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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>This \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/28/california-los-angeles-prison-solitary\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>story\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem> was produced in collaboration between The Marshall Project and CatchLight as part of a three-year \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.catchlight.io/mental-health-details\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Mental Health Visual Desk Reporting Initiative.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One morning in July 2013, tens of thousands of California prisoners made history when they refused to eat. They were participating in a state-wide hunger strike, protesting policies that kept people locked in solitary confinement indefinitely. Hundreds of people in Pelican Bay State Prison, the state’s supermax facility near the Oregon state line, had been in \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/10/resource-PB-monitoring-stats.pdf\">isolation for over a decade\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most were sent to solitary, known as the Security Housing Unit (SHU), for being labeled gang members. But that designation could be based on evidence as thin as reading a certain book, knowing someone in a gang, or sketching an Aztec warrior, incarcerated people and attorneys reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After 60 days of refusing food, and along with a \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/ashker-v-brown\">concurrent lawsuit\u003c/a>, the hunger strikers ultimately won \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/08/2015-09-01-Ashker-settlement-summary.pdf\">major policy changes\u003c/a> from the California corrections department. Among them was an agreement to move most people in long-term solitary back into the general population, giving many a renewed chance at parole. Now, back in the community and over a decade since the protest, these men are working to rebuild their lives, help others inside, and make sense of the trauma they endured.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Photographer Brian L. Frank has been capturing this journey through portraits of people who were in solitary and who participated in the 2013 strike. The project primarily took place at Alcatraz, a site whose history echoes the experience of those in Pelican Bay. As a federal penitentiary, Alcatraz housed men who were deemed too dangerous for other facilities. Most were locked in small single cells. The prison, which closed in 1963, has since become a national park with exhibits exploring the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/goga/thebiglockup.htm\">past and present\u003c/a> of incarceration in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frank had photographed men inside the Pelican Bay SHU in 2014, on assignment for The Atlantic magazine. “It was a traumatizing and defining experience,” he said. “To think that I might be the only human from outside the prison they really spoke to, maybe in 10 years. It was something that stuck with me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071908\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071908\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"998\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_02.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_02-160x106.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An incarcerated man paces in the “exercise yard” of the solitary unit at Pelican Bay prison in 2014. SHU prisoners spend roughly 23 hours a day in their cells and often less than an hour in the concrete yard, with a partially open roof — their only exposure to sunlight and fresh air. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Participants in the portrait series include strike leaders like Sitawa Jamaa, one of four members of the Short Corridor Collective who \u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/news/features/solitary-secure-housing-units-2014-2/?src=longreads\">organized the strike\u003c/a>. The Collective formed when its members were isolated in a specific section of Pelican Bay’s SHU, intended to cut them off from members of their alleged gangs. Instead, the four men formed a multiracial coalition that drafted an “agreement to end hostilities” among incarcerated people and planned the protest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t care what label you put on any of us, you can’t keep us in the hole because of a label,” Jamaa said. “They keep you in there forever, unless you snitch. That ain’t fair. I never had an incident in 34 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frank also photographed hunger striker Jack Morris in Los Angeles. Morris, who spent over 30 years in solitary confinement, came home in 2017 and now runs the reentry program for a community health clinic. “When I think of guys having to do time in solitary confinement, I can’t even begin to make a suggestion as to how to endure that,” he said. “Because I don’t know if I could survive again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071909\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12071909 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_03.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1494\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_03.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_03-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_03-1536x1147.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Solitary confinement cell at the Solitary Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay penitentiary. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While in the SHU at Pelican Bay, men were alone in their cells for roughly 23 hours a day, with every meal provided through a slot in their door. Many said they never received a phone call, unless a family member died. Visits with loved ones were behind a thick plexiglass window. And any time spent outside their cells to exercise took place in an open-air cement room, with walls so high they couldn’t see their surroundings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had guys ask me, ‘Where are we in the world, where are we in the state?’” said psychologist Craig Haney, who studies the mental toll of long-term isolation. He has interviewed over 100 men in the SHU at Pelican Bay as an expert witness. “They could have been on Mars because they never got visually in contact with the world around them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it was built in the late 1980s, the solitary unit at Pelican Bay was a new kind of incarceration, Haney said. Human contact between incarcerated people and officers was largely eliminated. Cell doors were operated by the push of a button, messages were communicated via intercom, and surveillance was done with cameras instead of officers making rounds.[aside postID=news_12059022 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/258_KQED_NewFolsomPrisonSacramento_04132023-1020x680.jpg']Haney’s research found that such prolonged isolation led to paranoia, anxiety, despair, anger and, eventually, numbness among people in the SHU. “When you’re in the SHU, you don’t feel,” said Frank Reyna, who spent 20 years in solitary at Pelican Bay. “If you feel, you start getting weak. When people die, you just move on. You lose your emotions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prison officials had built a fortress designed to keep people away from each other. But locked alone in their cells, the men at Pelican Bay found any way they could to connect — by talking through their cell doors, the vents in the walls, or in cracks in the corners of their recreation cages.\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People found different ways to pass time, and make what meaning they could. Jamaa organized reading groups on his tier, with men taking turns reading different passages to each other and analyzing the text. Many spent hours in the morning with fastidious workout routines. During the strike, Brian James at Corcoran prison, south of Fresno, found himself counting and re-counting the perforations on his cell door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were only three ways out of the SHU, prisoners concluded: “snitch, parole, or die.” To snitch meant to provide information on another alleged gang member, and open yourself to the risk of retaliatory violence. Parole was unlikely for those whom prison officials had deemed among “the worst of the worst.” The only way out of the Pelican Bay SHU, hunger strikers reasoned, was in a body bag. They had nothing to lose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the strike began, “there was something in front of me to reach for, or hope for,” said James. “You spend your life inside of a box alone. So to know I’m in solidarity with [so many] people, it gave me that push in the right direction. I immediately knew we were a part of something really big.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071918\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071918\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_04.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1466\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_04.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_04-160x117.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_04-1536x1126.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rows of concertina wire and flood lighting surround the solitary unit at Pelican Bay in 2014. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Participants remember how, after a few days of fasting, the tier grew quiet. Where there used to be the sounds of morning exercise routines and chatter between cells, people began to spend more time in bed, conserving their energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a growing chorus of activists outside the prison were amplifying their message. The strike made international news. Celebrities like Danny Glover and Jay Leno lent their support. Groups held frequent rallies outside state prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dolores Canales’ son was on hunger strike in the SHU in Corcoran prison. She and other family members organized the California Families Against Solitary Confinement to pressure the corrections department to change their policies. “I felt like they would probably let them starve to death before meeting any demands,” she said. “There was such an urgency that if we did not do something, it would never change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071919\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071919\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1705\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-2000x1332.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-2048x1364.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photograph of the Reyna family, with a young Frank at the bottom right, in front of his Los Angeles home. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After a two-month strike, state lawmakers agreed to hold a hearing on the issue, and the men returned to eating. The protest had a long-lasting impact in California and beyond. In December 2012, before the strike, there were \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/10/resource-PB-monitoring-stats.pdf\">9,870 \u003c/a>men in some form of isolation in California state prisons. This past December, the most recent data available, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2026/01/STA429-010526-M.pdf\">there were 3,030\u003c/a>. The strike also sparked a nationwide movement against isolation — the next year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/23/shifting-away-from-solitary\">10 states\u003c/a> passed laws restricting its use. Many more states \u003ca href=\"https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/reforming-solitary-confinement-without-high-court\">have since followed\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the hunger strikers’ wins, the fight against the use of solitary continues. State activists are pushing for the \u003ca href=\"https://camandela.org/\">California Mandela Act on Solitary Confinement\u003c/a>, which would put strict limits on the length of isolation in state facilities, and ban it outright for pregnant people and people with disabilities. The act is named for the \u003ca href=\"https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf\">U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners\u003c/a>, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules. Gov. Gavin Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2022/09/california-solitary-confinement-bill/\">vetoed a version\u003c/a> of the bill in 2022, calling it “overly broad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a long-term fast, people need to return to eating very slowly, to avoid serious health complications. And after being starved of human contact, prisoners describe how they needed to also slowly readjust to being around people. Psychiatrist Terry Kupers called it the “SHU post-release syndrome.