In California Prisons, Hundreds Have Been Removed from Solitary Confinement———and Thousands Remain

January 27, 2015 by Sal Rodriguez 1 Comment

It has been over three years since the first statewide hunger strike in protest of the California prison systems’ use of solitary confinement. The hunger strike, the first of many to follow, was launched by individuals housed in the state’s Security Housing Units (SHUs). The hunger strikes prompted state Legislative hearings, international scrutiny, and some reforms.

The SHU, first established in 1989 at Pelican Bay State Prison, was designed to house the “worst-of-the-worst” in close, secure, isolated confinement. Keeping individuals in small, windowless cells for 22 1/2 to 24 hours a day eventually proved to be a convenient solution to deal with individuals exhibiting behavioral or mental health problems and real or suspected gang affiliation as well.

The SHU, once limited to Pelican Bay, has been expanded to a total of four male facilities and one female facility. Despite this expansion, California doesn’t have enough room in the SHUs for all the individuals prison officials would like to place in them, necessitating their placement in Administrative Segregation Units (ASUs), which are dispersed throughout each prison.

By 2011, there were thousands of individuals in the SHU, including over 1,100 in the Pelican Bay SHU alone. Of them, approximately half had been in the SHU for over a decade and 78 had been in the SHU for at least 20 years.

In June 2011, individuals in the Pelican Bay SHU coordinated a hunger strike in protest of long-term isolation. The hunger strike lasted three weeks, notably bringing together people of all racial groups. There would be an additional hunger strike that year, followed by a third, 60-day-long hunger strike in July 2013.

Partly in response to the hunger strikes, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) proposed and implemented an array of reforms purportedly aimed at tightening the standards for SHU placement and potentially reducing the number of individuals held in highly restrictive custody.

Beginning in October 2012, the CDCR has changed the criteria used to place individuals in the SHU, created a “Step Down Program” for individuals to transition out of the SHU, and began a process of case-by-case reviews of all individuals held in the SHU and ASU to determined the appropriateness of their placement.

The reviews are ongoing, but the data collected so far is quite revealing.

According to data obtained from CDCR, 725 SHU case reviews have been conducted, with about 69%  those cases leading to release to the final step in the Step Down Program and/or a General Population setting. A further 63% of ASU case reviews have led to a return to the general population.

In other words, in most cases, it appears that under slightly stricter standards, CDCR could not justify keeping individuals in highly restrictive, isolating conditions.

With these reviews being conducted for over two years now, and the overall decline of the prison population, one would expect that the number of people in restrictive housing would be on the decline.

Officially, CDCR does not believe it holds individuals in solitary confinement. Thus, a true count of the total number of individuals in such conditions is difficult to determine. The purpose of this research is to use CDCR data to provide a means of determining how many individuals might be in solitary confinement.

The CDCR releases pertinent data through COMPSTAT (COMPuter STATistics or COMParative STATistics). CDCR  keeps track of the following data: the number of individuals in single-celled housing, the number of individuals in the SHU and ASU, and the number of individuals in the SHU and ASU in single-celled housing. This data is the closest one can get to determining the number of individuals in solitary confinement.

Total Single Cell Population

Presented first is a comparison of the reported single-cell population per institution in October 2012 and October 2014.

Number of individuals reported on Single-Cell status in October 2012 and October 2014

In October 2012, there was a prison population of 124,718. At that time, were 6,281 individuals who were single-celled, or 5.03% of the prison population. In October 2014, there was a prison population of 120,705.  There were 5,546 individuals who were single-celled, or 4.59% of the prison population.

In 2012, 4,572 of those single-celled were designated with an S-Suffix, or 72% of the single-celled population. In 2014, 4,975 of those single-celled were designated with an S-Suffix, or 89% of the single-celled population. Individuals designated an S-Suffix are generally placed on single-celled status for longer periods of time.

SHU Population

The SHU is used to house people deemed security threats over the long-term. Given the outcomes of the case-by-case reviews, a reduction in the SHU population has occurred since 2012.

SHU Populations In October 2012 and October 2014 reported through COMPSTAT.

In October 2012, the total SHU population stood at 3,923. In October 2014, the total SHU population was 3,732.

As can be seen in the above chart, there were reductions in the SHU population in all four male institutions, with the exception of the Pelican Bay SHU. In October 2012, there were 1,121 held in the Pelican Bay SHU; two years later the figure was 1,171.

