Pelican Bay State Prison

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Aerial view of Pelican Bay State Prison.

Pelican Bay State Prison is a California State Prison that houses some of California's most dangerous inmates. It is a "supermax" facility located in the northwestern part of the state near Crescent City, Del Norte County on 275 acres (1.1 km²). (Geographic coordinates: 41°51.3′N 124°9′W.)

1 Organization
2 Criticisms and incidents
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Organization

Pelican Bay opened in 1989 principally to house the growing population of maximum-security and high-security risk inmates in the California prison system. The facility is sited in a remote forested area 11 miles from the California-Oregon state line and far from California's major metropolitan areas, 370 miles north of San Francisco and more than 750 miles north of Los Angeles. Originally designed to house 2,550 prisoners, as of 2006, Pelican Bay houses 3,301 prisoners, nearly all of whom are classified as "Level IV" maximum-security.

Pelican Bay's grounds and operations are physically divided. Half of the prison holds Level IV prisoners in a "general population" environment with outside exercise courts. The other half of the prison contains Pelican Bay's best-known feature: an X-shaped cluster of white buildings set apart by electrified fencing and barren ground known as the Security Housing Unit, or SHU. This is a supermax-type control-unit facility where prisoners identified as gang members; prisoners with a history of violence, crimes or serious rules violations within prison; and other prisoners presenting serious management concerns are incarcerated. The Pelican Bay SHU was one of the first such facilities in modern American history explicitly planned and built as a control-unit facility. SHU inmates are held in isolation, 22.5 hours per day in their undecorated cell and one hour alone in a small indoor exercise yard. Radios and TVs are allowed.

The outside operations of several prison gangs, such as Nuestra Familia and the Aryan Brotherhood, are directed via secret communications from within Pelican Bay's SHU.^[1]

[edit] Criticisms and incidents

Prisoner advocates have argued that SHU imprisonment is cruel and unusual punishment, due to the lack of stimulation, activity and natural light given to these prisoners. Psychiatrists have identified a psychiatric condition known as SHU Syndrome, similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, symptoms of which include especially serious depression.

Criticism has also been raised regarding the procedures used to classify prisoners as gang members or affiliates, who are subject to indefinite assignment to the SHU solely on the basis of an informant’s word. Since the only way out of SHU is to “debrief” – i.e. to become an informant – the word of such a person is subject to doubt.

[edit] Vaughn Dortch case

Torture was a charge from early in the prison’s history. In April 1992, prisoner Vaughn Dortch who had suffered mental delusions and had been confined to the Violent Control Unit of the SHU, was ordered to bathe after having smeared himself with fecal matter. When he refused, prison guards forced him into a tub with hot water, resulting in third-degree burns to the lower parts of his body. He filed suit and the case was settled, resulting in a payment of $997,000 to Dortch. The settlement was ordered confidential by the presiding federal judge, but it was widely publicized by a 60 Minutes TV show on February 27, 1994.^[2] The lead prison nurse later testified about this case in Madrid v. Gomez.

[edit] Madrid v. Gomez

A massive class-action lawsuit, Madrid v. Gomez, was filed on behalf of some 3,600 Pelican Bay prisoners in 1993, alleging various rights violations and mistreatments. The federal district court judge Thelton Henderson found in January 1995 that prisoners had been subjected to excessive violence, cruel and unusual punishment, and substandard medical care; he ruled that mentally ill inmates could no longer be confined in the SHU and he appointed a special master to oversee the conditions at the prison.^[3]

Later, Judge Margarita Castanon took health care out of the hands of the California Department of Corrections and placed it under Federal authority.

[edit] Riots

On February 23, 2000, a fight involving some 200 inmates broke out among rivaling black and latino gangs in the exercise yard. Guards eventually used Mini-14 rifles to stop the riot, killing one and injuring 15 inmates. The riot lasted for some 30 minutes. Nineteen inmates suffered stabbing or beating wounds; about 50 prison-made weapons were recovered.^[4]