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071921\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071921\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1705\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-2000x1332.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-2048x1364.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alcatraz Island, initially constructed as a military prison in the 1850s, was later converted into a maximum-security federal penitentiary until its closure in 1963. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When people get out of solitary, they isolate themselves,” Kupers said. “They dread crowds. They can’t look for a job. They don’t want to be near people they don’t know. I have mothers in the community calling me saying, ‘My kid will not come out of the room. What should I do?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reyna came home to Los Angeles in October after over 38 years in prison. “Sometimes I could have a beautiful day, man, and then I just feel empty, like I’m back to where I was,” he said. “But now I can release things. My feelings are coming back. Now, I don’t care, I cry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>\u003cu>ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:\u003c/u>\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thank you to the individuals who shared their time and stories to \u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/28/california-los-angeles-prison-solitary\">make this project possible\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>With additional gratitude to Minister King X (Director, California Prison Focus/K.A.G.E Universal), \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.c-note.org/\">\u003cem>Donald C-Note Hooker\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, Lundi Shackleton, and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy staff at Alcatraz and organizers of the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/alca/planyourvisit/formerly-incarcerated-speaker-series.htm\">\u003cem>Formerly Incarcerated Speaker Series. \u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This project is dedicated to the memory and enduring legacy of \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parksconservancy.org/article/unlocking-truth-how-alcatraz-changing-conversation-incarceration\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Stanford Chatfield \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>(1956-2025)\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>(Historical Interpreter at Alcatraz for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>\u003cu>CREDITS:\u003c/u>\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>PHOTOGRAPHER: \u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Brian L. Frank/CatchLight\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>REPORTER:\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Christie Thompson/The Marshall Project \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>MULTIMEDIA EDITORS:\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Celina Fang/The Marshall Project, Jenny Stratton/CatchLight\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>EDITORS:\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Manuel Torres/The Marshall Project, Raghu Vadarevu/The Marshall Project \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>DEVELOPER:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem> Aithne Feay/The Marshall Project\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>COPY EDITORS:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lauren Hardie/The Marshall Project, Ghazala Irshad/The Marshall Project\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>PRODUCTION COORDINATOR:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mara Corbett\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Ashley Dye/The Marshall Project, Adriana Garcia/CatchLight \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>About The Marshall Project: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/newsletters\">\u003cem>newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, and follow them on \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/marshallproj/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Instagram\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/marshallproj/?hl=en\">\u003cem>TikTok\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/marshallproj/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Reddit\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/marshallproj/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Facebook\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "A 2013 prison hunger strike in California led to a dramatic decline in the use of solitary confinement. More than a decade later, people impacted by solitary reflect on the toll of separation.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>This \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/28/california-los-angeles-prison-solitary\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>story\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem> was produced in collaboration between The Marshall Project and CatchLight as part of a three-year \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.catchlight.io/mental-health-details\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Mental Health Visual Desk Reporting Initiative.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One morning in July 2013, tens of thousands of California prisoners made history when they refused to eat. They were participating in a state-wide hunger strike, protesting policies that kept people locked in solitary confinement indefinitely. Hundreds of people in Pelican Bay State Prison, the state’s supermax facility near the Oregon state line, had been in \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/10/resource-PB-monitoring-stats.pdf\">isolation for over a decade\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most were sent to solitary, known as the Security Housing Unit (SHU), for being labeled gang members. But that designation could be based on evidence as thin as reading a certain book, knowing someone in a gang, or sketching an Aztec warrior, incarcerated people and attorneys reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After 60 days of refusing food, and along with a \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/ashker-v-brown\">concurrent lawsuit\u003c/a>, the hunger strikers ultimately won \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/08/2015-09-01-Ashker-settlement-summary.pdf\">major policy changes\u003c/a> from the California corrections department. Among them was an agreement to move most people in long-term solitary back into the general population, giving many a renewed chance at parole. Now, back in the community and over a decade since the protest, these men are working to rebuild their lives, help others inside, and make sense of the trauma they endured.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Photographer Brian L. Frank has been capturing this journey through portraits of people who were in solitary and who participated in the 2013 strike. The project primarily took place at Alcatraz, a site whose history echoes the experience of those in Pelican Bay. As a federal penitentiary, Alcatraz housed men who were deemed too dangerous for other facilities. Most were locked in small single cells. The prison, which closed in 1963, has since become a national park with exhibits exploring the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/goga/thebiglockup.htm\">past and present\u003c/a> of incarceration in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frank had photographed men inside the Pelican Bay SHU in 2014, on assignment for The Atlantic magazine. “It was a traumatizing and defining experience,” he said. “To think that I might be the only human from outside the prison they really spoke to, maybe in 10 years. It was something that stuck with me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071908\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071908\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"998\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_02.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_02-160x106.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An incarcerated man paces in the “exercise yard” of the solitary unit at Pelican Bay prison in 2014. SHU prisoners spend roughly 23 hours a day in their cells and often less than an hour in the concrete yard, with a partially open roof — their only exposure to sunlight and fresh air. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Participants in the portrait series include strike leaders like Sitawa Jamaa, one of four members of the Short Corridor Collective who \u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/news/features/solitary-secure-housing-units-2014-2/?src=longreads\">organized the strike\u003c/a>. The Collective formed when its members were isolated in a specific section of Pelican Bay’s SHU, intended to cut them off from members of their alleged gangs. Instead, the four men formed a multiracial coalition that drafted an “agreement to end hostilities” among incarcerated people and planned the protest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t care what label you put on any of us, you can’t keep us in the hole because of a label,” Jamaa said. “They keep you in there forever, unless you snitch. That ain’t fair. I never had an incident in 34 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frank also photographed hunger striker Jack Morris in Los Angeles. Morris, who spent over 30 years in solitary confinement, came home in 2017 and now runs the reentry program for a community health clinic. “When I think of guys having to do time in solitary confinement, I can’t even begin to make a suggestion as to how to endure that,” he said. “Because I don’t know if I could survive again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071909\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12071909 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_03.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1494\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_03.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_03-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_03-1536x1147.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Solitary confinement cell at the Solitary Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay penitentiary. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While in the SHU at Pelican Bay, men were alone in their cells for roughly 23 hours a day, with every meal provided through a slot in their door. Many said they never received a phone call, unless a family member died. Visits with loved ones were behind a thick plexiglass window. And any time spent outside their cells to exercise took place in an open-air cement room, with walls so high they couldn’t see their surroundings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had guys ask me, ‘Where are we in the world, where are we in the state?’” said psychologist Craig Haney, who studies the mental toll of long-term isolation. He has interviewed over 100 men in the SHU at Pelican Bay as an expert witness. “They could have been on Mars because they never got visually in contact with the world around them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it was built in the late 1980s, the solitary unit at Pelican Bay was a new kind of incarceration, Haney said. Human contact between incarcerated people and officers was largely eliminated. Cell doors were operated by the push of a button, messages were communicated via intercom, and surveillance was done with cameras instead of officers making rounds.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Haney’s research found that such prolonged isolation led to paranoia, anxiety, despair, anger and, eventually, numbness among people in the SHU. “When you’re in the SHU, you don’t feel,” said Frank Reyna, who spent 20 years in solitary at Pelican Bay. “If you feel, you start getting weak. When people die, you just move on. You lose your emotions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prison officials had built a fortress designed to keep people away from each other. But locked alone in their cells, the men at Pelican Bay found any way they could to connect — by talking through their cell doors, the vents in the walls, or in cracks in the corners of their recreation cages.\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People found different ways to pass time, and make what meaning they could. Jamaa organized reading groups on his tier, with men taking turns reading different passages to each other and analyzing the text. Many spent hours in the morning with fastidious workout routines. During the strike, Brian James at Corcoran prison, south of Fresno, found himself counting and re-counting the perforations on his cell door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were only three ways out of the SHU, prisoners concluded: “snitch, parole, or die.” To snitch meant to provide information on another alleged gang member, and open yourself to the risk of retaliatory violence. Parole was unlikely for those whom prison officials had deemed among “the worst of the worst.” The only way out of the Pelican Bay SHU, hunger strikers reasoned, was in a body bag. They had nothing to lose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the strike began, “there was something in front of me to reach for, or hope for,” said James. “You spend your life inside of a box alone. So to know I’m in solidarity with [so many] people, it gave me that push in the right direction. I immediately knew we were a part of something really big.