While there has been an increase in the number of individuals in the Pelican Bay SHU, there has also been a decline in the number of individuals in the Pelican Bay SHU on single-cell status. In 2012, 83% of those in the SHU were on single-cell status. In 2014, about 75% of those in the Pelican Bay SHU were on single-cell status.

At the California Institution for Women, there have been slight reductions in use of the SHU. In October 2012, there were 88 women in the SHU, with none on single-cell status. In October 2014, there were 78 women in the SHU, with four on single-cell status.

Among the SHU population system-wide, there have been reductions in the number and percentage of individuals on single-cell status. In 2012, there were 1,849 individuals in the SHU on single-cell status, approximately 47.1% of the SHU population. In 2014, there were 1,721 individuals in the SHU on single-cell status, or about 46.1% of the SHU population.

It is important to note that those removed from single-cell status might well still be locked down 22 to 24 hours a day–but in cells with one or more other people.

ASU Population

Aside from the SHU, the ASU also serves to isolate individuals in the California prison system, though generally for shorter periods of time than the SHU. There is no typical term in the ASU, which can range from hours to years. Unlike the SHU, the ASU is not designed to be long-term housing.

ASU Population as reported through COMPSTAT in October 2012 and October 2014.

Overall, the total number of individuals in the ASU declined significantly between 2012 and 2014.

In October 2012, there were 7,007 individuals (5.61% of the prison population) in ASUs:

• Of them, there were 1,547 on single-cell status (22%)
• Salinas Valley State Prison had the largest ASU population (395) and the largest population of ASU prisoners on single-cell status (202)
• Valley State Prison reported only having two people in the ASU
• Some prisons reported having no single-celled ASU prisoners: Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, California Correctional Center, San Quentin State Prison, and Valley State Prison for Women

In October 2014, there were 5,777 individuals (4.78% of prison population) in ASUs:

• Of them, there were 1,289 on single-cell status (22.3%)
• Kern Valley State Prison had the largest ASU population (364)
• Salinas Valley State Prison had the largest single-cell ASU population (165)
• Central California Women’s Facility, California Correctional Center and Correctional Training Facility reported only having two people in the ASU on Single-Cell Status
• Some prisons reported having no single-celled ASU prisoners: Avenal State Prison, Chuckwalla Valley State Prison, Sierra Conservation Center, and California Institution for Women

ASU single-cell population reported through COMPSTAT for October 2012 and October 2014.

The fluctuations in single-cell status across institutions are as of yet unexplained.

Unlike what is available for the SHU, CDCR makes available through COMPSTAT the average terms in the ASU per institution. ASUs are not designed for long-term housing and do not typically come with any significant form of programming. While in theory individuals shouldn’t spend very much time the ASU, COMPSTAT data consistently shows long-terms in the ASU.

Breakdown of the average lengths of stay in ASUs prisons reported in October 2012 and October 2014.

As seen in the above chart, lengths of stay in the ASU vary across prisons and time.

In October  2012, the average term in the ASU was 107.5 days. Two years later, the average ASU term was 89.6 days, a significant decline.

In 2012, among male facilities, Sierra Conservation Center had the lowest average length of stay in the ASU, with an average of 42 days. Calipatria State Prison had the longest, with an average ASU stay of 266 days. In 2014, Chuckawalla Valley had the briefest length of stay of stay in the ASU, with terms of 36 days. Ironwood State Prison had the longest average stay in the ASU, at 132 days.

Conclusions

It appears that the total use of single-cell housing is on the decline. Further, total use of SHU and ASUs in both raw numbers and as a percentage of the prison population have declined. In the SHU, there has been a slight decline in the use of single-cell housing, though a slight increase in the SHU population at Pelican Bay State Prison. In the ASU, the percentage of individuals in the ASU on single-cell status has slightly increased, though there have been significant declines in terms of stay in the ASU.

There are a few potential explanations for the decline in single-cell placement and the use of segregation units. First, the case-by-case SHU and ASU reviews that have been occurring have undoubtedly contributed to the decline of segregation populations. As a result of those reviews, hundreds of individuals have been transferred out of the SHU and ASU and placed in general population. Second, there ought to have been reductions in the total single-cell population in part due to court-ordered reforms pertaining to the segregating of individuals receiving mental health treatment. Thirdly, it is possible that some individuals in segregation units have benefited in recent years from prison population reductions.

Thus far, for advocates of reducing the use of solitary confinement, there is cause for cautious optimism within the data. At the same time, there is much more that can be done.

