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• Prison Corruption Probe A Sham.
• court official is recommending that the former head of California's prison system face federal criminal charges. ...
• The severity of the report has stunned lawmakers who are about to open hearings on the prison system next week. At issue are three incidents at Pelican Bay State Prison, where guards are accused of attacking inmates.
• The report, drafted by an official appointed by a federal judge to oversee issues at Pelican Bay, says that two former state prison officials have botched and obstructed required investigations into alleged guard brutality, and that they lied to the court about why the investigations were stopped.
• Edward Alameida, who left the position of state prison chief last month, could face contempt charges for aborting three federally ordered investigations and allegedly orchestrating a cover-up.
• The three investigations were about charges of prison guard brutality at Pelican Bay in the 1990s. Pelican Bay is where many of the state's most dangerous inmates are kept.
• State Sen. ...
• It also said that false information was given to the federal court about closure of those investigations, and that serious systemic problems in the prison's Office of Investigative Services were never corrected.

• Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP).
• Pelican Bay State Prison - Mission Statement.
• Pelican Bay State Prison plays a vital role in the Department of Corrections by:.
• Located on 275 acres in the northwest corner of  California, Pelican Bay State Prison is designed to house the state's most serious criminal offenders in a secure, safe and disciplined institutional setting.   The prison opened December 1989 to accommodate a need for a growing population of maximum-security inmates. ...
• One half of the prison houses maximum-security inmates in a General Population setting. ...   The SHU is a modern design for inmates who are difficult management cases, prison gang members and violent maximim custody inmates. ...   The institution also operates two unique programs:  the Psychiatric Services Unit, which houses mentally ill inmates who are serving a SHU term, and the Transitional Housing Unit, which is an intensive program designed to reintegrate prison gang members back into a General Population setting.
• Pelican Bay State Prison was opened December 1989, and covers  275 acres. ...
• All visits to the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) are by appointment only. ...
• For updated information concerning Pelican Bay visitor hours or closures, please call the Visitor Processing Unit at (707) 465-1000.
• 1 mile to the gate of Pelican Bay.
• 1 mile to the gate of Pelican Bay.
• © 2003 State of California. ...

• Programming feedback? (email) CBS 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS airs Saturday 8-9:30AM and Sunday 8-9AM on UPN Bay Area/44-Cable 12. ...
• Prison Hearing in Dog Attack Case.
• In another development today: A Superior Court judge ruled some evidence seized from the prison cells of two Pelican Bay inmates can be used as evidence in the case. ...
• Inside, Schneider immediately took on his mom / suspect as his attorney, rejecting the attorney the state appointed him. ...
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• ACLU and Prison Law Office Challenge Prison Over Policy Barring Inmates' Access to Internet Content.
• WHAT: The ACLU of Northern California and the Prison Law Office are representing a prisoner in a federal court challenge to a policy prohibiting inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison from receiving any mail that contains material printed from the Internet. ... A hearing on the motion for summary judgment filed by the State is scheduled for August 9th.
• SAN FRANCISCO - In a landmark case, the ACLU of Northern California and the Prison Law Office are representing Pelican Bay prisoner Frank Clement in his federal court challenge to a policy prohibiting inmates at the prison from receiving any mail that contains material printed from the Internet. ...
• Information from a website about HIV/ AIDS, Bible study material, materials about parole schedules and college financial aid, and information about prison rape are all banned if printed from the Internet. ...
• "Prisoners can be barred from receiving timely information that is crucial to their health, education, religion or the process of an appeal," says Heather MacKay, an attorney with the Prison Law Office in San Quentin. ...
• Policies like Pelican Bay's are currently in place in San Quentin State Prison; Avenal State Prison; California Correctional Center in Susanville; California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi; California State Prison, Sacramento; Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown; and Wasco State Prison. ...
• The Prison Law Office is a private nonprofit tax-exempt organization.

