SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation is still keeping inmates in isolation, violating a landmark settlement that ended indefinite solitary confinement in California, counsel for a class of 1,600 prisoners told a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday.
Many prisoners are still confined to their cells for up to 23 hours a day, even while the settlement promised that eligible inmates would be transferred out of Security Housing Units (SHU) and into to the general population, class attorney Samuel Miller told the three-judge panel.
“Half of them are being held in their cells longer than when they were in SHU,” he said.
Luis Esquivel, now an inmate at Calipatria State Prison, said in court documents that he was confined to his cell for 13 out of 23 days and only let out for meals, according to his own tracking in June and July 2017.
Esquivel said his average daily out of cell time is now less than what it was when he was held in a security housing unit at Pelican Bay State Prison. "The conditions in ‘general population’ at Calipatria are similar to SHU, and my experience is likewise similar. I have limited social interaction and intellectual stimulation. I rarely go outside,” he said, adding that the experience has given him insomnia and anxiety.
California’s prison system has a long history of warehousing suspected gang members in solitary confinement. “In 2011 California had more people in solitary confinement for longer periods of time than any other state in the country,” attorney Rachel Meeropol with the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a press call Monday.
Two prisoners sued the state pro se in 2009, and U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken granted them class status in 2012. A settlement in 2015 put a stop to solitary confinement on the basis of gang affiliation and required formerly segregated inmates to be housed with the general population.
A magistrate judge was appointed to oversee the reforms for two years with the option of extending that oversight if the CDCR violates prisoners’ constitutional rights.
But prisoners claim the state has not held up its end of the deal, and still keeps them in their cells for 23-hour stretches.
“Being locked in a cell for 23 hours a day is solitary confinement no matter what name the CDCR calls it,” Meeropol said.
In 2018, Wilken found the CDCR violated the settlement both by holding prisoners in their cells for prolonged periods and placing a number of inmates on “walk-alone status” that bars them from exercising with others or engaging in group leisure activities.
Arguing for the state of California during a videoconference on Tuesday, attorney Jeffrey Fisher said the ruling along with Wilken’s “associated remedial plans” should be reversed.
He said the CDCR never breached the settlement, as it only promised to transfer inmates from one type of housing unit to another. “It is undisputed that has happened,” he said.
U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee, asked if allowing formerly segregated inmates to mingle with the general population in the prison yard would put them at risk.
Fisher responded that it would. He said for safety reasons, the prison system had decided to put some inmates in Restricted Custody General Population (RCGP), which keeps some inmates from recreating outside in groups.
“Because they had made so many enemies because of their association with prison gangs, there wasn’t a general population unit that they could safely be transferred to. There was a good chance that they would be assaulted or killed. So they created the RCGP for that purpose,” Fisher said. He added that this “walk-alone” status, as it has come to be called, is meant to be temporary and that some inmates have since been moved out of the restricted custody population.
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