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071918\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071918\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_04.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1466\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_04.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_04-160x117.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_04-1536x1126.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rows of concertina wire and flood lighting surround the solitary unit at Pelican Bay in 2014. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Participants remember how, after a few days of fasting, the tier grew quiet. Where there used to be the sounds of morning exercise routines and chatter between cells, people began to spend more time in bed, conserving their energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a growing chorus of activists outside the prison were amplifying their message. The strike made international news. Celebrities like Danny Glover and Jay Leno lent their support. Groups held frequent rallies outside state prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dolores Canales’ son was on hunger strike in the SHU in Corcoran prison. She and other family members organized the California Families Against Solitary Confinement to pressure the corrections department to change their policies. “I felt like they would probably let them starve to death before meeting any demands,” she said. “There was such an urgency that if we did not do something, it would never change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071919\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071919\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1705\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-2000x1332.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_06-2048x1364.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photograph of the Reyna family, with a young Frank at the bottom right, in front of his Los Angeles home. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After a two-month strike, state lawmakers agreed to hold a hearing on the issue, and the men returned to eating. The protest had a long-lasting impact in California and beyond. In December 2012, before the strike, there were \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/10/resource-PB-monitoring-stats.pdf\">9,870 \u003c/a>men in some form of isolation in California state prisons. This past December, the most recent data available, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2026/01/STA429-010526-M.pdf\">there were 3,030\u003c/a>. The strike also sparked a nationwide movement against isolation — the next year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/23/shifting-away-from-solitary\">10 states\u003c/a> passed laws restricting its use. Many more states \u003ca href=\"https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/reforming-solitary-confinement-without-high-court\">have since followed\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the hunger strikers’ wins, the fight against the use of solitary continues. State activists are pushing for the \u003ca href=\"https://camandela.org/\">California Mandela Act on Solitary Confinement\u003c/a>, which would put strict limits on the length of isolation in state facilities, and ban it outright for pregnant people and people with disabilities. The act is named for the \u003ca href=\"https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf\">U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners\u003c/a>, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules. Gov. Gavin Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2022/09/california-solitary-confinement-bill/\">vetoed a version\u003c/a> of the bill in 2022, calling it “overly broad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a long-term fast, people need to return to eating very slowly, to avoid serious health complications. And after being starved of human contact, prisoners describe how they needed to also slowly readjust to being around people. Psychiatrist Terry Kupers called it the “SHU post-release syndrome.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071921\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071921\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1705\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-2000x1332.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/EchoesOfIsolation_09-2048x1364.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alcatraz Island, initially constructed as a military prison in the 1850s, was later converted into a maximum-security federal penitentiary until its closure in 1963. \u003ccite>(Brian L. Frank/CatchLight)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When people get out of solitary, they isolate themselves,” Kupers said. “They dread crowds. They can’t look for a job. They don’t want to be near people they don’t know. I have mothers in the community calling me saying, ‘My kid will not come out of the room. What should I do?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reyna came home to Los Angeles in October after over 38 years in prison. “Sometimes I could have a beautiful day, man, and then I just feel empty, like I’m back to where I was,” he said. “But now I can release things. My feelings are coming back. Now, I don’t care, I cry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>\u003cu>ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:\u003c/u>\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thank you to the individuals who shared their time and stories to \u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/28/california-los-angeles-prison-solitary\">make this project possible\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>With additional gratitude to Minister King X (Director, California Prison Focus/K.A.G.E Universal), \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.c-note.org/\">\u003cem>Donald C-Note Hooker\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, Lundi Shackleton, and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy staff at Alcatraz and organizers of the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/alca/planyourvisit/formerly-incarcerated-speaker-series.htm\">\u003cem>Formerly Incarcerated Speaker Series. \u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This project is dedicated to the memory and enduring legacy of \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parksconservancy.org/article/unlocking-truth-how-alcatraz-changing-conversation-incarceration\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Stanford Chatfield \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>(1956-2025)\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>(Historical Interpreter at Alcatraz for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>\u003cu>CREDITS:\u003c/u>\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>PHOTOGRAPHER: \u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Brian L. Frank/CatchLight\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>REPORTER:\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Christie Thompson/The Marshall Project \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>MULTIMEDIA EDITORS:\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Celina Fang/The Marshall Project, Jenny Stratton/CatchLight\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>EDITORS:\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Manuel Torres/The Marshall Project, Raghu Vadarevu/The Marshall Project \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>DEVELOPER:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem> Aithne Feay/The Marshall Project\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>COPY EDITORS:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lauren Hardie/The Marshall Project, Ghazala Irshad/The Marshall Project\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>PRODUCTION COORDINATOR:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mara Corbett\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Ashley Dye/The Marshall Project, Adriana Garcia/CatchLight \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>About The Marshall Project: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.themarshallproject.org/newsletters\">\u003cem>newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, and follow them on \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/marshallproj/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Instagram\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/marshallproj/?hl=en\">\u003cem>TikTok\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/marshallproj/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Reddit\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/marshallproj/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Facebook\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "a-push-to-curb-solitary-confinement-in-california-prisons-hits-a-wall",
"title": "A Push to Curb Solitary Confinement in California Prisons Hits a Wall",
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"content": "\u003cp>On Monday, the communications director of Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) sent a press release with the news that AB 280, a bill that sought to limit the use of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/solitary-confinement\">solitary confinement\u003c/a> in state prisons, was not moving forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Last year, we decided to leave the bill on the Assembly Floor to allow more time for all of the stakeholders involved to work toward a solution and during that time, new regulations were put forth to address some of the issues related to solitary confinement,” Holden, the bill’s author, said in the press release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Without a doubt, more change is needed, and I believe holding the bill on the Assembly Floor will allow the Legislature and advocates to review the results of these regulations and use new data to implement the most effective plan of action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In February, the California Legislative Black Caucus announced the 14 reparations bills it was prioritizing. CLBC members curated the list to test the limits of the Legislature’s commitment to racial justice while seeking to avoid a wholesale rejection that could derail the quest for reparations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bills were drawn from two years of work by the California Reparations Task Force, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/reparations\">KQED has reported on since its inception\u003c/a>. The task force’s final report, published in June 2023, includes over 100 policy proposals, as well as a plan to provide direct cash payments to eligible residents. None of the introduced bills include cash payments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nine reparations bills remain alive, including one requiring the list of books banned inside California prisons to be publicly displayed. And in November, Californians will vote on a measure that seeks to remove language from the state’s constitution allowing involuntary servitude “as punishment to a crime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a brief recap of AB 280. For more information on reparations bills, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11981271/track-the-success-of-californias-14-reparations-bills-for-black-residents\">please check out our tracker\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What AB 280 wanted to do:\u003c/strong> Limit the use of solitary confinement in state prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How is limiting solitary confinement reparations?\u003c/strong> Black men make up 28% of the state’s prison population and 18.5% of the population in restricted housing. Meanwhile, Black women account for 25.4% of the prison population, and four out of five women in restricted housing are Black, \u003ca href=\"https://law.yale.edu/centers-workshops/arthur-liman-center-public-interest-law/liman-center-publications/time-cell-2021\">according to a 2022 report\u003c/a> by the Correctional Leaders Association and the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11981271 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/02/AP24032786348814-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why isn’t AB 280 moving forward?\u003c/strong> Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar proposal in 2022, arguing that the bill’s exclusion of certain groups from segregated housing — such as inmates younger than 26 or older than 59 — was too broad. After vetoing the bill, Newsom ordered state prison officials to “develop regulations that would restrict the use of segregated confinement except in limited situations, such as where the individual has been found to have engaged in violence in the prison.