• Last summer, some 600 inmates in the notorious supermaximum-security unit at California's Pelican Bay State Prison stopped eating. They were protesting the conditions in which the state says it must hold its most difficult prisoners: locked up for 23 hours out of every 24 in a barren concrete cell measuring 7 1/2 by 11 feet. ... In Pelican Bay's supermax unit, as in most supermax prisons around the country, the cells are arranged in lines radiating out like spokes from a control hub, so that no prisoner can see another human being--except for those who are double-bunked. Last year, the average population of the Pelican Bay supermax unit was 1,200 inmates, and on average, 288 men shared their tiny space with a "cellie. " Since 1995, 12 double-bunked prisoners in the Pelican Bay supermax unit have been murdered by their cell mates. ...
• But the protest died out after two weeks, according to the jailhouse lawyer who organized it; and though a state senator promised that he would look into the strikers' complaints, so far conditions at Pelican Bay remain unchanged. ...
• Seven years ago, in January 1995, inmates at Pelican Bay won a class-action lawsuit, Madrid v. ... "The Eighth Amendment's restraint on using excessive force has been repeatedly violated at Pelican Bay, leading to a conspicuous pattern of excessive force," Henderson wrote in describing the severe beatings then common at the facility, the third-degree burns inflicted on one mentally ill inmate who was thrown into boiling water after he smeared himself with feces, and the routine use of painful restraining weapons against others. The judge ordered California to remove any seriously mentally ill or retarded inmates from the supermax unit, and he appointed a special master to overhaul the prison. ...
• And so, while a new warden and new rules were brought to Pelican Bay, the basic conditions of sensory deprivation in its supermax unit have remained intact. ...
• Thus, say critics, the chances for guard-on-inmate violence remain high at Pelican Bay, just as at other supermaxes around the country. ...
• The supermax model emerged out of the prison violence of the 1970s and the early 1980s, when dozens of guards around the country, including two at the maximum-security federal prison at Marion, Illinois, were murdered by prisoners. First, prison authorities developed procedures to minimize inmate-staff contact; then they took to "locking down" entire prisons for indefinite periods, keeping inmates in their cells all day and closing down communal dining rooms and exercise yards. Eventually, they began to explore the idea of making the general prison population safer by creating entirely separate high-tech, supermax prisons in which "the worst of the worst" gang leaders and sociopaths would be incarcerated in permanent lockdown conditions. ... California--which had seen 11 guards murdered by inmates between 1970 and 1973, and a staggering 32 prisoners killed by other inmates in 1972 alone--opened Corcoran State Prison and its supermax unit in 1988 and Pelican Bay the year following. ...
• Indeed, throughout the 1990s, despite year-by-year declines in crime, one state after another pumped tens of millions of dollars into building supermax prisons and supermax facilities within existing prisons--sections that are usually called "secure housing units," or SHUs. Defenders of supermaxes, like Todd Ishee, warden of Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP), a supermax in Youngstown, argue that their restrictions provide a way to establish control in what is still--and inherently--an extremely dangerous environment. "In 1993," he says, "our maximumsecurity prison at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility was host to a riot. ...

• State prison chief testifies over probe.
• California's prison director denied in San Francisco federal court Friday that he impeded an investigation into allegations that Pelican Bay State Prison guards committed perjury in inmate-abuse cases.
• Hagar called Alameida to testify amid allegations that Alameida wrongly dismissed internal affairs investigations targeting Pelican Bay State Prison guards -- an assertion the director repeatedly rejected Friday and one that conflicts with previous testimony.
• The probe began last year after Pelican Bay guards Jose Ramon Garcia and Edward Michael Powers were convicted and sentenced to seven and six years in prison, respectively. ...
• Among the allegations is that prison guards lied in federal court to protect Powers and Garcia. ...
• Alameida testified Friday that the department, whose internal affairs division is temporarily being supervised by the state attorney general's office, started the probe with about 40 cases, which was whittled to three.
• According to previous testimony by Joseph Barbara, a corrections department attorney, he told Alameida at the March 27 meeting that the department had enough evidence of perjury to not only discipline a prison guard but to also have him criminally prosecuted in state court.

