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• Prison Project.
• In Support Of The Pelican.
• Bay Prison Hunger Strikers.
• California Prison Focus:.
• Pelican Bay State Prison Continues.
• At Pelican Bay State Prison.
• In Support of Prison Hunger Strike.

• Pelican Bay State Prison.
• It's standard procedure for all staff at Pelican Bay State Prison, the ultra-high-security institution for "the worst of the worst" among California's prison inmates.
• The protective gear is also mandatory for visitors, as a team of CAPT representatives found out when they traveled to the prison near the Oregon border for a first-hand look at its new Psychiatric Security Unit where the Psych Techs work.
• It was definitely a new experience for the CAPT team -- State Secretary-Treasurer Mike Gothro from Atascadero, Corrections Liaison John Miller from the prison in Vacaville, and Chief Negotiator Ken Murch. ...
• Pelican Bay State Prison is on 275 acres in Crescent City, Calif. ...
• The prison opened the PSU on December 1, 1995 to house seriously mentally ill inmates in an environment where there is still a high degree of security. ...
• The prison itself houses maximum custody inmates in a general population setting, as well as providing two Security Housing Units for prison gang members, violence-oriented inmates, and other habitual trouble-makers. ...
• Pelican Bay's eight Psych Techs were selected primarily for their experience with forensics. ...
• Despite the fact that significant incidents have gone down all over the prison and there have been some inmate disturbances, the Psych Techs say they are getting a real handle on the inmates they are sent.
• CAPT Chief Negotiator Ken Murch (right) meets with two Pelican Bay Psych Techs, Jacqueline Quinn and Bill Oliver. ...
• Pelican Bay opened in 1989 and houses about 3,600 of the most violence-prone inmates in the 32-prison system. It's a high-tech prison that is viewed as a national model for prisons in the 21 Century.

• Hunger Protest for Human Rights at Pelican Bay State Prison. by California Prison Focus Tuesday July 03, 2001 at 12:15 PM 415-252-9211 2940 16th Street #307, San Francisco, CA 94103.
• Hunger Protest for Human Rights at Pelican Bay State Prison Basic Facts .
• On July 1, 2001 prisoners housed in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California began a hunger protest. ...
• Indefinite SHU terms that are given to alleged prison gang members last years. ...
• Prisoners in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit are demanding fair treatment and new procedures governing their excessively long sentences under the SHU’s tortuous conditions. ...
• Inherently unreliable information often obtained under coercion is used in the Kangaroo Court of prison classification to assign thousands of men to endless SHU confinement and its aftermath. ...
• Many are put in the SHU based on circumstantial evidence of no more than membership in a gang without any proof or even allegation of actual criminal activities while in prison. ...
• Acceptable data might include an in-prison group photograph taken years ago that includes a known gang member, a name and phone number of a relative in an address book or a greeting card from a suspected gang member. ...
• In addition we believe that there must be independent oversight and review of SHU policies and independent decision making by a special panel of experts over the placement in the SHU of alleged prison gang members. ...
• California Prison Focus 2940 16th Street #307 San Francisco, CA 94103 415-252-9211 FAX 415-252-9311 http://www. ...
• let those in prison become real leaders and give us hope. ...
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• Tower, the town's juvenile officer and the DARE instructor in the local school, was arrested by the state police Thursday on felony charges of threatening to commit a crime and tampering with a witness. ...
• 21, Tower, 34, allegedly threatened to grab the steering wheel of his wife's 1997 Volvo sedan while she was driving, telling her, "How's it feel to die today?" according to a complaint filed by state police Trooper Jill Rockey. ...
• Tower has received a couple of commendations for his police work, including a "Looking Beyond the Traffic Ticket" award given last spring by the state Police Standards and Training Council. ...
• January 16- The San Jose Mercury News reports: Citing evidence of a massive cover-up within the highest levels of California's corrections department, a court-appointed investigator has found that the state's prison system has "lost control'' of its ability to investigate and discipline guards for abusing inmates and is in dire need of major reforms. ...
• , could be prosecuted for defying court orders to clean up Pelican Bay State Prison and for lying during a probe into how the CDC handled ongoing misdeeds by prison guards at the state's toughest maximum-security prison, located near the Oregon border. ...
• The report describes a CDC administration under the control of the state's powerful prison guard union and willing to abdicate its internal discipline procedures to maintain a dangerous "code of silence'' about inmate abuses such as beatings and staging fights among prisoners. ...
• Among other things, the report accuses Alameida and his top lieutenants of killing an internal probe into whether Pelican Bay guards lied during a 2002 federal criminal trial of two guards ultimately convicted of civil rights violations. ...
• The report was prepared by John Hagar, who monitors conditions at Pelican Bay for U. ... Hagar said the "code of silence'' hinders the ability of investigators to pursue claims of prison guard misconduct, a problem not just at Pelican Bay but at prisons throughout the state. ...
• Hagar's report found that the code of silence is carried out, unchecked, by the state's politically influential prison guards' union, a strong supporter of former Govs. ...
• The perjury allegations arose during the 2002 trial of two former Pelican Bay guards, Edward Michael Powers and Jose Garcia, who were convicted and sentenced to federal prison for violating inmates' rights by attacking them or letting other inmates attack them. After the trial, CDC officials met with federal prosecutors to review concerns that some Pelican Bay guards lied during the proceedings to cover up for Powers and Garcia. ...

