Great article of CA Prison system in SF weekly

[annm4peace]

http://www.sfweekly.com/2013-08-21/news/security-housing-unit-prison-solitary-confinement-pelican-bay-hunger-strike/

Punishment by Design: The Power of Architecture Over the Human Mind

the article is several pages and very informative. If you live in CA,, is this really where you want your tax dollars to go ?
and to be done in your name ?

The term "solitary confinement" is itself so incendiary that officials in the Department of Corrections won't even use it. "We don't define our units as 'solitary confinement,'" says Terry Thornton, deputy press secretary for the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation. "We say 'security housing unit.'" The security housing unit is designed to isolate gang members and inmates deemed too violent to mix with everyone else, she says. Inmates are sent there based on their behavior in prison, and not the crimes they've committed outside.

But research suggests that security housing units produce harmful effects, which are often so potent that psychologists coined a new term to describe them: "security housing unit syndrome." Former Harvard Medical School faculty member Stuart Grassian began using the term after evaluating 200 prisoners in various state and federal penitentiaries, and concluding that the ones locked in solitary exhibited "acute mental illness." In some cases, they suffered pre-existing illnesses that were amplified after periods of prolonged isolation; in others, he says, they'd previously been healthy. The "toxicity of solitary confinement" is strong enough to induce psychosis in normal humans, he concludes in an article for the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy.

The toxicity to which Grassian refers derives from the space itself — from the fact that it has no windows, and affords little to no contact with other living things. His Oakland-based colleague, Terry Kupers — who teaches at the Wright Institute in Berkeley — says there's a consensus that solitary confinement harms mentally ill inmates, and that evidence suggests the environment at the Pelican Bay SHU impairs relatively stable inmates, as well.

"At Pelican Bay State Prison, where the current hunger strike originated, there are no windows in the cells and the only place prisoners can look out from their cells through small pinholes in their metal doors is a blank wall across the walkway," Kupers writes in an e-mail. "So almost total alienation from natural light and nature, and total isolation from other humans are built into the architectural design."

( who profits and who pays)

Prison design is a booming field in architecture right now — "booming" meaning construction revenues will jump to $2.4 billion over the next five years, according to a January report by the market research firm IBISWorld — and as a result, many of the firms that design our office towers or luxury apartment buildings are also conceiving the spaces in which we hide our criminals. Some, like Arizona's Arrington Watkins or the Spokane-based firm Integrus Architecture, consider the "justice" market a significant portion of their business.

Bigger fish like CGL Companies have figured out how to vertically dominate the market: The company often approaches county governments with its own architects, contractors, and financial backers all in one package. It's a way to privatize the system so that the cash-strapped county can lease its jails from a private company, says CGL's chief business development officer, Eli Gage. (The rising popularity of private prisons, coupled with a projected 0.5 percent annual increase in national incarceration rates, will boost the industry overall, according to IBISWorld.)

Last year, CGL was acquired by Hunt Companies Inc., a corporation that specializes in big real estate projects such as military bases and shopping malls. To Sperry, that suggests prison construction is a real estate gold mine. But that's not to mention the many ancillary markets that have sprung up within the industry, such as the equipment contractors who install all those thousand-pound motorized doors, or the security electronics companies that design cameras to peer out of every corner. Even firms that treat prisons as a niche might have a principal architect dedicated to jail design, Gage says.

The California Department of Corrections' latest project — a prison-hospital in Stockton, which opened in June — is a perfect example of the powerful economic interests behind every facility. Its planners promise a $1 billion impact on the local economy, and up to 5,500 jobs in a traditionally depressed area.

[annm4peace]

1. Support the CA Prisoner Hunger strikers. Day 46. One has died.. how many more have to?

http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/

Call Governor Jerry Brown
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Suggested script: I’m calling in support of the prisoners on hunger strike. The governor has the power to stop the torture of solitary confinement. I urge the governor to compel the CDCR to enter into negotiations to end the strike. RIGHT NOW is their chance to enter into clear, honest negotiations with the strikers to end the torture.

[Live and Learn]

2. K&R nt

[limpyhobbler]

3. k&r

[sabrina 1]

4. We are a violent society. It is shameful that this country cannot provide a better way to boost

the economy than building more gulags.

This story is not even being covered in the MSM. I used to read stuff like this about other countries and was thankful that I did not live there. Now we do.