• Pelican Bay State Prison.
• State owned and operatored .

• It's a Form of Warfare: A Description of Pelican Bay State Prison.
• The bus ride from Folsom State Prison to Pelican Bay State Prison is breathtakingly beautiful. ... You cannot get enough of the sights, sounds, and smells; then you reach Smith River and the prison.
• California's newest prison, Pelican Bay, is also touted as its most secure and innovative, technologically speaking. ...
• prisoners, as the rest of the state's prisoners enjoy. ...
• All other clothing is `state issue' and consists of a mustard yellow jumpsuit which ties instead of zips or snaps (for metal control), white socks, t-shirts, shorts and so forth. ...
• You cannot have your property set aside for you when (hopefully) you reach a `mainline' prison after your S. ...
• Although the majority of prisoners are here for either violent acts inside prison or for gang membership, gang association or both, there are many prisoners who are not here for these reasons. Some are drug users/dealers inside the prison, some are merely the unfortunate ones who have run afoul of some officer or staff member and were shipped up here.
• It is to keep anyone named `indeterminate' from ever going to a mainline prison until he breaks and `debriefs. ...
• First off, the prison is located in a remote corner of the state near the Oregon border. ... This means that visitors must travel more than a thousand miles to get to the prison. ...
• The isolation goes on even inside the prison. ...
• Even though the region surrounding the prison uses local cable television or satellite broadcast, this prison points its dish at (of all places) Denver, Colorado. Satellite dishes are not taxed according to where they are pointed; therefore, there is no fiscal advantage to the prison for tuning-in Denver. ...
• you are sent to Pelican Bay's mainline. ... ; if not, you are sent to another equally strict prison.

• For the past thirteen years New Life For Old Ministries has ministered consistently in major lock-down institutions all across the country such as: Utah State Prison in Utah; Ely State Prison in Nevada; Southern Nevada Correctional Institution in Indian Springs, Nevada; Southern Desert Correctional Institution in Jean, Nevada; Angola State Prison in Louisiana; Mabel Basset State Prison in Oklahoma; Pelican Bay, San Quentin, Deuel Vocational Institution, Northern California Women’s Facility and California Men's Colony in California; and Halava State Prison in Hawaii.

• Pelican Bay Prison in California.
• Pelican Bay is an American supermax prison on a remote part of California's coast line. It's a tough prison in a country that has decided that the only answer to crime is to lock people up.
• Visit the Pelican Bay State Prison website.
• Prisoners at Pelican Bay are kept in their cells 23 hours a day - alone. ...
• The prisoners at Pelican Bay are considered to be very dangerous and rarely feel human contact.
• There are more prisons like Pelican Bay in California. ... Since then the number of prisoners in the state has soared from 20,000 to 160,000.

• The actions of a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer during a traffic stop in Myers Flat have been deemed improper by the state's Court of Appeal, reversing jail and probation sentences that stemmed from a car search.
• And now that the state's Court of Appeal has ruled that their arrests were based on a search that violated Constitutional rights, the two former defendants in the case will likely sue the CHP.
• The plate, however, was issued in Arizona -- a state that allows single license plates. ...
• The resulting jury trial led to White's conviction and incarceration at Pelican Bay State Prison. ...
• 27, the state's Court of Appeal ruled that Mertz had violated Fishbain and White's Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. ...
• Crane said that Fishbain has "serious health problems" and a valid doctor's recommendation to treat them with marijuana (which is allowed under Proposition 215, the state's medical marijuana law).
• "My buddy did almost three years in Pelican Bay State Prison and I've been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome and anxiety-related stomach disorders that I've been hospitalized for," he said. ...
• "Illegal searches are the first and most visible step toward living in a police state, where people have no Fourth Amendment rights and police can pull over kids who happen to look like hippies," he said. ...
• Fishbain explained that when the stop occurred, he was going to the Bay Area to visit Quaste's mother, who also had a 215 recommendation. ...
• Chris White's incarceration in state prison is "a tragedy," said his Eureka-attorney, Manny Daskal, who also said he's "looking at the civil rights violation issues" in the context of a possible lawsuit against the CHP. ...

