{"id":3483,"date":"2011-10-10T19:02:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T02:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=3483"},"modified":"2011-10-10T19:02:07","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T02:02:07","slug":"americas-shame-nearly-12000-prisoners-join-california-hunger-strike-to-end-torture-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=3483","title":{"rendered":"America’s Shame, Nearly 12,000 Prisoners Join California Hunger Strike To End Torture Conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly 12,000 Prisoners Join California Hunger Strike To End Torture Conditions<\/strong>
\nBy Jeffrey Kaye – The Public Record – Oct 3rd, 2011<\/p>\n

According to a report published Saturday by Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity (PHSS), the Federal receiver\u2019s office has indicated that \u201cnearly 12,000 prisoners were on hunger strike, including California prisoners who are housed in out of state prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the second hunger strike in less than four months, with prisoners at the Supermax Pelican Bay Prison and other California state prisons protesting the use of long-term solitary confinement, in addition to four other main demands, including provision of adequate and nutritious food, an end to administrative abuses (such as group punishments), and expansion, and in some cases provision, of \u201cConstructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates.\u201d<\/p>\n

But besides an end to state-sanctioned isolation, which amounts to torture, the most salient demand is an end to the hated \u201cdebriefing\u201d system, which places inmates in solitary if prison officials determine they are \u201cgang members.\u201d As I noted in an article last July, determination of \u201cgang\u201d status includes \u201cacquisition or exchange of personal or state property amounting to more than $50\u2026. tattooing or possession of tattoo paraphenalia\u2026. possession of $5 or more without authorization\u2026. [and] refusal to work or participate in a program as assigned,\u201d among others. Indeed, even refusal to submit to \u201cdebriefing,\u201d i.e., interrogation of prisoners to get them to \u201csnitch,\u201d or give names of other \u201cgang\u201d members, is reason to label someone a gang member and put them in solitary indefinitely. The prisoners call this \u201csnitch, parole, or die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both isolation and forced confessions are illegal forms of incarceration. The 2006 Commission on Safety and Abuse in America\u2019s Prisons, co-chaired by former Chief Judge of U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, John Gibbons and former Attorney General Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, called for an end to isolation in U.S. prisons. (See summary of findings and recommendations, PDF.)<\/p>\n

A Fight for Dignity, Justice, and Humanity<\/p>\n

California prisons are a stinking mess, a scandal of gigantic proportions. The health care component of the California prison system has been in federal receivership for years because of the awful, insufficient care provided to the sick and mentally ill. As reported in a McClatchy article last May, the U.S. Supreme Court \u201ccited \u2018serious constitutional violations\u2019 in California\u2019s overcrowded prisons and ordered the state to abide by aggressive plans to fix the problem.\u201d The court rejected state pleas to put off the necessary changes, and ordered the prison system to lower its population by approximately 37,000. (A plan to implement the changes is meeting some skepticism.) …source<\/a><\/p>\n

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Nearly 12,000 Prisoners Join California Hunger Strike To End Torture Conditions By Jeffrey Kaye – The Public Record – Oct 3rd, 2011 According to a report published Saturday by Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity (PHSS), the Federal receiver\u2019s office has indicated that \u201cnearly 12,000 prisoners were on hunger strike, including California prisoners who are housed in more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[1892],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}