• PELICAN BAY.
• Prison policies lead to explosion of inmate anger.
• 23 guards at Pelican Bay State Prison used deadly force against prisoners who were fighting in the B yard facility of the prison. According to the prison administration, one prisoner was killed, 15 were injured by gunshots and 32 injured in the fighting. ...
• At a news conference held on the steps of the new State Office Building in San Francisco, Richard Becker of the National Peoples Campaign charged that the community cannot trust the prison system to investigate itself. ...
• Becker recalled the 1971 Attica Rebellion when inmates in that New York State prison took it over. During the takeover a number of guards were held by prisoners to insure their safety and to force the prison administration to listen to their demands. ...
• When State Troopers, on the orders of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, stormed Attica and took back control of the prison, they killed 43 inmates and guards. To justify the violence used to retake the prison, phony stories of guards being castrated and killed by prisoners were released to the media. After an independent investigation led by prisoner advocates and other community organizations, it was revealed that all the guards who had died during the takeover had been killed by the state.
• At the press conference here, former Pelican Bay prisoner Dorsey Nunn of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children said it was not a coincidence that the day the riot took place, two guards from Pelican Bay were being indicted for arranging assaults on prisoners by other prisoners. Nunn suggested the fights were facilitated by the prison system as an effort to deflect attention from these indictments. ...
• Nunn reminded the media of the well-documented gladiator fights between prisoners set up by guards at Corcoran state prison.
• Luis Talamantez, a former political prisoner and member of the San Quentin Six, spoke of the need to end the cycle of violence and reiterated the call to shut down Pelican Bay State Prison altogether.
• Leslie DiBenidetto-Skopek of the California Prison Focus spoke of a recent investigative trip made by CPF on Feb. 11 and 12 to Pelican Bay to document the conditions under which prisoners live.

• KTVU/Fox2 and Bay City News/September 7, 2001 .
• San Franciso -- A prison inmate whose dogs fatally attacked a San Francisco woman was granted permission in federal court in the city today to act as his own lawyer in facing racketeering and murder conspiracy charges.
• Schneider, who is now serving a state court life sentence at the high-security Pelican Bay State Prison, is a co-owner of two dogs that fatally mauled Diane Whipple in her Pacific Heights apartment building in January.
• Schneider and seven other alleged members and associates of the Aryan Brotherhood were indicted by a federal grand jury last week on charges of racketeering, murder conspiracy and other crimes allegedly orchestrated by the white supremacist gang from inside Pelican Bay.
• All eight were brought one by one, in handcuffs and under heavy guard this morning, to Zimmerman's Federal Building courtroom in San Francisco for arraignment and hearings on whether they should be held in federal or state custody while awaiting trial.
• The magistrate ordered Schneider and three other Pelican Bay inmates returned to state custody in the North Coast prison after their court appearance next Tuesday.
• The four other defendants, who are serving sentences in other state prisons, will remain in federal custody in local county jails while awaiting trial. ...
• Attorney Terry Canepa had originally sought the transfer of Schneider and the other three Pelican Bay inmates to federal custody as well. But she withdrew that request after a hearing on the first Pelican Bay inmate to appear, convicted murderer James Pendleton, whose lawyer said Pendleton opposed federal detention and wanted to return to Pelican Bay.
• After Canepa said she had correspondence showing that Pendleton had allegedly ordered several more murders from within the prison, Zimmerman said that evidence and Pendleton's criminal record indicated he was a danger to society.
• But he said the prosecutor hadn't proved that keeping him in federal custody at Alameda County's North County Jail would be any less dangerous than keeping him at Pelican Bay. Zimmerman then ordered Pendleton returned to state custody.
• Canepa then withdrew the federal detention request for the other Pelican Bay inmates after each, including Schneider, said he opposed federal custody.
• Schneider, dressed in red and orange prison garb, said, "Too many people in here,'' when he was first brought into the small courtroom filled with defense attorneys, spectators and federal marshals.
• Schneider is currently serving a state sentence of life without parole for a 1991 aggravated assault and a 1990 attempted murder, both committed while he was in prison.

