NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6301

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Subject: NEWS:Calif Pelican Bay Prison Investigated
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Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

California's Pelican Bay Prison investigated

By Jane Cutter
San Francisco

In late August Pelican Bay Information Project prison activists
investigated Pelican Bay State Prison, California's newest
state-of-the-art $224 million maximum security facility. The
investigators reported systematic human rights abuses there. They
documented scores of violations of the eighth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

This was the third investigative visit to the Crescent City
facility to gather vital information for a class-action suit, as
well as to continue monitoring the well-being of prisoners kept
in the prison's notorious Security Housing Unit. Workers World
spoke to PBIP activist Luis Talamantez upon his return.

As before, the warden's staff put many obstacles in the group's
path, hoping to prevent prisoners from openly communicating about
the abuses and their grievances. "Several of the prisoners had
sent interview request forms to the PBIP attorney, which
`mysteriously' disappeared. Prison staff outright refused to
bring political prisoner Hugo Pinell to the visiting room, due to
his notoriety. However, because of PBIP doctor Corey Weinstein's
insistence, the guards relented," Talamantez told Workers World.

Prisoners at the SHU are subjected to daily acts of violence and
intimidation at the hands of racist, brutal guards. Tasers and
stun guns are frequently used to "extract" non-conforming
prisoners from their cells. They are then hog-tied for hours on
end, and often left hand-cuffed overnight.

Prisoners are kept in bunker-like cells round the clock except
for short exercise periods in a small adjacent enclosure called a
"dog walk." Prisoners rarely go there, because of the degrading
rectal examination and chaining and shackling conducted before
being escorted there. Over 50 percent of the prisoners confined
at Pelican Bay are Latino, while over 30 percent are Black.

"`Debriefing' is the administrative technique of co-opting a
prisoner into becoming a `snitch' before being released from this
horrible SHU experience. This is the primary objective and
operating mode of the prison staff. Rehabilitation as a policy of
the past is dead. Punishment under GOP law-and-order governors,
beginning with Ronald Reagan in the early 1970s, is now the
guiding principle of California's Department of Corrections,"
Talamantez explained.

The investigative tour of the facility came exactly 21 years
after the state-sponsored assassination of prison revolutionary
George Jackson at San Quentin's Adjustment Center on Aug. 21,
1971. Two of the 25 prisoners from the SHU interviewed, Hugo
Pinell and Louie Lopez, were part of the 1971 prisoner-solidarity
rebellion, at which Luis Talamantez was also present.

The repression of this rebellion ended George Jackson's life.
Twenty-one years later Pinell and Lopez continue to be punished.
And while still strong in maintaining prisoner solidarity and
their revolutionary spirit, like many of the other prisoners
questioned, they appeared to suffer from many effects of long
term imprisonment, medical neglect and sensory deprivation. Hugo
Pinell is slowly losing his sight.

According to Talamantez: "Another long term survivor, Ruchell
`Cinque' Magee, has been kept incommunicado since his arrival at
Pelican Bay. For all intents and purposes, he has been
`disappeared.' "

During this investigative trip PBIP made contact with "a sizable
underground community that is developing around the prison. It is
composed of prison visitors, family members, etc., who have moved
to Crescent City to be near their loved ones. They live in
constant fear that their loved ones will not survive the SHU
experience. Many are Third World women from southern California
who have given up their jobs and come to Pelican Bay in what
could be called a prison pilgrimage. PBIP met with many of them.
All asked the same question, `How can we help?' "

PBIP's long-term goal is to shut down the SHU, and rehabilitation
for SHU prisoners as survivors of human rights abuses. To get
involved, write the committee at 2489 Mission St. #28, San
Francisco, Calif. 94110, or call [phone].

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "[e-mail]".)

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