• In the Court of Appeal of the State of California .
•  INMATE Classified is in the business of publishing personal Web pages on the Internet for prison inmates who subscribe to its service. ... Aaron Collins, an inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison (Pelican Bay), subscribed to INMATE Classified' s service. In mid-1998, however, the warden at Pelican Bay directed that materials downloaded from the Internet would not be accepted by the prison mailroom. ...
•  Pelican Bay is a maximum security prison that houses some of the state' s most dangerous prisoners, including those who have become affiliated with prison gangs or committed serious disciplinary infractions in prison and are confined in its security housing unit. ... ) Inmates at Pelican Bay do not have direct access to the Internet through computer terminals at the prison. ...
•  INMATE Classified is a business that advertises itself as offering prison inmates a "personal connection to the Internet. ... Each personal home page includes the inmate' s prison mail address and an individual e-mail address. ...
•  Collins subscribed to INMATE Classified sometime in mid-1997, while he was incarcerated at California State Prison-Sacramento. He was transferred to Pelican Bay in October 1997 and continued his subscription for several months, receiving multiple messages. But in May 1998, the warden at Pelican Bay issued a memorandum informing inmates that there had been an influx of mail containing Internet related material and that materials downloaded from the Internet and sent to the prison were considered unauthorized publications pursuant to California Code of Regulations, title 15, section 3138(f)(1). The memorandum stated that these publications and the mail in which they were enclosed would not be accepted by the prison mailroom. ...
• At the hearing on the petition, Pelican Bay presented the testimony of Augie Lopez, Associate Warden of Central Services, Jill Tholl, prison mail room supervisor, and Michael Menz, a detective in the Sacramento County Sheriff' s Department assigned to the "High Tech Crimes Task Force," who testified as an expert in Internet law enforcement and investigation. According to Lopez and Tholl, the prison mail room staff opens between 2,000 and 5,000 pieces of mail daily, Monday through Friday. ... , mail sent through a third party to circumvent the regulation allowing correspondence between prison inmates only with prior approval of the warden of each facility. ...
• He explained that Pelican Bay has a large population of gang-oriented inmates, many of whom have tried to use the mail to accomplish drug related crimes, smuggling, extortion, and solicitation for murder both inside and outside the prison. The existing restrictions on the flow of information into and out of the prison, such as the limitation on inmate to inmate communication, are aimed at impeding and curtailing criminal activity by inmates. The restrictions on published materials are also related to prison security; their purpose is to keep out coded messages, narcotics, weapons, and other contraband. Lopez believed that the quick and easy accessibility of communication by e-mail would generate an "avalanche" of mail to inmates, exacerbating security problems and resulting in an "exorbitant workload" for prison staff. ...