• (AP) ­ Guards shot 13 inmates, killing one, to quell a race riot Wednesday at a prison that houses some of California's most dangerous criminals. ...
• California prison guards shoot 13 inmates .
• (AP) ­ Guards shot 13 inmates, killing one, to quell a race riot Wednesday at a prison that houses some of California's most dangerous criminals, a prison spokesman said.
• About 200 black and Hispanic inmates with handmade weapons began fighting in a yard of the highest-security wing of Pelican Bay State Prison, Lt. ...
• The maximum-security prison was built for 2,280 inmates but has 3,400, many of whom were sent there after being involved in violence or escape attempts at other prisons. ...
• Prison authorities originally said nine inmates were shot.
• The prison, which opened in 1989, is situated on 270 acres of forest land 20 miles south of the Oregon state line.
• Guards were able to put down another riot at Pelican Bay last August by firing tear gas and rubber bullets. ...
• In 1997, six inmates were killed in clashes between cellmates at the prison.
• In an apparently unrelated case, two former guards are charged with violating the civil rights of Pelican Bay inmates. ...
• Garcia is already serving a state prison sentence on similar charges. Another former Pelican Bay guard, David E. ...

• Title: The Millennium Pelican: Anthology of Writing by Inmates from Pelican Bay State Prison. ...
• Printed in the prison workshop through the Arts in Corrections Program. ...
• Topic(s) - Latino - Prison - Poetry - Chicano Literature .

• Program Information Sheet for: Pelican Bay State Prison .
• Pelican Bay State Prison .
• Prison This information was last updated on 04/24/2003.

• Institution:  Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP).
•   The first big trip to Pelican Bay will take place on September 11 -12 since CPF was banned in July 2001 during the hunger strike (and the rewriting of the attorney visiting regulation finalized in May). ...
• Melee at Pelican Bay 7/00 • Hunger Strike 7/01 • Hunger Protest Fact Sheet 7/01.

• Latino prisoner challenges Pelican Bay torture.
• After seven solitary years inside a "prison of tomorrow" where natural sunlight does not penetrate, prisoner Steve Castillo finally got his day in court June 11. Appearing on a habeas writ before Sacramento State Court Judge Ronald Tochterman, the 40-year-old Chicano prisoner, looking pale and thin, managed a clenched-fist salute to his supporters despite being severely encumbered by handcuffs, shackles and a waist chain. ...
• Like hundreds of others in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison, Castillo is accused of belonging to a prison gang. Within California's mammoth prison system, being "validated" as a prison gang member means automatic placement inside the notorious SHU (security housing unit) at PBSP. Other SHU units exist around the state, including one for women at Chowchilla. ...
• Prisoners at Pelican Bay have been propagandized as the "worst of the worse," deserving of their grim fate. But over the years and through dozens of organized visits to the prison site, members of California Prison Focus have become convinced that the real violators of the law are the prison staff. ...
• , the California Department of Corrections systematically targets prisoners--mostly Latinos and Blacks--from its other 32 prison compounds to feed into its SHU warehouse depots. ... This insures that the state-of-the-art facility near the Oregon state line continues to operate at full capacity, at an annual cost of $50 million. ...
• The only real option Castillo and hundreds of others similarly situated have, other than becoming state informants, is to file writ after legal writ in hope of obtaining release from this bureaucratic maze of institutionalized racism and injustice. ...
• After years of silence the OAL issued a 20-page administrative finding that says the CDC has for 10 years been illegally operating "underground" regulations never legally promulgated under the Administrative Regulatory Act, which all state agencies are bound by and which the OAL oversees. ...
• Time and again, Castillo has been brought before prison kangaroo courts in an attempt to break him. ...
• Their only real prison infraction has been refusal to surrender their personal identities or collaborate with their oppressors. ...
• Many like Castillo are active jailhouse lawyers who give aid to others and are considered prison leaders, revolutionaries and prisoners of conscience. ...
• Pelican Bay opened in 1989 and has been the subject of many lawsuits. ...