A country can be judged by the way it treats its prison population.

This country needs a serious intervention.

[annm4peace]

5. Jerry Brown Considers Prison Alliance Between Private Company, Union

Last edited Fri Aug 23, 2013, 02:42 AM - Edit history (1)

so now i know why DemocratIC Gov Jerry Brown has been silent on the Prisoners Hunger strike

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/22/jerry-brown-prisons-private_n_3799519.html

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has no intention of releasing state prisoners convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, despite a federal court order requiring the state to reduce its prison population by the end of the year, sources told HuffPost.

Instead, Brown and legislative leaders are discussing a proposal to create an unconventional partnership between the state's powerful prison guard union and the nation's largest private prison corporation -- an alliance that may permanently expand California's prison system while curbing nascent efforts to reduce the state's mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders.

Under the plan, one of several the governor has proposed in conversations with legislative leaders in recent weeks, the for-profit prison giant Corrections Corporation of America would lease one or more of its prisons to the state, which would in turn use California prison guards and other public employees to staff the company’s facilities.

[Comatose Sphagetti]

6. We wouldn't put a dog in solitary confinement.

People? No problem.

[sorefeet]

7. Dear Warden, what if there really is a

Judgment Day??????? How in the fuck are you going to explain all the people you tortured. Are you going to say it was your job, just following policy??? That should go over like a lead balloon.
Bottom line is you are a coward and you are doing a bad thing. You are no better than the men you lock up if you allow this to happen one more day. But you do have a pay check to protect, don't you.

[sorefeet]

8. I think I'll write a letter to

the warden in Deer Lodge Montana and tell him the cat is out of the bag. We know about solitary confinement and we know what it does to the human mind to be entombed while alive.
And to demand an end to solitary in his prison. I don't give a fuck how mean the prisoner is, no human deserves this treatment. If you left a cyanide pill in the cell I bet they would all opt to take it. That's how bad it is.

[annm4peace]

9. thanks

check who lines the pockets of the politicians in Montana

[An_enlightened_soul]

10. Help me understand

If someone is deemed too violent or dangerous to be allowed in general population, what is the answer? Where should a prison house that inmate?

I'm not trying to troll or be obtuse.. And I'm well aware that there are certainly many inmates who don't belong in solitary. I'm just trying to understand what we do with the inmates who DO belong there.

[annm4peace]

11. When You read the articles, you will learn they all aren't dangerous or too violent

You can keep people in separate cells but you don't have to keep them in solitary,, no natural light, no fresh air, no letters from family or friends.

You read how easily prisoners who might be in prison for drugs or other non-violent crimes and end up in solitary.. because they have an ethnic art work, or related to someone who they suspect is in a gang, or accused of being in a gang by another prisoner.

No one should be in Solitary for more than 1 day.

I worked in a Psych hospital on a locked unit. We didn't even put people in solitary confinement for more than 12 hours.

I also worked with an ex prisoner who was in Solitary for 1 week and he said by the 3rd day he thought he had lost his mind and was hallucinating. He was only 22. He was 19 when he was in Solitary. that was back in 1991 and I'll never forget him telling me about that. He ended up in prison for dealing drugs, and stealing cars. He was not violent.

[annm4peace]

12. California jails: “Solitary confinement can amount to cruel punishment, even torture” –

California jails: “Solitary confinement can amount to cruel punishment, even torture” – UN rights expert
Posted on August 23, 2013 by prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity
GENEVA (23 August 2013) – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, today urged the United States Government to abolish the use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement. There are approximately 80,000 prisoners in the United States of America who are subjected to solitary confinement, nearly 12,000 are in isolation in the state of California.

“Even if solitary confinement is applied for short periods of time, it often causes mental and physical suffering or humiliation, amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and if the resulting pain or sufferings are severe, solitary confinement even amounts to torture,” Mr. Méndez stressed as nearly 200 inmates in Californian detention centres approach their fifth consecutive week on hunger strike against cruel, inhuman and degrading prison conditions.

“I urge the US Government to adopt concrete measures to eliminate the use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement under all circumstances,” he said, “including an absolute ban of solitary confinement of any duration for juveniles, persons with psychosocial disabilities or other disabilities or health conditions, pregnant women, women with infants and breastfeeding mothers as well as those serving a life sentence and prisoners on death row.”

[Supersedeas]

13. some good questions