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While AB 280 was pending in the state Assembly, a spokesperson told KQED that Holden was waiting for advice from the governor’s office about how to amend the bill to avoid a second veto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monday’s press release from Holden’s office cited the support for AB 280 as a reason the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released new solitary confinement guidelines in 2023 because the bill brought heightened awareness to issues with solitary confinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The legislation is there. The language is written. I believe that it is important to move on this with urgency once the new information has been considered,” Holden said. “My hope is that AB 280 is the seed that will sprout into actionable change next session and that with a new fiscal year, this bill can make it to the finish line.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On Monday, the communications director of Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) sent a press release with the news that AB 280, a bill that sought to limit the use of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/solitary-confinement\">solitary confinement\u003c/a> in state prisons, was not moving forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Last year, we decided to leave the bill on the Assembly Floor to allow more time for all of the stakeholders involved to work toward a solution and during that time, new regulations were put forth to address some of the issues related to solitary confinement,” Holden, the bill’s author, said in the press release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Without a doubt, more change is needed, and I believe holding the bill on the Assembly Floor will allow the Legislature and advocates to review the results of these regulations and use new data to implement the most effective plan of action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In February, the California Legislative Black Caucus announced the 14 reparations bills it was prioritizing. CLBC members curated the list to test the limits of the Legislature’s commitment to racial justice while seeking to avoid a wholesale rejection that could derail the quest for reparations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bills were drawn from two years of work by the California Reparations Task Force, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/reparations\">KQED has reported on since its inception\u003c/a>. The task force’s final report, published in June 2023, includes over 100 policy proposals, as well as a plan to provide direct cash payments to eligible residents. None of the introduced bills include cash payments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nine reparations bills remain alive, including one requiring the list of books banned inside California prisons to be publicly displayed. And in November, Californians will vote on a measure that seeks to remove language from the state’s constitution allowing involuntary servitude “as punishment to a crime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a brief recap of AB 280. For more information on reparations bills, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11981271/track-the-success-of-californias-14-reparations-bills-for-black-residents\">please check out our tracker\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What AB 280 wanted to do:\u003c/strong> Limit the use of solitary confinement in state prisons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How is limiting solitary confinement reparations?\u003c/strong> Black men make up 28% of the state’s prison population and 18.5% of the population in restricted housing. Meanwhile, Black women account for 25.4% of the prison population, and four out of five women in restricted housing are Black, \u003ca href=\"https://law.yale.edu/centers-workshops/arthur-liman-center-public-interest-law/liman-center-publications/time-cell-2021\">according to a 2022 report\u003c/a> by the Correctional Leaders Association and the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why isn’t AB 280 moving forward?\u003c/strong> Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar proposal in 2022, arguing that the bill’s exclusion of certain groups from segregated housing — such as inmates younger than 26 or older than 59 — was too broad. After vetoing the bill, Newsom ordered state prison officials to “develop regulations that would restrict the use of segregated confinement except in limited situations, such as where the individual has been found to have engaged in violence in the prison.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While AB 280 was pending in the state Assembly, a spokesperson told KQED that Holden was waiting for advice from the governor’s office about how to amend the bill to avoid a second veto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monday’s press release from Holden’s office cited the support for AB 280 as a reason the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released new solitary confinement guidelines in 2023 because the bill brought heightened awareness to issues with solitary confinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The legislation is there. The language is written. I believe that it is important to move on this with urgency once the new information has been considered,” Holden said. “My hope is that AB 280 is the seed that will sprout into actionable change next session and that with a new fiscal year, this bill can make it to the finish line.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "'Mandela' Bill Would Limit Solitary Confinement in California Prisons and Jails",
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"content": "\u003cp>In solitary confinement, a formerly incarcerated California man recalled, there were two kinds of people: One kind would read books in their cells, exercise and do and redo crossword puzzles. The other kind would scream and curse, refuse to dress and throw their feces at the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal in solitary confinement, he said, was to avoid becoming the second kind of person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s one that’s resilient and one that’s not so resilient,” said the man, a former member of the Mexican Mafia who asked CalMatters not to use his name for fear of retaliation. “I’ve seen people go over the edge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The man spent several consecutive years in solitary confinement at a California prison — a circumstance some lawmakers want to change. A \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2632\">bill before Gov. Gavin Newsom \u003c/a>would limit solitary confinement in California to 15 consecutive days, and no more than 45 days out of 180.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assembly Bill 2632, named the “California Mandela Act” after former political prisoner and president of South Africa Nelson Mandela, would be the most wide-ranging change to solitary confinement in any state, limiting the practice in all California prisons, jails and immigration detention facilities. Its contentious passage through the Legislature ended largely on party-line votes, with Republicans continuing to raise an alarm about the bill’s potential costs.[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Keramet Reiter, criminologist, University of California, Irvine\"]'This isn't the first time that people have looked around and said, 'Wow, this seems like a really damaging practice, let's get rid of it.' We've been looking around and saying that since the 1800s.'[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proponents of limiting or doing away with solitary confinement have long argued it is inhumane, ineffective and tantamount to torture. Law enforcement groups have asked Newsom to veto the bill, arguing that prison and jail officials, not legislators, should determine when and where to use solitary confinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The formerly incarcerated man — who spent decades alone in 8-by-10 cells at multiple California prisons, much of it in solitary — has a surprising outlook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He thinks eliminating solitary confinement is a bad idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s crazy,” he said. “I don’t think there’s much thought put into it. I believe they think it’s detrimental to the psyche of the individuals who are being housed there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But without some kind of deterrent, I mean, you go whack a guy and you get 15 days in the hole and you’re back in a regular general population yard.”[aside postID=\"news_11923753,news_11925791\" label=\"Related Posts\"]Solitary confinement in California takes many forms. There are few regulations and no universal definition, but generally, solitary confinement means spending 22 to 23 hours per day in a single cell, usually about the size of an elevator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill before Newsom also bans solitary confinement entirely for anyone younger than 26 or older than 59; people who are pregnant or recently had a baby or a miscarriage; and people who experience a physical or mental disability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill would make California the first state to ban solitary confinement in immigration detention. Last year, New York legislators enacted a similar 15-day limit on solitary confinement in prisons and jails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Margot Mendelson, legal director of the Prison Law Office, which co-sponsored the bill, said the formerly incarcerated man mischaracterizes the bill and oversimplifies its impact. The proposal would not require corrections officials to put someone back in the general population, and “disciplinary measures would still be in place,” she said. It’s the practice of solitary confinement for 22 or 23 hours a day that would end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It creates the culture of deprivation and violence itself,” Mendelson said. “People do get better, places are more peaceful, reentry is more successful when we bring programming and relationships and social contacts back to these spaces.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-solitary-confinement-in-and-out-of-favor\">Solitary confinement in and out of favor\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Research conducted in the last 20 years has shown solitary confinement to be harmful to the people incarcerated, as well as expensive and \u003ca href=\"https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302205\">ineffective in rehabilitation\u003c/a>. The \u003ca href=\"https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305375\">health effects cited include depression and anxiety\u003c/a>, but also hallucinations and hypersensitivity to sounds and smells. Suicidal ideation and attempts are far higher for those in solitary confinement than the general population, some of the same research shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2015, the United Nations defined any period of isolation beyond 15 days as torture. In a 2016 editorial, \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-why-we-must-rethink-solitary-confinement/2016/01/25/29a361f2-c384-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html\">former President Barack Obama called solitary confinement “an affront to our common humanity.”\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s become one of the most regularly used tools by prison and jail administrators to punish violence or sequester disruptive people and, sometimes, as a protective measure for former police officers or other incarcerated people who would be obvious targets inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The practice is incredibly resilient,” said Keramet Reiter, a University of California, Irvine, criminologist who has done extensive research on solitary confinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This isn’t the first time that people have looked around and said, ‘Wow, this seems like a really damaging practice, let’s get rid of it.’ We’ve been looking around and saying that since the 1800s,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. experiment with solitary confinement began as early as the 1780s, waned in the 1800s and was largely abandoned in the early 1900s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But beginning in the 1980s, prisons brought back solitary confinement, and its use exploded: By 1997, \u003ca href=\"https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305375\">nearly every state had a super-maximum security prison\u003c/a>. In \u003ca href=\"https://law.yale.edu/centers-workshops/arthur-liman-center-public-interest-law/liman-center-publications/time-cell-2021\">a snapshot of prison populations in 2021\u003c/a>, Yale Law School researchers said there were between 41,000 and 48,000 people in solitary confinement in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For California, it has remained a contentious issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a series of hunger strikes across California prisons for two months in the summer of 2011, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reached a settlement in federal court with incarcerated people in Pelican Bay State Prison held in solitary confinement for decades based on their perceived gang affiliations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://clearinghouse.net/case/12103/\">2015 settlement\u003c/a> ended the department’s practice of indefinite detention in solitary confinement. But a federal judge ruled in February that the department continues to violate the terms of the agreement \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/court-finds-continued-systemic-constitutional-violations-california\">by fabricating or exaggerating reports\u003c/a> from confidential informants that put people back in solitary.