• The Barrio Defense Committee and the Campaign to Free Jose Luis NOW! is taking a stand to defend another young Raza man held hostage by the US government at Pelican Bay State Prison. John Martinez is a member of the Barrio Defense Committee and he is standing up por nuestra gente!  In early June 2000, he wrote to say that the Warden of Pelican Bay, as ordered by the State of California, was keeping la Raza designated by the state to be "southern hispanic" on lockdown for 24 hours a day since mid April. The Raza at Pelican Bay began to organize a hunger strike to protest the conditions they were subject to denied the right to exercise, to make phone calls or have visits and denied the right to have access to the law library. ... In response to the threat of a hunger strike the prison allowed the men to return to the "A" program as of June 20th, but within a week all of the organizers where transfered without notice to the "B" facility.
• " The US prison system has always used tactics to divide our people and maintain control over the colonial subjects. ...
• We are now going to be starting a massive, nationwide call-in campaign in Defense of John Martinez and all Raza Locked Down at Pelican Bay. ...
• 4) We hold the State of California responsible for the health and well- being for all Mexicans inside the prisons, jails and juvenile detention centers.
• State Capital.
• Pelican Bay State Prison.

• Group says prison's plan to fill in 2. 2 acres of bay threatens habitat .
• 2 acres of San Francisco Bay to shore up a state prison that may face closure makes no sense and threatens to harm sensitive bay habitat, according to the Marin chapter of the Sierra Club. ... 2 acres of shoreline next to San Quentin State Prison that officials there say is needed to halt erosion that has rendered a guard tower useless. ... 2 acres of fill to the ecologically sensitive waters of San Francisco Bay," said Herb Kutchins, a member of the local Sierra Club's executive committee. ...
•   The proposed project comes at time when state legislators and even the head of the state Department of Corrections have indicated that the prison may be a good candidate for closure. State legislators have asked for a study evaluating the ramifications of closing San Quentin, the oldest state prison in California. ...
• Prison officials, however, said there are no immediate plans to close San Quentin, and state Department of Corrections Margot Bach expressed disappointment that the Sierra Club did not voice its objections during earlier public meetings. ... What do they want? Do they want the facility to fall into the bay?"  Other local environmental groups that were present at the meetings raised no objections to the plans, Bach said. ...
• "  The Sierra Club asked in its letter for the prison to conduct more studies of the potential environmental impacts on the area, which the group said is located near habitat for several endangered or threatened species, including the California brown pelican, steelhead trout, the salt marsh harvest mouse and the California clapper rail. ...
• Shepard said the Army Corps will deliver the letter to prison officials so they can address the Sierra Club's concerns. ...

• Federal investigators are taking a close look at three California state prisons -- Pelican Bay, High Desert and Corcoran -- to determine whether prison administrators and guards have violated inmates' civil rights. ...
• Tate was only one of seven inmates shot to death and 40 wounded by guards at Corcoran since the prison opened in 1988. ...
• In 1996 another inmate was fatally shot by a guard, bringing to three the number of inmates slain by guards since the prison opened in 1995. ...
• The Pelican Bay investigation, now in its initial stages, is studying whether inmates have been unlawfully singled out for retribution by guards. ...
• Pelican Bay also has come under scrutiny for what one state prosecutor described as a "reign of terror" linked to a white supremacist prison gang. Eight inmates have been killed in their cells by other inmates since 1996, and prison officials have said that three of those killings involved members or associates of the Aryan Brotherhood.
• Leslie DiBenedetto-Skopek of the California Prison Focus prisoners' rights group, said called the security housing policy "a major failure" as a tool to maintain order. ...
• John Cox, who resigned from his Pelican Bay guard job in 1995 and now has a suit pending against the prison system, said he hopes the public heeds the results of the investigations. ...
• Sources: Susan Sward and Bill Wallace, "3 California Prisons Under Intense Federal Investigation" San Francisco Chronicle March 28, 1998; Susan Sward, "Pelican Bay Killings Linked to Supremacists" San Francisco Chronicle February 28, 1998. ...

