Faculty Forum - Human Rights Posted on Monday, June 04, 2012

A Thousand Years of Solitude

Joanne Mariner Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International and Former Director of the Hunter College Human Rights Program

Hunter College Human Rights Program Director and Justia columnist Joanne Mariner comments on the situation endured by the more than a thousand prisoners who are held in solitary confinement, in tiny cells, in the Security House Unit (SHU) at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison—with about half serving terms of more than ten years, and some serving terms of more than twenty years. Mariner covers the Center for Constitutional Rights’s class action, filed just last week, challenging the SHU’s solitary confinement regime. She also conveys the Draconian punishment the prisoners suffer, deeming it a combination of sensory deprivation and social isolation, with only the most meager chance for exercise, and even phone calls such as those conveying the news of a death in the family allowed only at authorities’ discretion. Visitation, too, is harshly limited, as is mental health care. Mariner supports the CCR’s effort to challenge these and other practices—including the double-celling of prisoners in the tiniest of cells, and the highly questionable “prison gang validation” process that leads to incarceration at the SHU, as opposed to elsewhere in California’s prison system. Chances for parole, meanwhile, are slim to none. And while the UN has suggested abolishing indefinite solitary confinement, California still employs just such confinement at the SHU.

Imagine spending a month alone in a windowless cell the size of a small bathroom. Now multiply that by 100, and you can begin to understand the average period of solitary confinement endured by prisoners held in the Security House Unit at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison.

The SHU, as the unit is called, houses more than 1,000 men, most of them remaining in solitary confinement for years, even decades.

According to official prison statistics, more than 500 prisoners at the SHU (or about half the total population) have been held there for more than 10 years. What is more, 78 prisoners have been held at the SHU for more than 20 years.

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