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LOS ANGELES — Nearly 29,000 inmates in California state prisons refused meals for the third day Wednesday during a protest of prison conditions and rules.
The protest extended to two-thirds of the 33 prisons across the state and all 4 private out-of-state facilities where California sends inmates, corrections officials said.
Thousands of prisoners also refused to attend their work assignments for
a third day, and state officials were bracing for a long-term strike.
Once the state tallies the official number of participants, the hunger strike could become the largest in state history. A similar hunger strike over several weeks in 2011 had about 6,000 participants at its official peak, corrections officials said, and a strike that fall had about 4,200.
The protest is centered on the state’s aggressive solitary confinement
practices, but it appeared to have attracted support from many prisoners
with their own demands for changes in prison conditions.
Jules Lobel, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and
the lead lawyer in a federal lawsuit over solitary confinement, said he
expected the strike to go on for much longer than previous ones because
inmates would refuse to accept anything less than a legally binding
agreement for immediate changes.
“Last time, they took promises of reforms, but they are not going to do
that again, because two years later the reforms have not materialized in
any real way,” Mr. Lobel said.
“This could become a very serious situation over time, because it seems
we have a substantial group of people who are prepared to see it to the
end if they don’t get real change,” he said.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not
officially recognize a strike until inmates have refused nine
consecutive meals; officials said the number of prisoners who had gone
that far would not be tallied until Thursday.
California is facing the threat of being charged with contempt of court after a Supreme Court order
in May 2011 to reduce its prison population by 10,000 inmates this
year. The court said crowding and terrible conditions inside the prison
system constituted inhumane treatment in violation of the Eighth
Amendment. On Wednesday, the state filed for a stay of the court’s order
to release prisoners.
Gov. Jerry Brown has repeatedly said that the state has gone as far as
it can to release low-level offenders and reduce crowding at the
prisons, and that it is providing adequate medical care for inmates. But
last month, a federal judge criticized the system for allowing
potentially lethal valley fever to spread through two jails in Central
Valley and ordered the state to move 2,600 inmates at risk of catching
the disease.
A small group of inmates in solitary confinement at the maximum-security
Pelican Bay State Prison, in a remote area near the Oregon border,
called for the protest months ago. They have complained that inmates are
being held in isolation indefinitely for having ties to prison gangs.
Some have been held for decades without phone calls, access to
rehabilitation programs or time outdoors.
Ten inmates at High Desert State Prison in Northern California began
their own hunger strike last week and were being monitored by medical
staff for signs of distress, officials said. Their demands, made in a
letter, include cleaner prison facilities, better food and more access
to the prison library. Prisoners at several other facilities also issued
demand letters, which were displayed on a Web site supporting the strikers.
The organizers timed the protest to coincide with the start of Ramadan,
the Muslim month of fasting, which began this week; state officials said
that would make it more complicated to determine how many prisoners
were fasting out of religious obligation rather than in protest.
Prison officials said the protests had not caused any major disruptions.
“These actions have been talked about for months,” said Jeffrey
Callison, a spokesman for the corrections department. “We have been
preparing to make sure that the rules are enforced consistently.”
After the protests two years ago, corrections officials promised to use
new criteria in placing inmates in solitary confinement and to create a
process by which inmates could get out of isolation. Corrections
officials say that of 382 inmates who have been screened, roughly half
have qualified to return to the general population. But about 10,000
inmates remain in solitary confinement units.
Carol Strickman, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners With Children
who negotiated on behalf of inmates during the last hunger strike, said
allies of the inmates had no way of verifying how many were taking part
this time. During the last strike, officials prohibited participants
from communicating with family and friends.
“Officials have this bunker mentality, but now it’s like a house of
cards is falling down,” Ms. Strickman said. “There have been so many
problems for decades, and now they are being forced to deal with them
all at once.”
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