Pelican Bay State Prison

Pelican Bay State Prison

Location	Crescent City, Del Norte County, California
Coordinates	41°51′18″N 124°09′00″W / 41.855°N 124.15°W / 41.855; -124.15Coordinates: 41°51′18″N 124°09′00″W / 41.855°N 124.15°W / 41.855; -124.15
Status	Operational
Security class	Supermax
Capacity	2,380
Population	2,977 (125.1%) (as of 31 December 2012[1])
Opened	1989
Managed by	California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Warden	Clark E. Ducart (acting)

Pelican Bay State Prison is a supermax California state prison in Crescent City, California. The 275-acre (111 ha) facility has an 'X' section designed to keep California's known "worst of the worst" prisoners in long-term solitary confinement.^[2] It takes its name from a shallow bay on the Pacific coast, about 2 miles (3 km) to the west. The prison lies in a detached section of Crescent City, several miles north of the main urban area.

Facilities

Pelican Bay opened in 1989.^[3] 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 and barren ground known as the Security Housing Unit (SHU).^[4] An electric fence surrounds the entire perimeter.

The 8-by-10-foot (2.4 m × 3.0 m) cells of the Pelican Bay SHU, or Secure Housing Unit, are made of smooth, poured concrete. They have no windows. Instead, there are fluorescent lights, which the inmates can control. For at least twenty-two hours every day, prisoners remain in their cells, looking out through a perforated steel door at a solid concrete wall. Food is delivered twice a day (breakfast, sack lunch, and dinner) through a slot in the cell door.

A correctional officer in a central control booth controls these doors; he can press a button and allow one prisoner at a time to go out to a shower, or to his court-mandated five hours per week of outdoor exercise. This exercise takes place in a cement yard, often called a "dog run", which extends the length of three cells, and has a roof partially open to the sky. The correctional officer in the control booth is always armed; from his central vantage point in the control booth, he can shoot onto any one of six pods, each containing eight cells.^[5]

Pelican Bay SHU

Prisoners in Pelican Bay's Security Housing Unit (SHU) spend an average of eight years in solitary confinement, before being released back into the general prison population, or onto parole. Some prisoners who were placed in the SHU when it opened are still held there, without indication that they will ever be released back into general population. While some prisoners have spent decades in the Pelican Bay SHU, most prisoners are eventually released. On average, sixteen prisoners per month are released directly from the Pelican Bay SHU onto parole in California. The majority of inmates housed within the SHU are alleged prison gang members/associates. A validated/alleged prison gang member/associate will spend an average of six years in the SHU. However, inmates are afforded the opportunity to "debrief" and give a written account of their gang participation. If their account shows a proper degree of repentance and is satisfactory to the authorities they will be transferred to a different prison and allowed to "do their time" in protective custody. However, most inmates are unrepentant criminals and choose not to participate in the debrief process, which they call "snitching". ^[6]

There are 1,107 prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU as of June 15, 2011 and 3,081 total prisoners housed in Pelican Bay as of April 4, 2012. The design capacity of Pelican Bay is 2,380 inmates.

Alleged psychological effect

Prisoners, lawyers for the prisoners, and prisoner advocates have tried to argue that SHU confinement is cruel and unusual punishment due to the severe conditions. Some of their psychiatrists and psychologists have described a "SHU syndrome", a condition which, they say, affects prisoners who spend more than a few months in isolation. The symptoms reportedly resemble those of post-traumatic stress disorder, including hallucinations, depression, anxiety, anger, and suicide.^[7]

Hunger strikes

Pelican Bay SHU prisoners have organized hunger strikes in protest of conditions there, chiefly the punishment of solitary confinement. In 2002, a reported 60 SHU prisoners began a hunger strike.^[8]

Another hunger strike was reported to have begun on July 1, 2011. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported that "less than two dozen" were refusing food.^[9] The Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition reported close to 100% participation in the SHU on the first day, with the strike spreading to the Pelican Bay general population on the second day. The Coalition also reported that the strike had spread to Corcoran and Folsom prisons, with over 100 prisoners participating.^[10] The CDCR subsequently stated that 6,600 prisoners had refused food in the first days of the strike, and that after five days, more than 2,000 remained on strike. Most inmates reportedly consumed food purchased from the canteen; however, others were refusing all food with the stated intention to strike indefinitely.^[11] SHU prisoner Mutop DuGuya stated, "No one wants to die. Yet under this current system of what amounts to intense torture, what choice do we have? If one is to die, it will be on our own terms."^[12]