•   Pelican Bay on Hunger Strike .
• Pelican Bay inmates protest policy that sends reputed gang members to segregation units. ...
• SACRAMENTO -- A group of inmates is entering the third week of a hunger strike at Pelican Bay State Prison, hoping to force corrections officials to change how they identify and punish gang members in California's sprawling penal system. ...
• About 60 inmates at the remote prison in Del Norte County near the Oregon border began refusing their meals Oct. ...
• Prison officials said they are monitoring the striking inmates carefully but have no plans to alter their policy. In January, however, they intend to launch an already scheduled review of the 1,154 inmates confined in isolation at Pelican Bay to determine whether any were sent there erroneously. ...
• The department's gang policy has long been a target of inmate grievances, and last year sparked a hunger strike that involved about 1,000 convicts at Pelican Bay and a second prison. ...
• Under state regulations, male convicts determined to be gang members or associates may be sent to a security housing unit at Pelican Bay or at prisons in Corcoran and Tehachapi. ...
• Prison officials say confining the most active gang members in the unit helps curb violence within its systemwide population of 159,000. Gang conflicts account for about 75% of the violence at the state's 33 lockups, officials say. ...
• They want the state to change its policy to require that only an inmate who engages in overt gang-related misconduct be labeled a member and punished with an indefinite term in a security housing unit. ...
• Once you are in the unit, "it is very, very difficult to get out," said Jesus Enriquez of La Puente, whose son-in-law has been confined at Pelican Bay's security housing unit for 11 years. ...
• At Pelican Bay, the 1,154 unit inmates spend about 23 hours a day in 8-by-10-foot cells, released only to exercise daily and to shower three times a week. ...
• In a 1995 decision slamming the prison and a pattern of brutality there, a federal judge said conditions in the unit "hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable. ...
• The hunger strike at Pelican Bay is being led by Steven Castillo, a unit inmate convicted of first-degree murder who is challenging the state's assertion that he is a member of the Mexican Mafia. ...
• Carbone said Castillo and the other striking inmates are subsisting on Kool-Aid and water, but prison officials said the convicts are eating food stockpiled from the canteen. ...

• Death in prison (contined).
• Although an outside burn specialist prescribed more pressure garments for Martin, they never arrived at the prison. Martin owned three pairs of the garments, which she had left at home, but she charges that attempts by friends to send them to the prison were unsuccessful -- boxes came back marked "return to sender. " While she fought with prison officials and medical staff to allow her garments to be sent to her in the prison, she suffered for up to six months in the same unhygienic garment, at which time she was told she could stop wearing it. ...
• "When they finally gave me the crutches I had to learn to walk again," Martin told the Bay Guardian. ...
• In the past decade, class action lawsuits filed against the California Department of Corrections have argued that the state fails to provide adequate medical health care, mental health treatment, and disability access, and in most cases district and federal judges have found that to be true. ...
• In November 1990 a federal suit that attracted national media attention alleged that medical treatment at Pelican Bay prison for men in California violated the constitutional injunction against cruel and unusual punishment; there has been no ruling yet on the case. ...
• Wilson, alleges that the California state prisons do not comply with basic requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act; in response the CDC contended that the ADA doesn't apply to prisoners. ...
• "The prison medical care system is very poor all over the state," Don Spector, director of the Prison Law Office at San Quentin and one of the lead attorneys for the Armstrong case, told the Bay Guardian. ...
• "It's just so bizarre the way they treat the medical care there," Cynthia Martin told the Bay Guardian. ...
• "We all have done things, and we all have to pay for what we have to pay for," Linda told the Bay Guardian. ... So it's incumbent upon the state to look after that person's health. ...

• "It really had nothing to do with Napa State Hospital except the location. ...
• Dianne Warrick held police at bay for an hour before being wounded by a Highway Patrol officer. ...
• "There's been a tremendous dedication of resources to Pelican Bay. We're very gratified that the judge allowed prison of ficials to exercise their discretion and come up with a remedy.
• District Juge Thelton Henderson's approval of the state's health care plan for Pelican Bay State Prison. ...
• Elizabeth Schroeder associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, commenting on the high percentage of inaccuracies in the state's new CD-ROM database for sex offenders.