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The view from inside\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Solitary confinement in California prisons isn’t what’s sometimes portrayed on television: a pitch-black cell with a hole in the floor. That, Reiter said, was indeed the practice in some Southern states in the 1970s and 1980s but isn’t the case here, where prison and jail officials have some leeway in defining the practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the solitary cellblocks of one California prison, the walls were yellowing, according to the formerly incarcerated man and member of the Mexican Mafia. Instead of bars, incarcerated people peered out through perforated steel. Everything was concrete, even the bed frames.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People were close enough to hear each other, but calling out to others earned them a “115,” California prison code for a disciplinary report. The formerly incarcerated man said he was still able to give commands to other Mexican Mafia gang members, either from his cell or in meetings at the prison law library. “I used to run a whole crew from the SHU [special housing unit],” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The varying definitions of solitary confinement in California make tracking the number of people in solitary difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that there are other units around the state under different names that are called step-down units or other things like that where, in practice, people are still spending 22, 23, 24 hours a day in solitary confinement,” Reiter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s one of her concerns about the bill: If prison and jail officials can simply call solitary confinement another name, then they probably will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state prison system is one version of solitary confinement, but the 58 counties each have their own jails with their own definitions of the practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mendelson, of the Prison Law Office, described the county incarceration system in California as “the Wild West for solitary confinement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is nothing limiting the totally unprincipled and excessive use of solitary confinement in county jail,” said Mendelson, who has regular contact with incarcerated people at jails in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In those county jails, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said he’s faced with a changing population, and he needs solitary confinement to deal with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prison realignment, mandated by \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120AB109\">Assembly Bill 109 in 2011\u003c/a>, reduced prison populations in part by housing more people at county jails. Honea, who is also the president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, said that led to a “more criminally sophisticated inmate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re dealing with people who have long criminal histories and prior experience in state prison,” Honea said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then those prison politics, which used to not be so prevalent in county jails, now are far more prevalent,” he said. “The last 12 years, there are increased assaults on staff. Our facilities generally were not designed to meet the needs of these individuals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honea said he and other sheriffs also need to be able to use long-term solitary confinement for disruptive people suffering from mental health disorders who put themselves and others in danger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not suggesting solitary is a solution to mental health. The impact that solitary confinement and administrative segregation can have on mental health is out there,” Honea said. “But we can deal with that without simply mandating something that would apply across the state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sheriffs’ association wrote in opposition to the bill that the Board of State and Community Corrections, rather than the Legislature, should regulate the use of solitary confinement. The board sets standards for prisons and jails and conducts inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Costs disputed\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The projected cost to the California prison system is \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-california-immigration-government-and-politics-17e5a54ddcdfabbed3df83bc39df93c7\">$1.3 billion up front\u003c/a>, with another $200 million per year to pay for more staff. The costs to county jails would vary by location. Honea said he did not yet know the potential cost to the Butte County Jail should Newsom approve the measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the bill’s supporters argue the measure would actually save the state money. \u003ca href=\"https://imadvocates.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Solitary-Cost-Report-AB2632.pdf\">In a report published in July\u003c/a>, the nonprofit Immigration Defense Advocates argued that solitary units “require more custody staff.” Closing down solitary confinement facilities and repurposing them for other uses would be “covered by the massive savings generated by this transition,” the report found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Solitary confinement is usually reserved for disruptive or violent people, or validated gang members. But at least one formerly incarcerated Californian, \u003ca href=\"https://solitarywatch.org/2020/09/02/inside-the-hole-enduring-solitary-confinement-in-california/\">author Kenneth E. Hartman, wrote in 2020 on the website Solitary Watch\u003c/a> that he was put in solitary confinement for political reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hartman was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole in 1980; former Gov. Jerry Brown commuted his sentence in 2017.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hartman contends the reasons he was placed in solitary confinement included testifying against the prison system in federal court, organizing a letter-writing campaign to legislators and encouraging fellow incarcerated people to sign political petitions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not respond to a request for comment on Hartman’s allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you look at solitary, what you see is people who are challenging the system in some way,” Reiter said. “Challenging its categories, challenging its rules, and that makes it harder to reform, right? Because these are the people that the system is struggling to deal with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mendelson of the Prison Law Office said limiting solitary confinement doesn’t mean the prison or jail is unable to take any disciplinary measures at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, she said, a facility would still be permitted to house a problematic person in a single cell. But the additional burdens of solitary confinement — 22 or 23 hours per day in a cell, with no opportunity for education or socialization — would end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That doesn’t mean there can’t be a significant set of consequences,” Mendelson said. “Those consequences just can’t be torture, which is what solitary confinement is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The former member of the Mexican Mafia doubts that approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Look, is it a bad place? Sure,” he said. “But they have to have bad places for bad people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In solitary confinement, a formerly incarcerated California man recalled, there were two kinds of people: One kind would read books in their cells, exercise and do and redo crossword puzzles. The other kind would scream and curse, refuse to dress and throw their feces at the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal in solitary confinement, he said, was to avoid becoming the second kind of person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s one that’s resilient and one that’s not so resilient,” said the man, a former member of the Mexican Mafia who asked CalMatters not to use his name for fear of retaliation. “I’ve seen people go over the edge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The man spent several consecutive years in solitary confinement at a California prison — a circumstance some lawmakers want to change. A \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2632\">bill before Gov. Gavin Newsom \u003c/a>would limit solitary confinement in California to 15 consecutive days, and no more than 45 days out of 180.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assembly Bill 2632, named the “California Mandela Act” after former political prisoner and president of South Africa Nelson Mandela, would be the most wide-ranging change to solitary confinement in any state, limiting the practice in all California prisons, jails and immigration detention facilities. Its contentious passage through the Legislature ended largely on party-line votes, with Republicans continuing to raise an alarm about the bill’s potential costs.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proponents of limiting or doing away with solitary confinement have long argued it is inhumane, ineffective and tantamount to torture. Law enforcement groups have asked Newsom to veto the bill, arguing that prison and jail officials, not legislators, should determine when and where to use solitary confinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The formerly incarcerated man — who spent decades alone in 8-by-10 cells at multiple California prisons, much of it in solitary — has a surprising outlook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He thinks eliminating solitary confinement is a bad idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s crazy,” he said. “I don’t think there’s much thought put into it. I believe they think it’s detrimental to the psyche of the individuals who are being housed there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But without some kind of deterrent, I mean, you go whack a guy and you get 15 days in the hole and you’re back in a regular general population yard.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Solitary confinement in California takes many forms. There are few regulations and no universal definition, but generally, solitary confinement means spending 22 to 23 hours per day in a single cell, usually about the size of an elevator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill before Newsom also bans solitary confinement entirely for anyone younger than 26 or older than 59; people who are pregnant or recently had a baby or a miscarriage; and people who experience a physical or mental disability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill would make California the first state to ban solitary confinement in immigration detention. Last year, New York legislators enacted a similar 15-day limit on solitary confinement in prisons and jails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Margot Mendelson, legal director of the Prison Law Office, which co-sponsored the bill, said the formerly incarcerated man mischaracterizes the bill and oversimplifies its impact. The proposal would not require corrections officials to put someone back in the general population, and “disciplinary measures would still be in place,” she said. It’s the practice of solitary confinement for 22 or 23 hours a day that would end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It creates the culture of deprivation and violence itself,” Mendelson said. “People do get better, places are more peaceful, reentry is more successful when we bring programming and relationships and social contacts back to these spaces.