On July 8, 2013, prisoners resumed the July 2011 hunger strike, due to alleged broken promises and cruel conditions, with upwards of 29,000 prisoners across California joining in the hunger strike.^[13]

Lawsuit

In May 2012, California's prison system faced a lawsuit from the Center for Constitutional Rights, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and other California attorneys on behalf of ten men incarcerated in the SHU. The plaintiffs were all housed in the SHU for 11 to 22 years, some having been transferred directly from other SHUs. The suit claims that the prisoners "have been incarcerated California’s Pelican Bay State Prison's Security Housing Unit ("SHU") for an unconscionably long period of time without meaningful review of their placement", that "California's uniquely harsh regime of prolonged solitary confinement at Pelican Bay is inhumane and debilitating", and that "[t]he solitary confinement regime at Pelican Bay violates the United States Constitution's requirement of due process and prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment".^[14]

Television and film

In the fictional series Life, Detective Charlie Crews spends twelve years in Pelican Bay for a triple homicide he did not commit, part of it spent in the SHU, as the background of the series' plot. In the TV series The Shield, the main character, Vic Mackey regularly threatens recalcitrant suspects with only the name of the prison. In the 2001 film Training Day, Alonzo Harris, the character portrayed by Denzel Washington, tells everyone in one of the last scenes that they are going to "be playing basketball in Pelican Bay" if they mess with him, continuing to say "SHU program, Nigga" referencing the solitary confinement portion of the prison. Pelican Bay is also referenced in two films directed by Michael Mann. In Heat, the psychopathic character Waingro, portrayed by Kevin Gage, admits to having spent time in "the SHU at Pelican Bay" during his most recent stint in prison. In Miami Vice, the characters of Crockett and Tubbs, portrayed by Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, are given fictitious criminal identities before they go undercover, which among other things imply that the two met while serving time in Pelican Bay.

Notable inmates

• Hugo Pinell: Spent 43 years in solitary confinement (23 of those years were spent in Pelican Bay's SHU) - longer than any other inmate in California. At the age of 71, Pinell was killed at California State Prison, Sacramento.^[15]
• Damian Williams – Infamous for beating Reginald Denny during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003 for the shooting death of a drug dealer. Currently incarcerated at Calipatria State Prison.^[16]
• Sanyika Shakur: Former Crips gangster and author of Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member. Completed two separate stints in Pelican Bay and served his time in the SHU. Released in August, 2012.^[17]
• Joe "Pegleg" Morgan: Notorious Mexican Mafia member. Morgan was housed in the SHU until his transfer to the hospital ward of Corcoran State Prison, where he died from cancer on November 9, 1993.^[18]
• Rene Enriquez: Before "debriefing" and becoming a government informant, Enriquez was a high-ranking Mexican Mafia member. He spent years in Pelican Bay's SHU, but is now doing his time on a protective custody yard at Ironwood State Prison. ^[19]
• Arturo Castellanos: Leader of Florencia 13 (F13) street gang, and high-ranking member of the Mexican Mafia. Convicted of an LA County murder in 1979 and sentenced to 26-years-to-life in prison. Isolated in Pelican Bay SHU for continuing to run gang activities from his cell.^[20] Helped organize hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013 in protest of conditions within California SHU's. Over 30,000 inmates statewide participated.^[21]
• Charles Manson: In March, 1997 he was charged with "conspiracy to distribute narcotics" and transferred to Pelican Bay State Prison, where he was housed in the SHU for 14 months.^[22]
• Lloyd Avery II, who played Knucklehead No.2 in Boyz N The Hood, was a prisoner here for a double murder. In 2005, he was killed by his satan worshipping cellmate, and his body was discovered two days later.

References

External links

• Pelican Bay State Prison official website
• Pelican Bay Prison Project
• Christian Parenti article
• NPR: At Pelican Bay Prison, a Life in Solitary
• Prison Gangs, photo essay by John Burgess, The Press Democrat. San Francisco Bay Area Press Photographers Association, 2001.