• Brave Resistance at Pelican Bay SHU.
• Prison Hunger Strike against Supermax Torture.
• On October 19, over 90 prisoners locked away in solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) began a hunger strike. ...
• In June 2001, 1,000 prisoners at Pelican Bay and some of the three other SHU prisons in California went on a hunger strike for two weeks. ...
• Pelican Bay State Prison was opened in December 1989. ... Inside the perimeter of the prison, all signs of the surrounding environment have been obliterated--there is not a bug, not a blade of grass.
• In the Security Housing Units at Pelican Bay, Corcoran, Tehachapi and Chowchilla, a regime of scientific torture has been created. ... California Prison Focus, a community-based organization working with and for prisoners in the SHUs, notes that, "The prisoners are denied human needs such as adequate contact with loved ones, a decent private space to live in, some say about their privileges and deprivations, some productive outlet and a chance to learn and grow. ...
• Makini's husband, Leonard Alexander, has been in the Pelican Bay SHU since it opened in 1989, and has continued to resist. ...
• A psychiatrist working with California Prison Focus who toured the SHUs and other "supermaximum" units reported observing many individuals suffering from the most severe psychoses he had seen in his 30-year career.
• The SHU at the Valley State Prison for Women at Chowchilla, California has been the subject of international protest by Amnesty International and has been criticized by the United Nations Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. ...
• "The SHUs are used," as Charles Carbone, a lawyer with California Prison Focus told the RW , "to capture those people who are able to gain any political visibility, political notoriety, or those people that are able to mobilize and radicalize other prisoners. ...
• Some prominent political prisoners are at Pelican Bay, including Ruchell Magee, arrested after the Marin courthouse shootout that involved Jonathan Jackson, brother of George Jackson, and Hugo Pinell, another associate of George Jackson and one of the San Quentin 6. Steve Castillo, who participated in the most recent hunger strike, was sent to Pelican Bay for being a jailhouse lawyer.
• The California Department of Corrections says the purpose of the SHUs is to control prison gangs. ...
• A validation is not based on anything a prisoner may have done against prison rules, but on "association" with a "gang member," or someone suspected of being a gang member.

• The Pelican Bay State Prison Web page of the California Department of Corrections Web site boasts cabinetry, graphic arts and dry cleaning among the vocational "personal growth opportunities" available to inmates.
• The site gives directions to the maximum-security facility in the northwest corner of California, announces visiting hours and touts the "innovative and collaborative environment" that the joint offers to the "state's most serious criminal offenders in a secure, safe and disciplined institutional setting. ...
• Because Pelican Bay Prison administrators officially take a suspicious view of the Internet.
• Even as the California Department of Corrections exploits the Web as a great way to brag to the not-currently incarcerated public at large about all its prisons have to offer, the state is maintaining that prison officials should be allowed to ban all materials downloaded from the Net, including e-mail, from reaching inmates. ...
• So what the state is saying, essentially, is that prisoners are not allowed snail mail that contains printouts of information from Internet sites or e-mail messages. ...
• More than that, prison officials won't say, which leads outside experts to speculate that maybe they're keeping mum as to the real reason for the attempted crackdown on all things Net-related. Maybe the real problem, they suggest, is the proliferation of "prison pen pal sites" -- a kind of online dating service for incarcerated felons.
• So far, the courts haven't agreed with the state of California. ... the California Department of Corrections, the Pelican Bay policy should be thrown out on First Amendment grounds. ...
• The California state attorney general is fighting to keep the ban, and has appealed the decision. The attorney general argues that prison officials can restrict the constitutional rights of prisoners, including their First Amendment rights, if it serves a "legitimate penological interest. " The state maintains that banning Web page and e-mail printouts does serve a legitimate purpose, charging that such information could compromise security, and that allowing Internet printouts to be sent into prisons would overwhelm already strapped mailroom workers with sheer volume.
• "First, the ease with which electronic communication can be manipulated heightens the risk that coded messages and other prohibited communications will be passed to prisoners and the identity of the sender concealed," state attorneys wrote in their appeal.
• The ACLU is representing the plaintiff, a Pelican Bay inmate who has been incarcerated since 1985. ...
• " Her group submitted a declaration in the case arguing that much of the material that it publishes on its Web site, such as first-person accounts of prison rape, is available nowhere else.
• The state argues that it's not the information contained in the Stop Prison Rape Web site that is banned, just the traces of the verboten medium -- the Internet. "Pelican Bay's policy does not prohibit someone from writing a letter to an inmate communicating the contents of this, or any, Web site, or purchasing the books or pamphlets identified on the Stop Prison Rape Web site. Thus, the Pelican Bay policy does not prevent inmates from obtaining information," asserts the appeal. ...