• Dozens of members of Nuestra Familia, a gang police say is run by inmates at California's Pelican Bay State Prison, have been indicted, but a lawyer for one of the defendants is accusing the FBI of gross misconduct in the investigation. ...
• 9 — The FBI didn't just infiltrate the notorious Nuestra Familia prison gang, it allowed an informant to continue the group's violent and criminal activities for seven months, pulling off drug and gun deals and the killing of a rival gang leader, a defense attorney for one of the men accused in the case alleges in a court filing. ...
• But San Francisco attorney Marc Zilversmit contends the government's own legal filings reveal a federal role in the brutal prison-based gang, and raise troubling questions about how far the FBI can take an undercover operation.
• The investigation, dubbed Operation Black Widow, was a joint effort by the FBI and state and local police in Northern California to break the Nuestra Familia gang, which police say operated from Salinas to the Oregon border and was run from inside the state's high-security Pelican Bay State Prison.
• The gang has been around since 1965, according to federal prosecutors, started inside Soledad prison to protect Hispanic inmates. ...
• The investigation into the outfit, which had been going on since 1997, got a break in December 2000, when Daniel "Lizard" Hernandez — facing life in prison for charges that included murder plots in the course of a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) enterprise — contacted the Special Services Unit of the California Department of Corrections to talk about becoming an informer.
• According to Zilversmit, who represents another defendant, Hernandez not only helped the government build its case, but also took advantage of the freedom given him by law enforcement to first gain the position of go-between for Nuestra Familia leaders in prison and members on the street and eventually to take over the operation.
• "You're going to have this guy out there — if he's going to be credible as the leader of a violent prison gang, he's going to have to be encouraging all kinds of violent acts. ...
• The FBI didn't just infiltrate a notorious prison gang, they virtually ran it for months, allegedly pulling off drug and gun deals and allowing the killing of a rival. ...

• Prosecutors said the letter, written by the San Francisco attorney to Aryan Brotherhood member and Pelican Bay State Prison inmate Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, put the witnesses' lives in jeopardy and further linked the defendants to Schneider. ...
• Noel and his wife, Marjorie Knoller, are on trial for the mauling death of Diane Whipple by two dogs prosecutors say were part of a prison-run enterprise in which the two attorneys participated. ...
• It was moved to Los Angeles following heavy pre-trial publicity in the Bay Area. ...
• Correspondence sent into and out of the prison by both Noel and Knoller under the guise of "confidential legal mail" showed a nexus between the defendants and the prison gang, lead prosecutor James Hammer told the seven-woman, five-man jury. ...
• Hammer's key witness was Devan Hawkes, an investigator specializing in prison gangs with the state Department of Corrections. ...
• He also said that Costa once stabbed Schneider in Pelican Bay. ...
• "Kenny Costa is housed in federal custody in Colorado and Timothy "Bam Bam" Hickerson together with other former Pelican Bay inmates are housed at the federal correctional facility at Lompoc. ...
• He said other prison gang members also contributed money to underwrite costs. ...
• The trial resumes today with the key prosecution witness, corrections department investigator Devan Hawkes, testifying about the Aryan Brotherhood's entrepreneurism outside prison. ...

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• California prison guards investigated for opening fire during riot.
• Inmates fight at Pelican Bay State Prison in video shot weeks before Wednesday's riot .
• CRESCENT CITY, California (CNN) -- Three guards at a California maximum security prison are under investigation for opening fire on inmates during a racially charged riot earlier in the week, officials say. ...
• The guards at Pelican Bay State Prison were placed on paid administrative leave, pending the investigations. ...
• Ben Grundy, a prison spokesman. ...
• Lance Corcoran of the Correctional Peace Officers' Union says the Pelican Bay prison has approximately 400 incidents of violence per year .
• "Pelican Bay experiences approximately 400 incidences of violence per year," said Lance Corcoran, an executive with the Correctional Peace Officers' Union. ...
• The Wednesday morning riot at Pelican Bay involved some 200 black and Hispanic inmates in a 30-minute melee in a rain-soaked prison yard. ...
• The prison remains on total lockdown. ...
• The last time an inmate was killed by a California prison guard was in May 1998 at Pleasant Valley State Prison. ...
• Fifteen others were wounded by prison guards during the disorder. ...
• Bach said at least 88 "manufactured inmate slashing weapons" have been recovered from the prison yard. ...
• Prison records of hostage-takers released.
• RELATED SITES: California State Prisons.
• Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP).
• Pelican Bay State Prison.