UN Committee on Torture Says U.S. Must Reform Its Use of Solitary Confinement

December 5, 2014 by Sridevi Nambiar 5 Comments

On November 28, the United Nations Committee Against Torture released a 15 page report reviewing the United States’ compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). The report cites the excessive use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails as a violation of CAT, and recommends a set of dramatic reforms.

The report is a follow up to the Committee’s meeting with United States government officials on November 12 and 13 in Geneva. As a state party to CAT, the United States is expected to submit a “Periodic Report” detailing its adherence to the Convention, as well as respond to questions, observations, and recommendations for change issued by the Committee. Over the two days, the United States delegation presented its latest periodic report for a ten-member Committee to review, after almost an 8 year gap since the last such review.

The U.S. government’s periodic report discusses some 55 separate issues of concern to the Committee Against Torture ranging from the treatment of immigrants in detention, the death penalty, police brutality, and sexual abuse of people in prison to the rendition and secret detention of terror suspects and their continued presence at Guantanamo Bay. In all cases, the United States insists that it is in compliance with CAT, even as several human rights and civil liberties organizations submitted shadow reports telling otherwise. (Access them here: American Civil Liberties Union; Center for Constitutional Rights, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and California Prison Focus; American Friends Service Committee; NY CAIC; the Correctional Association of NY; NRCAT; T’ruah; Victorious Black Women, and the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights.)

The U.S. periodic report also attempts to dismiss the Committee on Torture’s concerns on solitary confinement–which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture defines as “physical and social isolation of individuals who are confined to their cells for 22 to 24 hours a day,” and to which some 80,000 people are being subjected to every day in the United States. As per the U.S. report, there is “no systemic use of solitary confinement in the United States.”

However, in Geneva, members of the Committee Against Torture raised multiple questions and concerns about solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. Committee Vice-Chairperson George Tugushi questioned the American delegation about measures taken to limit the use of solitary confinement, especially on children and other vulnerable individuals. Another Committee member, Alessio Bruni, asked about prolonged solitary confinement such as is being used in Louisiana, where individuals have been isolated for 30 years, and noted that such treatment caused “anxiety, depression and hallucinations until their personality is complete destroyed.”

Both in its periodic report and during the hearings, the United States government sought to assure the Committee on Torture that sufficient restrictions on the imposition of solitary confinement are already in place. At the hearings, David Bitkower, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice maintained that “U.S. courts have interpreted the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution as prohibiting the use of solitary confinement under certain circumstances.” The U.S. periodic report further claims that The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Rehabilitation Act) limit the use of solitary confinement against persons with mental illnesses and other disabilities, while the PREA [Prison Rape Elimination Act] offers protection from the same for children.

But in its “Concluding observations” released last week, the UN Committee reaffirms that “it remains concerned about reports of extensive use of solitary confinement and other forms of isolation in US prisons, jails and other detention centres for purpose of punishment, discipline and protection, as well as for health-related reasons” even as the United States denies any “systemic use.” In the report, the Committee once again raises concerns on the use of solitary confinement for indefinite periods of time, its use against children and persons with mental disabilities, and the general lack of pertinent statistical data. The report also states that the isolation of prisoners for 22 – 23 hours a day as used in super-maximum security prisons is “unacceptable.”

The Committee lays forth several recommendations for the United States to ensure its policies on solitary confinement are in better compliance with CAT. It asks the U.S. government to restrict the use of solitary confinement “as a measure of last resort, for as short time as possible, under strict supervision and with the possibility of judicial review.” Further it reasserts the need to ban the imposition of solitary confinement on “juveniles, persons with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities, pregnant women, women with infants and breastfeeding mothers in prison.” It also stresses that “regimes of solitary confinement such as those in super-maximum security detention facilities” need to be banned. Finally, the Committee once again brings attention to the lack of detailed information on the use of solitary confinement. It asks the United States to “compile and regularly publish comprehensive disaggregated data on the use of solitary confinement, including related suicide attempts and self-harm.”

Asked how he believes the U.S. government might respond to these recommendations, David Fathi, Director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project said: “We shouldn’t hope for dramatic change.  Even if the federal government were highly motivated, it has limited authority to affect conditions in state and local facilities, where ninety percent of prisoners are held.” However, he hopes that the Committee’s report “may give an added push to states and localities that are already considering solitary reform.”