of refusing meals, and together with a concurrent lawsuit, the starvation strikers in the end gained main coverage adjustments from the California corrections division. Amongst them was an settlement to maneuver most individuals in long-term solitary again into the overall inhabitants, giving many a renewed likelihood at parole. Now, again in the neighborhood and over a decade for the reason that protest, these males are working to rebuild their lives, assist others inside, and make sense of the trauma they endured.

Photographer Brian L. Frank has been capturing this journey by means of portraits of people that have been in solitary and who participated within the 2013 strike. The challenge primarily befell at Alcatraz, a website whose historical past echoes the expertise of these in Pelican Bay. As a federal penitentiary, Alcatraz housed males who have been deemed too harmful for different amenities. Most have been locked in small single cells. The jail, which closed in 1963, has since develop into a nationwide park with reveals exploring the previous and current of incarceration within the U.S.

Frank had photographed males contained in the Pelican Bay SHU in 2014, on project for The Atlantic journal. “It was a traumatizing and defining expertise,” he mentioned. “To suppose that I is likely to be the one human from outdoors the jail they actually spoke to, possibly in 10 years. It was one thing that caught with me.”

Contributors within the portrait sequence embrace strike leaders like Sitawa Jamaa, considered one of 4 members of the Brief Hall Collective who organized the strike. The Collective fashioned when its members have been remoted in a particular part of Pelican Bay’s SHU, meant to chop them off from members of their alleged gangs. As an alternative, the 4 males fashioned a multiracial coalition that drafted an “settlement to finish hostilities” amongst incarcerated folks and deliberate the protest.

“I don’t care what label you placed on any of us, you’ll be able to’t maintain us within the gap due to a label,” Jamaa mentioned. “They maintain you in there without end, except you snitch. That ain’t truthful. I by no means had an incident in 34 years.”

Frank additionally photographed starvation striker Jack Morris in Los Angeles. Morris, who spent over 30 years in solitary confinement, got here residence in 2017 and now runs the reentry program for a group well being clinic. “Once I consider guys having to do time in solitary confinement, I am unable to even start to make a suggestion as to find out how to endure that,” he mentioned. “As a result of I do not know if I might survive once more.”

Whereas within the SHU at Pelican Bay, males have been alone of their cells for roughly 23 hours a day, with each meal offered by means of a slot of their door. Many mentioned they by no means obtained a telephone name, except a member of the family died. Visits with family members have been behind a thick plexiglass window. And any time spent outdoors their cells to train befell in an open-air cement room, with partitions so excessive they couldn’t see their environment.

“I had guys ask me, ‘The place are we on this planet, the place are we within the state?’” mentioned psychologist Craig Haney, who research the psychological toll of long-term isolation. He has interviewed over 100 males within the SHU at Pelican Bay as an skilled witness. “They might have been on Mars as a result of they by no means received visually involved with the world round them.”

When it was constructed within the late Eighties, the solitary unit at Pelican Bay was a brand new form of incarceration, Haney mentioned. Human contact between incarcerated folks and officers was largely eradicated. Cell doorways have been operated by the push of a button, messages have been communicated by way of intercom, and surveillance was finished with cameras as an alternative of officers making rounds.

Haney’s analysis discovered that such extended isolation led to paranoia, nervousness, despair, anger and, finally, numbness amongst folks within the SHU. “If you’re within the SHU, you don’t really feel,” mentioned Frank Reyna, who spent 20 years in solitary at Pelican Bay. “In the event you really feel, you begin getting weak. When folks die, you simply transfer on. You lose your feelings.”

Jail officers had constructed a fortress designed to maintain folks away from one another. However locked alone of their cells, the lads at Pelican Bay discovered any method they might to attach — by speaking by means of their cell doorways, the vents within the partitions, or in cracks within the corners of their recreation cages.

Individuals discovered alternative ways to cross time, and make what which means they might. Jamaa organized studying teams on his tier, with males taking turns studying completely different passages to one another and analyzing the textual content. Many spent hours within the morning with fastidious exercise routines. Throughout the strike, Brian James at Corcoran jail, south of Fresno, discovered himself counting and re-counting the perforations on his cell door.

There have been solely 3 ways out of the SHU, prisoners concluded: “snitch, parole, or die.” To snitch meant to supply info on one other alleged gang member, and open your self to the chance of retaliatory violence. Parole was unlikely for these whom jail officers had deemed amongst “the worst of the worst.” The one method out of the Pelican Bay SHU, starvation strikers reasoned, was in a physique bag. They’d nothing to lose.

When the strike started, “there was one thing in entrance of me to succeed in for, or hope for,” mentioned James. “You spend your life within a field alone. So to know I’m in solidarity with [so many] folks, it gave me that push in the appropriate route. I instantly knew we have been part of one thing actually huge.”

Contributors keep in mind how, after just a few days of fasting, the tier grew quiet. The place there was the sounds of morning train routines and chatter between cells, folks started to spend extra time in mattress, conserving their power.

In the meantime, a rising refrain of activists outdoors the jail have been amplifying their message. The strike made worldwide information. Celebrities like Danny Glover and Jay Leno lent their help. Teams held frequent rallies outdoors state prisons.

Dolores Canales’ son was on starvation strike within the SHU in Corcoran jail. She and different members of the family organized the California Households In opposition to Solitary Confinement to strain the corrections division to vary their insurance policies. “I felt like they’d most likely allow them to starve to demise earlier than assembly any calls for,” she mentioned. “There was such an urgency that if we didn’t do one thing, it could by no means change.”

After a two-month strike, state lawmakers agreed to carry a listening to on the difficulty, and the lads returned to consuming. The protest had a long-lasting impression in California and past. In December 2012, earlier than the strike, there have been 9,870 males in some type of isolation in California state prisons. This previous December, the newest information accessible, there have been 3,030. The strike additionally sparked a nationwide motion in opposition to isolation — the following 12 months, 10 states handed legal guidelines limiting its use. Many extra states have since adopted.

Regardless of the starvation strikers’ wins, the combat in opposition to the usage of solitary continues. State activists are pushing for the California Mandela Act on Solitary Confinement, which might put strict limits on the size of isolation in state amenities, and ban it outright for pregnant folks and other people with disabilities. The act is called for the U.N. Commonplace Minimal Guidelines for the Remedy of Prisoners, referred to as the Nelson Mandela Guidelines. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a model of the invoice in 2022, calling it “overly broad.”

After a long-term quick, folks have to return to consuming very slowly, to keep away from severe well being problems. And after being starved of human contact, prisoners describe how they wanted to additionally slowly readjust to being round folks. Psychiatrist Terry Kupers known as it the “SHU post-release syndrome.”

“When folks get out of solitary, they isolate themselves,” mentioned Kupers. “They dread crowds. They can not search for a job. They do not need to be close to folks they don’t know. I’ve moms in the neighborhood calling me saying, ‘My child is not going to come out of the room. What ought to I do?’”

Reyna got here residence to Los Angeles in October, after over 38 years in jail. “Typically I might have a good looking day, man, after which I simply really feel empty, like I’m again to the place I used to be,” he mentioned. “However now I can launch issues. My emotions are coming again. Now, I don’t care, I cry.”