• Joliet Prison is one of the oldest prisons in the United States. In January of 1999, a new prison administration came into office with the expressed goal of taking back the prisons and making sure that doing "hard time" meant just that. ... 10PM ET MSNBC INVESTIGATES: LOCKUP: INSIDE PELICAN BAY Pelican Bay State Prison was designed to be California's new Alcatraz, a single facility that would successfully isolate and contain the state's most dangerous inmates. ... What we discovered was a web of prison gangs; a segregated society on the verge of a virtual war. ... We show and tell the story of one of the worst prison riots in American history, and explain the dangerous dynamics of the prison yard. ... Rikers is a jail, not a prison, which means most of those incarcerated have not yet been sentenced. ... 9PM MSNBC INVESTIGATES: A MOTHER'S CONFESSION Is this the story of a new mom whose post-partum depression was so severe it drove her to kill her own child? Or is that simply the cover story of a desperate woman facing a life in prison? 10PM ET MSNBC INVESTIGATES: IS MY MOTHER A MONSTER? It's a frightening thought for any parent. ...

• End Of The Road by HH Dominguez, Jr (SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison), posted Feb 23, 2004 Pale and thin from a lack of sun and an inadequate diet provided by CDC (California Department of Corrections), inmates that challenge authority and fight for equal justice are validated for non-disciplinary reasons. ... Most often it’s Latinos and Blacks from thirty-two other prison compounds who’ve been selected as leaders / members or associates of a prison gang based on informants, tattoos, group photos, innocent correspondences, possession of artwork or political / revolutionary propaganda, etc. ... Within Pelican Bay State Prison SHU, the number of inmates as of 1995 to this date has remained at full capacity. ... The Blacks are categorized into three main groups, “Crips,” “Bloods,” or “Bay Area. ... The real reason why CDC validates inmates is to keep the prison population from uniting in any form, so they don’t turn on staff, stage protests, and challenge administrational policies or procedures; to retain job security for all these new prisons, especially the SHUs; and to keep the political money train rolling. ... For instance, if you’re from the south side of a city and have “South Side” tattooed on you, it can be used as part of southern Latino prison faction. ...
• It has opened my eyes about the real prison life. ...

• It was during a tour of Pelican Bay, California's state-of-the-art high-security prison on the desolate north coast. ...
• "I remember him because he was so dramatically psychotic," recalls Haney, a professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz who was gathering evidence for a lawsuit on conditions of solitary confinement inside Pelican Bay. ...
• A longtime heroin addict whose criminal history consisted of drug-related theft, Wagner deteriorated in Pelican Bay. Along with nearly half the prison's population, he was held in solitary confinement, or so-called "supermax" conditions. ...
• Just five months after he was released from Pelican Bay, Wagner was facing capital murder charges for a slaying committed during a robbery in Sacramento. "Here was a man who had previously committed only nonviolent offenses stemming from his drug addiction, and within a few months on the streets, he was accused of committing capital murder," says Haney, whose testimony contributed to a judge's landmark ruling that conditions at Pelican Bay "may press the bounds of what most humans can psychologically tolerate. ...
• We may never know for sure if the despair Wagner experienced while incarcerated contributed to the slaying, but the warehousing of unprecedented numbers of people has dramatically increased prison overcrowding and brutality while exhausting prison resources for medical and mental health services. Haney, whose research has documented the long-term psychological damage inmates are experiencing, warns that surging prison populations and deteriorating conditions are a dangerous combination. ...
• "It should matter to all of us what state of mind they are in when they are released. ...
• It should matter to all of us what state of mind they are in when they are released. ...
• On a hunch, his adviser, Philip Zimbardo, whose breakthrough Stanford Prison Experiment would soon rock the world of psychology, suggested that Haney explore the complaints of a New Jersey mother who felt her son had been wrongfully convicted and was now on death row. ...
• But times have changed since Haney's days in graduate school, when he and Zimbardo were understandably optimistic that their work on the Stanford Prison Experiment would help speed reforms of U. ... prison policy. ...
• "For the first time in the 200-year history of imprisonment in the United States, there appear to be no limits on the amount of prison pain the public is willing to inflict in the name of crime control," wrote Haney and Zimbardo. ...
• Conditions there are so bad that the prison system has been under federal scrutiny for 20 years. ...
• "There is a swagger in the Texas prison system that doesn't exist anyplace else," says Haney, who inspected several of the state's supermax units and interviewed more than 100 inmates and prison guards there for a recent court hearing. ...