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-solitary-confinement-in-and-out-of-favor\">Solitary confinement in and out of favor\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Research conducted in the last 20 years has shown solitary confinement to be harmful to the people incarcerated, as well as expensive and \u003ca href=\"https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302205\">ineffective in rehabilitation\u003c/a>. The \u003ca href=\"https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305375\">health effects cited include depression and anxiety\u003c/a>, but also hallucinations and hypersensitivity to sounds and smells. Suicidal ideation and attempts are far higher for those in solitary confinement than the general population, some of the same research shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2015, the United Nations defined any period of isolation beyond 15 days as torture. In a 2016 editorial, \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-why-we-must-rethink-solitary-confinement/2016/01/25/29a361f2-c384-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html\">former President Barack Obama called solitary confinement “an affront to our common humanity.”\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s become one of the most regularly used tools by prison and jail administrators to punish violence or sequester disruptive people and, sometimes, as a protective measure for former police officers or other incarcerated people who would be obvious targets inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The practice is incredibly resilient,” said Keramet Reiter, a University of California, Irvine, criminologist who has done extensive research on solitary confinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This isn’t the first time that people have looked around and said, ‘Wow, this seems like a really damaging practice, let’s get rid of it.’ We’ve been looking around and saying that since the 1800s,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. experiment with solitary confinement began as early as the 1780s, waned in the 1800s and was largely abandoned in the early 1900s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But beginning in the 1980s, prisons brought back solitary confinement, and its use exploded: By 1997, \u003ca href=\"https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305375\">nearly every state had a super-maximum security prison\u003c/a>. In \u003ca href=\"https://law.yale.edu/centers-workshops/arthur-liman-center-public-interest-law/liman-center-publications/time-cell-2021\">a snapshot of prison populations in 2021\u003c/a>, Yale Law School researchers said there were between 41,000 and 48,000 people in solitary confinement in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For California, it has remained a contentious issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a series of hunger strikes across California prisons for two months in the summer of 2011, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reached a settlement in federal court with incarcerated people in Pelican Bay State Prison held in solitary confinement for decades based on their perceived gang affiliations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://clearinghouse.net/case/12103/\">2015 settlement\u003c/a> ended the department’s practice of indefinite detention in solitary confinement. But a federal judge ruled in February that the department continues to violate the terms of the agreement \u003ca href=\"https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/court-finds-continued-systemic-constitutional-violations-california\">by fabricating or exaggerating reports\u003c/a> from confidential informants that put people back in solitary.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The view from inside\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Solitary confinement in California prisons isn’t what’s sometimes portrayed on television: a pitch-black cell with a hole in the floor. That, Reiter said, was indeed the practice in some Southern states in the 1970s and 1980s but isn’t the case here, where prison and jail officials have some leeway in defining the practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the solitary cellblocks of one California prison, the walls were yellowing, according to the formerly incarcerated man and member of the Mexican Mafia. Instead of bars, incarcerated people peered out through perforated steel. Everything was concrete, even the bed frames.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People were close enough to hear each other, but calling out to others earned them a “115,” California prison code for a disciplinary report. The formerly incarcerated man said he was still able to give commands to other Mexican Mafia gang members, either from his cell or in meetings at the prison law library. “I used to run a whole crew from the SHU [special housing unit],” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The varying definitions of solitary confinement in California make tracking the number of people in solitary difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that there are other units around the state under different names that are called step-down units or other things like that where, in practice, people are still spending 22, 23, 24 hours a day in solitary confinement,” Reiter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s one of her concerns about the bill: If prison and jail officials can simply call solitary confinement another name, then they probably will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state prison system is one version of solitary confinement, but the 58 counties each have their own jails with their own definitions of the practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mendelson, of the Prison Law Office, described the county incarceration system in California as “the Wild West for solitary confinement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is nothing limiting the totally unprincipled and excessive use of solitary confinement in county jail,” said Mendelson, who has regular contact with incarcerated people at jails in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In those county jails, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said he’s faced with a changing population, and he needs solitary confinement to deal with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prison realignment, mandated by \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120AB109\">Assembly Bill 109 in 2011\u003c/a>, reduced prison populations in part by housing more people at county jails. Honea, who is also the president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, said that led to a “more criminally sophisticated inmate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re dealing with people who have long criminal histories and prior experience in state prison,” Honea said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then those prison politics, which used to not be so prevalent in county jails, now are far more prevalent,” he said. “The last 12 years, there are increased assaults on staff. Our facilities generally were not designed to meet the needs of these individuals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honea said he and other sheriffs also need to be able to use long-term solitary confinement for disruptive people suffering from mental health disorders who put themselves and others in danger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not suggesting solitary is a solution to mental health. The impact that solitary confinement and administrative segregation can have on mental health is out there,” Honea said. “But we can deal with that without simply mandating something that would apply across the state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sheriffs’ association wrote in opposition to the bill that the Board of State and Community Corrections, rather than the Legislature, should regulate the use of solitary confinement. The board sets standards for prisons and jails and conducts inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Costs disputed\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The projected cost to the California prison system is \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-california-immigration-government-and-politics-17e5a54ddcdfabbed3df83bc39df93c7\">$1.3 billion up front\u003c/a>, with another $200 million per year to pay for more staff. The costs to county jails would vary by location. Honea said he did not yet know the potential cost to the Butte County Jail should Newsom approve the measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the bill’s supporters argue the measure would actually save the state money. \u003ca href=\"https://imadvocates.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Solitary-Cost-Report-AB2632.pdf\">In a report published in July\u003c/a>, the nonprofit Immigration Defense Advocates argued that solitary units “require more custody staff.” Closing down solitary confinement facilities and repurposing them for other uses would be “covered by the massive savings generated by this transition,” the report found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Solitary confinement is usually reserved for disruptive or violent people, or validated gang members. But at least one formerly incarcerated Californian, \u003ca href=\"https://solitarywatch.org/2020/09/02/inside-the-hole-enduring-solitary-confinement-in-california/\">author Kenneth E. Hartman, wrote in 2020 on the website Solitary Watch\u003c/a> that he was put in solitary confinement for political reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hartman was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole in 1980; former Gov. Jerry Brown commuted his sentence in 2017.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hartman contends the reasons he was placed in solitary confinement included testifying against the prison system in federal court, organizing a letter-writing campaign to legislators and encouraging fellow incarcerated people to sign political petitions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not respond to a request for comment on Hartman’s allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you look at solitary, what you see is people who are challenging the system in some way,” Reiter said. “Challenging its categories, challenging its rules, and that makes it harder to reform, right? Because these are the people that the system is struggling to deal with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mendelson of the Prison Law Office said limiting solitary confinement doesn’t mean the prison or jail is unable to take any disciplinary measures at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, she said, a facility would still be permitted to house a problematic person in a single cell. But the additional burdens of solitary confinement — 22 or 23 hours per day in a cell, with no opportunity for education or socialization — would end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That doesn’t mean there can’t be a significant set of consequences,” Mendelson said. “Those consequences just can’t be torture, which is what solitary confinement is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The former member of the Mexican Mafia doubts that approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Look, is it a bad place? Sure,” he said. “But they have to have bad places for bad people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A 41-year-old man woke up in a tiny cell day after day, on a bed that sits just a few feet away from olive-colored walls. He was locked up alone in what detainees refer to as “the hole,” he told KQED, for 22 hours or longer per day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The space has a sink and a toilet, but no windows to view the ample sunshine outside the immigration detention building in Bakersfield.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention is legally classified as civil, rather than criminal, and is not intended to be a punishment. But that’s one of many incongruities for Mohamed Mousa, who said he was held in a restricted housing unit, or RHU, in solitary confinement for more than 40 days, beginning in late June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s devastating. This right here shouldn’t be happening. That’s what I think about all day,” said Mousa, an Egyptian immigrant who was once hopeful about the individual freedoms this country promises. “This right here is un-American.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/392012-solitary-confinement-should-be-banned-most-cases-un-expert-says\">United Nations has argued \u003c/a>that solitary confinement — also known as segregation or isolation — beyond 15 days can amount to torture and \u003ca href=\"https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf\">should be banned in most cases\u003c/a>. But the practice, which experts agree is so punitive that it can spark or exacerbate severe mental illness and depression, continues to exist in California, though it faces rising opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state Senate is expected to vote by August 31 on a bill that would restrict segregated confinement for all incarcerated people, including immigrant detainees. Meanwhile, \u003ca href=\"https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=9E8F927E-DBC7-453E-97BB-3B66AC4A52D7\">both California U.S. senators questioned ICE’s use of solitary confinement\u003c/a> as “excessive and seemingly indiscriminate” earlier this month, and have pressed the agency for answers on how it plans to fix the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" postID=\"news_11919749,news_11917597,news_11923465\"]Four detainees at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center, including Mousa, allege staffers kept them in solitary confinement for several days or longer for supporting \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11919161/ice-detainees-protested-1-a-day-wage-now-theyre-in-solitary-confinement\">a peaceful labor strike\u003c/a>, according to KQED interviews and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11919749/ice-detainees-making-1-a-day-sue-over-alleged-wage-theft\">a recent lawsuit\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of detainees who were paid $1 a day to clean dormitories and bathrooms at the facility and the nearby Golden State Annex are calling for California’s minimum wage of $15 an hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson with The GEO Group, which owns and operates both detention centers, vehemently denied the men’s allegations of retaliation, and referred other questions to ICE.