• In a move that could signal a housecleaning of top state corrections officials, Gov. ...
• Hickman will replace former state Sen. ...
• The Department of Corrections, for instance, has been under fire for cost overruns and for allegedly shutting down an investigation of guard misconduct at Pelican Bay State Prison.
• Schwarzenegger transition sources said Hickman, 47, will be the first YACA secretary who's worked his way up through the prison system.
• "I look forward to using my experience and knowledge of California's correctional system to maintain efficient facilities and help keep our state safe from criminals. ...
• Hickman has nearly 25 years of experience in the field and started his career as a prison correctional officer.
• Hickman is considered a strong manager and is remembered as having been a particularly community-minded administrator when he was warden at Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County.
• Corrections and YACA are widely considered two of the toughest departments in state government to run.
• Because of staffing problems and the state's contract with the powerful 28,000-member officers' union, the department's overtime costs for 2002 were $255 million.
• YACA also oversees the California Youth Authority and the Board of Prison Terms, which are routinely under attack in the Legislature.
• "They certainly need to do a lot," said Burton, who is one of the prison system's harshest critics.
• "They need to straighten out policy at BPT where some parolee (fails a drug test) and they put him back in prison for six months at tremendous cost to taxpayers. ...
• Two committees in the state Senate have criticized his handling of reported abuses by correctional officers at a prison in Chino.
• The Bee last week obtained a confidential report by the Office of the Inspector General in which officials were severely criticized for their behavior regarding a brief riot at the state prison in Folsom.
• And this Friday, Alameida is scheduled to testify in federal court about why he allegedly closed down a departmental investigation of officers at Pelican Bay who may have perjured themselves in a criminal investigation of some of their colleagues. ...

• edu Subject: Pelican Bay Although I highly suspect that the only person besides me who remembers that I promised to post this is David Hawkes, here goes: *************************************************************************** San Francisco Daily Journal, January 12, 1995 STATE ACCEPTS BRUTALITY RULING ON PRISON Conditions at Pelican Bay violate inmates' rights, a judge decides, and he appoints a monitor. By Rex Bossert State officials sounded surprisingly upbeat and willing to cooperate with a monitor appointed by a San Francisco federal judge, who ruled in a landmark decision Wednesday that the use of excessive force and inadequate health care at California's state of the art Pelican Bay State Prison violate inmates' rights. ... Siggins, the lead attorney for the state's Department of Corrections, the chief defendant in the case. Though Siggins said the state has not ruled out an appeal, he added: "It's not clear there's anything in the order that will be difficult to comply with. ... Henderson of San Francisco ruled a pattern of beatings and brutality at the prison -- especially when guards forcibly remove inmates from their cells -- violated the Eighth Amendment. The Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment is also violated by the serious lack of health care at Pelican Bay, said Henderson, who was appointed to the federal bench by Carter in 1980. ... Gomez_, C90-3094TEH, a prisoners' rights class action challenging the conditions of the so-called super!maximum security of Pelican Bay's notorious Security Housing Unit. ... The SHU, one of three separate parts of the Del Norte County prison, is reserved for the state's most violent prisoners and gang members -- the "worst of the worst," according to the state. The suit was a consolidation of nearly 300 separate suits filed by Pelican Bay prisoners and brought before Henderson in a three month bench trial that ended a year ago. ... Lonergan, who retired from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in 1980, to act as a special master overseeing the state's efforts to improve conditions, Lonergan will help the state and the plaintiffs to work together on a remedial plan, to be submitted to Henderson within 120 days. Plaintiffs' attorney David Steuer, a partner with Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, declared the ruling a landmark victory because he said Henderson has "taken over control of the prison.

• US CA: Report Alleges State Prison Coverup Investigation Of Pelican Bay Guards C.
• htm (Corruption - United States) REPORT ALLEGES STATE PRISON COVERUP INVESTIGATION OF PELICAN BAY GUARDS CALLED `SHAM' .
• Citing evidence of a massive coverup within the highest levels of California's corrections department, a court-appointed investigator has found that the state's prison system has ``lost control'' of its ability to investigate and discipline guards for abusing inmates and is in dire need of major reforms. ...
• , could be prosecuted for defying court orders to clean up Pelican Bay State Prison and for lying during a probe into how the CDC handled ongoing misdeeds by prison guards at the state's toughest maximum-security prison, located near the Oregon border. ...
• The report describes a CDC administration under the control of the state's powerful prison guard union and willing to abdicate its internal discipline procedures to maintain a dangerous ``code of silence'' about inmate abuses such as beatings and staging fights among prisoners. ...
• Among other things, the report accuses Alameida and his top lieutenants of killing an internal probe into whether Pelican Bay guards lied during a 2002 federal criminal trial of two guards ultimately convicted of civil rights violations. ...
• ``It's a shocking document,'' said state Sen. ...
• The report was prepared by John Hagar, who monitors conditions at Pelican Bay for U. ...   Hagar said the ``code of silence'' hinders the ability of investigators to pursue claims of prison guard misconduct, a problem not just at Pelican Bay but at prisons throughout the state. ...
• The report's release comes at a time when the state's prison system and its leadership are under increased scrutiny -- and the report places the onus for reforms squarely on the new administration of Gov. ...   Without reforms, Henderson, who has overseen conditions at Pelican Bay for more than 10 years, could force changes upon the state if he accepts Hagar's findings. ...
• As a cost-cutting measure, Schwarzenegger has recommended folding an independent watchdog office responsible for investigating complaints against prison guards into California's adult and youth authority.   That move, however, is strongly opposed by Speier and state Sen. ...
• The guards' union, however, said it was ``incredulous'' about the report's conclusions, and Alameida expressed disappointment in the findings and defended the department's handling of Pelican Bay investigations. ...
• Schwarzenegger's staff referred questions about the report to the prison authority, which oversees the corrections department and is under the leadership of a new secretary, Rod Hickman. ...
• Hagar's report found that the code of silence is carried out, unchecked, by the state's politically influential prison guards' union, a strong supporter of former Govs. ...

• PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON.
• PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON et al. ...
• Pelican Bay State Prison, 526 U. ...

• Every year Prison Legal News reports, literally, hundreds of such cases. ...
• A federal court in California condemned a massive pattern of brutality at the Pelican Bay state prison which included shooting unarmed prisoners, one prisoner being boiled alive, placing naked prisoners in wire mesh cages outside in low temperatures, non-existent medical and mental health care, hog-tying prisoners in their cells for hours on end, and more. ... PLN provides free subscriptions to dozens of Pelican Bay prisoners too poor to afford a subscription. ...
• A federal court in Massachusetts found that prisoners eighth amendment rights in a 150 year old prison were violated by massive vermin infestation, fire hazards, a lack of toilets in the cells prisoners were locked in at night. ... The court described the sanitation at the prison: "And the unsanitary conditions that attend the use of the toilets in the cells and the emptying of them in the slop sink area call to mind the muck that 'boils up and pours over' in the gloomy second river of hell, the Styx, described by Dante. ...
• The suit was initially filed by PLN co-Editor Paul Wright on behalf of barely literate, non-English speaking prisoners who were not being provided with adequate medical care, disciplinary hearings, knowledge of prison rules and many other services because of the language barrier. ...
• A federal court in the District of Columbia found prison officals liable for the systematic sexual harassment, rape, sodomy, assaults, insults and other abuses by prison staff of women prisoners in a District of Columbia prison. ...
• 20 in damages after finding prison officials unlawfully retaliated against the prisoner by keeping him locked in segregation for more than a year and transferring him to another state where his life was in danger. The court found the retaliation occurred solely because he complained about prison conditions and filed a lawsuit challenging the conditions of his confinement. ...
• The prisoner was kept in prison hospital and denied access to all rehabilitative and educational programs offered by the prison, which he was qualified and able to participate in. ...
• On December 19, 1995, the New York Times reported a pervasive pattern of brutality at a New York state prison in Dannemora. ... In a six year period eight different federal court rulings have found 27 prison employees guilty of assaulting prisoners in such a severe manner that the prisoners' constitutional rights were violated. ... Different judges have termed the actions of prison guards in these cases "excessive," "cowardly" as well as "quick, efficient, savage beatings. ... All the guards sued remain employed at the prison. ...
• A jury in Ohio awarded two prisoners $460,800 in damages after finding they had been savagely beaten, without provocation by prison guards. The jury found that prison guards had "created an atmosphere of reprisal and retaliation at the prison" where the prisoners suffered massive injuries, bruises, contusions and lacerations. ...

• State News.
• (AP) -- Guards shot nine inmates, killing one, to quell a race riot Wednesday at a prison that houses some of California's most dangerous criminals, a prison spokesman said. --> Nine inmates shot, one killed, during California prison riot .
• (AP) -- Guards shot nine inmates, killing one, to quell a race riot Wednesday at a prison that houses some of California's most dangerous criminals, a prison spokesman said.
• About 200 black and Hispanic inmates with handmade weapons began fighting in a yard of the highest-security wing of Pelican Bay State prison, Lt. ...
• The maximum-security prison was built for 2,280 inmates but has 3,400, many of whom were sent there after being involved in violence or escape attempts at other prisons. ...
• The prison, which opened in 1989, is situated on 270 acres of forest land 20 miles south of the Oregon state line.
• Guards were able to put down another riot at Pelican Bay last August by firing tear gas and rubber bullets. ...
• In 1997, six inmates were killed in clashes between cellmates at the prison.
• In an apparently unrelated case, two former guards are charged with violating the civil rights of Pelican Bay inmates. ...
• Garcia is already serving a state prison sentence on similar charges. Another former Pelican Bay guard, David E. ...

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