• What is a Supermax prison? "Supermax" is short for "super-maximum security. ... Announcing the groundbreaking of Ohio's new $65 million 500-bed supermax prison to be built in Youngstown, the state's prison chief, Reginald A. Wilkinson, is reported to have said this prison will be where "the worst of the worst of the worst" will be confined in near isolation. ... " The "prototype", Colorado State Penitentiary. The "prototype" or model for the Youngstown supermax is the Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP). ... One difference between the Colorado State Penitentiary and the Youngstown supermax is that the housing units system in Colorado is fully air conditioned and the proposed Ohio facility is not. At the Colorado State Penitentiary, inmates enter at Level I and are expected to proceed through Level II to Level III. ... Prisoners at Level II have television but programs are determined by the prison's own station. ... Who gets put into supermax prisons and control units? Who are "the worst of the worst" prisoners? Supermax prisons are justified by prison officials as necessary to control violent prisoners and other troublemakers. Different terms are used to define criteria for assignment to control units: administrative control or administrative segregation; disciplinary control; local control (defined as an inmate having demonstrated chronic inability to adjust to the general population or presence will disrupt the orderly operation of the prison); protective control; security control; etc. In the Federal Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, officials state, less than 9 percent of the inmates came directly into the control unit because they were involved in organized crime, terrorist activities, drug cartels or similar crimes, and are believed to have "special security needs.

• Pelican Bay State Prison Houses 'the Worst of the Worst' in the Starkest Isolation Imaginable. ...
• It's quiet in pod C5, deep inside Pelican Bay State Prison's Security Housing Unit, home to about 1,200 of California's most violent offenders. ...
• This is not the crowded, clamorous kind of prison you see in the movies. ...
• If you're an inmate in a regular prison--even a maximum-security prison, which the other two wings of Pelican Bay are--most days you can play basketball in the yard or cards in the day room, work in the laundry room or dining hall and take meals with the other men on your tier.
• Pelican Bay, which sprawls over 275 acres just south of the Oregon border, in a Tolkienesque region of misty mountains and ancient redwood forests, was among the first of a wave of new prisons equipped with ultra-restrictive "supermax" lockups that have proliferated nationwide in recent years. ...
• California has three SHUs for men in its Pelican Bay, Corcoran and Tehachapi lockups, plus one for women in Valley State Prison in Chowchilla. ... But Pelican Bay is the one with the hardest cons and the harshest conditions, the end of the line for the inmates whom correctional officials call "the worst of the worst. ...
• Like their counterparts in other states, California corrections officials say they need SHUs to control incorrigibly violent cons in the state's vast archipelago of prisons, teeming with nearly 160,000 inmates. ... For starters, it's not clear to what extent SHUs are indeed reducing prison violence.
• ," a Pelican Bay SHU inmate who, like most of the nearly two dozen current and former SHU prisoners interviewed for this article did not want his name published, wrote: "How does society expect a person to act once he has been released from the SHU, in most cases after spending years back here? There are things that happen here which people out there are never aware of; these things tend to build anger and hate in some persons, and if these persons don't have anyone to talk to, or complain to, that anger and hate continues to grow. ...
• You can hardly blame prison authorities for liking the idea of supermaxes. Prison guards are spit on, screamed at and assaulted daily. ...
• The latest, a suit on behalf of a Pelican Bay inmate charging that long-term SHU confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, is slated to go to trial in December. ... In fact, Democratic state Sen. ...
• No question the Pelican Bay SHU holds a great many extraordinarily malicious men. Most of California's top prison gang leaders are there, including such luminaries as Aryan Brotherhood shot-callers Paul "Cornfed" Schneider and Dale Bretches, the original owners of the dogs that mauled a San Francisco woman to death in 2001. The day before my visit there this year, a SHU inmate who was appearing in court stabbed his own lawyer with an ice pick-like shank he apparently had hidden in what a Pelican Bay spokesman referred to as his "keister. ...