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spokesperson also repeatedly denied that a labor strike is taking place at the facilities, arguing that the work program is voluntary and in compliance with \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/5-8.pdf\">ICE’s guidelines\u003c/a> that detainees be compensated “at least” $1 per workday. Congress can change the rate, but \u003ca href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4726&context=caselrev\">hasn’t done so since 1978\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla declined a request for comment. But Padilla is “actively engaged on the issues being raised” at Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex, according to a spokesperson for the senator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He is working to increase transparency on how these concerns are being addressed in order to ensure proper oversight,” the spokesperson said in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Mousa sent to solitary due to demonstration\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mousa said he was kept in isolation until Thursday because he was “standing up for his rights and the rights of other detainees,” including by signing his name on a letter supporting the work stoppage on June 28.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s retaliation, it’s cruel, it’s punishment,” said Mousa, adding that his depression and anxiety have soared. “They want to break me. They want me to stop advocating. I’m already in hell. Detention is hell.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GEO documents show Mousa was ordered to “administrative segregation” on June 29, and later found guilty of “engaging in or inciting a group demonstration” and “conduct that disrupts or interferes with the security and orderly operation of the facility.” Both charges are labeled as \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/2-2.pdf\">high offenses\u003c/a> by the ICE standards Mesa Verde must follow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The facility denied Mousa’s appeal on July 15.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Mohamed Mousa, ICE detainee\"]‘They want to break me. They want me to stop advocating. I’m already in hell. Dentention is hell.’[/pullquote]\u003cbr>\n“A records review indicates your direct involvement in the misconduct incident,” wrote GEO staffers in a report addressing Mousa’s grievance. “Further, as you correctly asserted, ‘I’m known to stand up for my rights,’ you consistently have attempted to disrupt the orderly running of the facility, and it will not be tolerated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ICE spokesperson said the agency will not disclose details of individual disciplinary actions, and would not comment on the claims by Mousa or the other detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ICE fully respects the rights of all people to voice their opinion without interference, including through peaceful assembly and protest,” the ICE spokesperson wrote in a statement, but declined to comment on why the agency considers a detainee inciting or engaging in a demonstration a high offense.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Isolation ‘only when necessary,’ but evidence suggests otherwise\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to ICE, placing a detainee in segregation is a “serious step” that should follow the agency’s guidelines, and be used only when necessary after careful consideration of alternatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A detainee may be isolated from others for disciplinary reasons or a wide range of “administrative” ones, including medical issues, a detainee’s own safety and the orderly operation of the facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Disciplinary segregation is restricted to no more than 30 days. Yet, the agency’s guidelines fail to spell out any limits for the administrative kind, which leads to abuses, according to immigrant advocates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE did not immediately respond to KQED’s requests for the number of detainees currently held in solitary confinement. Between 2013 and 2019, the agency recorded nearly 13,800 segregation placements nationwide that lasted longer than 14 consecutive days or involved vulnerable detainees, such as those with mental illness, identifying as gay or on a hunger strike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency’s watchdog found the figure could be higher, because ICE ignores the full extent of segregation use at its more than 200 detention centers around the country. Facilities owned or operated by for-profit companies such as GEO hold most immigrant detainees in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2021-10/OIG-22-01-Oct21.pdf\">lack of comprehensive isolation data hinders\u003c/a> the agency’s “ability to ensure compliance with policy, and prevent and detect potential misuse of segregation,” according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General published last fall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, inspectors found no evidence that detention centers considered any alternatives to isolating detainees in 72% of the incidents they studied. During an unannounced inspection of a privately run detention center in Calexico, east of San Diego, the OIG discovered \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2020-12/OIG-21-12-Dec20.pdf\">two detainees isolated for more than 300 days\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11923787\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11923787\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"a hand reaches out from a cell to use a pay phone in a detention facility\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1684\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-800x526.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-1020x671.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-160x105.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-1536x1010.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-2048x1347.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-1920x1263.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An immigrant detainee makes a call from his segregation cell at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California, which is operated by The GEO Group. \u003ccite>(John Moore/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Caitlin Patler, assistant sociology professor at UC Davis, said she worries there is no better oversight by the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s highly likely that individuals’ rights are being violated by being placed into these extremely punitive settings,” said Patler, who has analyzed thousands of ICE solitary confinement incidents and found them more likely to occur at privately run facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE officials concurred with the OIG’s recommended changes to improve the agency’s supervision of segregation, including requiring facilities to track all cases — regardless of how long they are or any detainee-identified vulnerabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency had committed to implementing the recommendations by August 31 before requesting an extension. The new due date is now October 31, according to an OIG spokesperson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE declined to comment on why the extension was needed. But Stephen Roncone, the agency’s chief financial officer, acknowledged that the size of ICE’s network of facilities may present reporting challenges while the agency tries to ensure compliance with the rules.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The goal of ICE detention standards is to ensure that detainees are treated humanely … and receive the rights and protections they are entitled to,” Roncone wrote in the agency’s response to the OIG report.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>State bill would limit use of solitary confinement\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This comes as the California Senate considers \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2632\">AB 2632\u003c/a>, also known as the California Mandela Act in reference to the \u003ca href=\"https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N15/443/41/PDF/N1544341.pdf?OpenElement\">United Nations rules\u003c/a> that prohibit indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement beyond 15 days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Stephen Roncone, chief financial officer, ICE\"]‘The goal of ICE detention standards is to ensure that detainees are treated humanely … and receive the rights and protections they are entitled to.’[/pullquote]The bill, by Assemblymember Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, would also limit the use of segregated confinement to no longer than 15 consecutive days or 45 days in a period of six months. The practice would be banned for incarcerated people who have a mental or physical disability; have a serious mental health disorder; are pregnant; are 25 years old or younger, with some exceptions, or older than 60.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opponents, including law enforcement groups such as the California State Sheriffs’ Association, argue that the bill’s restrictions will practically end the practice, including when they believe it’s needed for the safety of inmates or staffers. Proponents counter solitary confinement diminishes the prospects of successful rehabilitation in prisons and can irreparably harm people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Holden, in response to questions about segregation reports at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center, said that stories like Mousa’s were not uncommon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The reports that solitary confinement has been used by private prison companies to undermine the First Amendment rights of immigrants in detention is exactly why California needs to pass the California Mandela Act,” said Holden in a statement. “California is no place for torture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters argue California has the authority to regulate conditions of confinement for people within its borders, but legislative analyses say \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2632\">it’s an open question\u003c/a> whether the bill can cover immigration detention centers, which are overseen by the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE arrested Mousa in December 2019 as he was released from Tehachapi State Prison in Southern California. Mousa had served a prison sentence for felonies related to an assault and possession of a firearm. The former film student, who lived in Los Angeles for years, has additional prior convictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mesa Verde, with 400 beds, currently holds 52 men and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/detain/detention-management\">meets ICE’s detention standards\u003c/a>, according to the agency’s statistics. Agency officials make custody determinations on a “case-by-case basis” and focus on cases that represent a threat to public safety or flight risk, an ICE spokesperson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mousa will remain in custody pending a review of his case at the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, according to ICE. Immigration judges had granted him protections from deportation in 2014 and then again in 2020, but ICE appealed, said Mousa’s attorney Kelsey Morales with the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "ICE Overusing Solitary Confinement in California, Lawmakers Worry | KQED",
"description": "California lawmakers are expected to vote this month on a bill that would restrict segregated confinement for all incarcerated people, including immigrant detainees. The move comes amid growing questions about ICE's use of solitary confinement as 'excessive and seemingly indiscriminate.'",