• Abuses by prison staff include beatings, particularly in isolated segregation units. ...
• Michael Valent died in March 1997 in Utah State Prison after being shackled in a restraint chair for 16 hours; a hole had been cut into the seat to allow him to defecate and urinate. Although no longer employed in this prison, restraint chairs are widely used in facilities throughout the USA. ...
• In January 1997 a federal magistrate ruled that the state should stop using the rail, describing it as a "painful and tortuous punishment". A state appeal against the ruling was still pending as of July 1998. ...
• 1995 federal ruling on conditions at Pelican Bay State Prison, California .
• In 1995 a federal ruling stated that conditions at the supermax unit of Pelican Bay State Prison, California, "may well hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable for those with normal resilience".
• Prison guards monitor inmates during a "shakedown" (a mass search for contraband items) in Ellis 1 Unit in Huntsville, Texas .
• Its goal is to make the US federal, state and local authorities more accountable for human rights violations. ...

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• State/Region.
• Mauling duo tied to prison gang .
• LOS ANGELES (AP) — The couple charged in the dog-mauling death of a neighbor worked with members of a white supremacist prison gang on a business devoted to raising dangerous guard dogs, a state investigator testified Thursday.
• Devan Hawkes, an employee of the state Corrections Department who investigates gangs, cited letters found at the couple's home and in the cells of two inmates belonging to the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
• She faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
• Noel, 60, faces the latter two charges and up to four years in prison if convicted.
• Thursday, jurors saw on a screen enlarged portions of letters in which Noel appeared to encourage Pelican Bay State Prison inmate Paul "Cornfed" Schneider to try to escape and said that if he and Knoller were present they would help.

• Prison Art Prisoner made arts & crafts for sale.
• Here is another piece of ink artwork, this one also done by a Pelican Bay prisoner, named Fernando. ...
• This drawings of an eagle was created by Dean Royer, a prisoner at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington State. ...
• This drawings of a totem was created by Dean Royer, a prisoner at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington State. ...
• This pair of drawings of a dog and cat were created by Dean Royer, a prisoner at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington State. ...
• This drawings of a spread  eagle was created by Dean Royer, a prisoner at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington State. ...
• Sergio Alvarez is a Mexicano in the SHU at Pelican Bay. ...
• This prisoner is also in the SHU at Pelican Bay. ...
• Prison Life by Eddie Hernandez - $40 .
• This prisoner is in the SHU at Pelican Bay. ...
• This prisoner is in the SHU at Pelican Bay. ...
• This prisoner is in the SHU at Pelican Bay. ...
• Prison Life #1 by Lino Delgado - $20.
• Collage of Prison-Outside Life 1. ... $20  This is a prison-made photocopy. ...

• "When you come on to a state property, you give up most of your rights," Cothran says.
• "We use state of the art in everything," says Cothran. ...
• California's corrections department is the largest state prison authority in the country, and the most technologically sophisticated. ...
• "A prison, on the other hand, has a captive audience, and can make the user of a biometric device perform the actions required for passing as many times as it likes until it is satisfied. ...
• Once a technology is blessed, the vendor must supply it free of charge for prison testing. Following modifications, successful products are certified as standards, and the state's prisons are then permitted to purchase them.
• The goal of all the gadgetry boils down to keeping dangerous offenders where they belong, such as the 1,500 men inside the Secure Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison, California's most secure and technologically advanced lockup.

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