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"headline": "ICE Overusing Solitary Confinement in California, Lawmakers Worry",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A 41-year-old man woke up in a tiny cell day after day, on a bed that sits just a few feet away from olive-colored walls. He was locked up alone in what detainees refer to as “the hole,” he told KQED, for 22 hours or longer per day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The space has a sink and a toilet, but no windows to view the ample sunshine outside the immigration detention building in Bakersfield.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention is legally classified as civil, rather than criminal, and is not intended to be a punishment. But that’s one of many incongruities for Mohamed Mousa, who said he was held in a restricted housing unit, or RHU, in solitary confinement for more than 40 days, beginning in late June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s devastating. This right here shouldn’t be happening. That’s what I think about all day,” said Mousa, an Egyptian immigrant who was once hopeful about the individual freedoms this country promises. “This right here is un-American.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/392012-solitary-confinement-should-be-banned-most-cases-un-expert-says\">United Nations has argued \u003c/a>that solitary confinement — also known as segregation or isolation — beyond 15 days can amount to torture and \u003ca href=\"https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf\">should be banned in most cases\u003c/a>. But the practice, which experts agree is so punitive that it can spark or exacerbate severe mental illness and depression, continues to exist in California, though it faces rising opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state Senate is expected to vote by August 31 on a bill that would restrict segregated confinement for all incarcerated people, including immigrant detainees. Meanwhile, \u003ca href=\"https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=9E8F927E-DBC7-453E-97BB-3B66AC4A52D7\">both California U.S. senators questioned ICE’s use of solitary confinement\u003c/a> as “excessive and seemingly indiscriminate” earlier this month, and have pressed the agency for answers on how it plans to fix the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Four detainees at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center, including Mousa, allege staffers kept them in solitary confinement for several days or longer for supporting \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11919161/ice-detainees-protested-1-a-day-wage-now-theyre-in-solitary-confinement\">a peaceful labor strike\u003c/a>, according to KQED interviews and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11919749/ice-detainees-making-1-a-day-sue-over-alleged-wage-theft\">a recent lawsuit\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of detainees who were paid $1 a day to clean dormitories and bathrooms at the facility and the nearby Golden State Annex are calling for California’s minimum wage of $15 an hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson with The GEO Group, which owns and operates both detention centers, vehemently denied the men’s allegations of retaliation, and referred other questions to ICE.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spokesperson also repeatedly denied that a labor strike is taking place at the facilities, arguing that the work program is voluntary and in compliance with \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/5-8.pdf\">ICE’s guidelines\u003c/a> that detainees be compensated “at least” $1 per workday. Congress can change the rate, but \u003ca href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4726&context=caselrev\">hasn’t done so since 1978\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla declined a request for comment. But Padilla is “actively engaged on the issues being raised” at Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex, according to a spokesperson for the senator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He is working to increase transparency on how these concerns are being addressed in order to ensure proper oversight,” the spokesperson said in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Mousa sent to solitary due to demonstration\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mousa said he was kept in isolation until Thursday because he was “standing up for his rights and the rights of other detainees,” including by signing his name on a letter supporting the work stoppage on June 28.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s retaliation, it’s cruel, it’s punishment,” said Mousa, adding that his depression and anxiety have soared. “They want to break me. They want me to stop advocating. I’m already in hell. Detention is hell.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GEO documents show Mousa was ordered to “administrative segregation” on June 29, and later found guilty of “engaging in or inciting a group demonstration” and “conduct that disrupts or interferes with the security and orderly operation of the facility.” Both charges are labeled as \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/2-2.pdf\">high offenses\u003c/a> by the ICE standards Mesa Verde must follow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The facility denied Mousa’s appeal on July 15.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘They want to break me. They want me to stop advocating. I’m already in hell. Dentention is hell.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cbr>\n“A records review indicates your direct involvement in the misconduct incident,” wrote GEO staffers in a report addressing Mousa’s grievance. “Further, as you correctly asserted, ‘I’m known to stand up for my rights,’ you consistently have attempted to disrupt the orderly running of the facility, and it will not be tolerated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ICE spokesperson said the agency will not disclose details of individual disciplinary actions, and would not comment on the claims by Mousa or the other detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ICE fully respects the rights of all people to voice their opinion without interference, including through peaceful assembly and protest,” the ICE spokesperson wrote in a statement, but declined to comment on why the agency considers a detainee inciting or engaging in a demonstration a high offense.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Isolation ‘only when necessary,’ but evidence suggests otherwise\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to ICE, placing a detainee in segregation is a “serious step” that should follow the agency’s guidelines, and be used only when necessary after careful consideration of alternatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A detainee may be isolated from others for disciplinary reasons or a wide range of “administrative” ones, including medical issues, a detainee’s own safety and the orderly operation of the facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Disciplinary segregation is restricted to no more than 30 days. Yet, the agency’s guidelines fail to spell out any limits for the administrative kind, which leads to abuses, according to immigrant advocates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE did not immediately respond to KQED’s requests for the number of detainees currently held in solitary confinement. Between 2013 and 2019, the agency recorded nearly 13,800 segregation placements nationwide that lasted longer than 14 consecutive days or involved vulnerable detainees, such as those with mental illness, identifying as gay or on a hunger strike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency’s watchdog found the figure could be higher, because ICE ignores the full extent of segregation use at its more than 200 detention centers around the country. Facilities owned or operated by for-profit companies such as GEO hold most immigrant detainees in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2021-10/OIG-22-01-Oct21.pdf\">lack of comprehensive isolation data hinders\u003c/a> the agency’s “ability to ensure compliance with policy, and prevent and detect potential misuse of segregation,” according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General published last fall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, inspectors found no evidence that detention centers considered any alternatives to isolating detainees in 72% of the incidents they studied. During an unannounced inspection of a privately run detention center in Calexico, east of San Diego, the OIG discovered \u003ca href=\"https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2020-12/OIG-21-12-Dec20.pdf\">two detainees isolated for more than 300 days\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11923787\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11923787\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"a hand reaches out from a cell to use a pay phone in a detention facility\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1684\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-800x526.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-1020x671.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-160x105.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-1536x1010.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-2048x1347.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/GettyImages-450371179-1920x1263.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An immigrant detainee makes a call from his segregation cell at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California, which is operated by The GEO Group. \u003ccite>(John Moore/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Caitlin Patler, assistant sociology professor at UC Davis, said she worries there is no better oversight by the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s highly likely that individuals’ rights are being violated by being placed into these extremely punitive settings,” said Patler, who has analyzed thousands of ICE solitary confinement incidents and found them more likely to occur at privately run facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE officials concurred with the OIG’s recommended changes to improve the agency’s supervision of segregation, including requiring facilities to track all cases — regardless of how long they are or any detainee-identified vulnerabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency had committed to implementing the recommendations by August 31 before requesting an extension. The new due date is now October 31, according to an OIG spokesperson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE declined to comment on why the extension was needed. But Stephen Roncone, the agency’s chief financial officer, acknowledged that the size of ICE’s network of facilities may present reporting challenges while the agency tries to ensure compliance with the rules.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The goal of ICE detention standards is to ensure that detainees are treated humanely … and receive the rights and protections they are entitled to,” Roncone wrote in the agency’s response to the OIG report.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>State bill would limit use of solitary confinement\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This comes as the California Senate considers \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2632\">AB 2632\u003c/a>, also known as the California Mandela Act in reference to the \u003ca href=\"https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N15/443/41/PDF/N1544341.pdf?OpenElement\">United Nations rules\u003c/a> that prohibit indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement beyond 15 days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘The goal of ICE detention standards is to ensure that detainees are treated humanely … and receive the rights and protections they are entitled to.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The bill, by Assemblymember Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, would also limit the use of segregated confinement to no longer than 15 consecutive days or 45 days in a period of six months. The practice would be banned for incarcerated people who have a mental or physical disability; have a serious mental health disorder; are pregnant; are 25 years old or younger, with some exceptions, or older than 60.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opponents, including law enforcement groups such as the California State Sheriffs’ Association, argue that the bill’s restrictions will practically end the practice, including when they believe it’s needed for the safety of inmates or staffers. Proponents counter solitary confinement diminishes the prospects of successful rehabilitation in prisons and can irreparably harm people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Holden, in response to questions about segregation reports at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center, said that stories like Mousa’s were not uncommon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The reports that solitary confinement has been used by private prison companies to undermine the First Amendment rights of immigrants in detention is exactly why California needs to pass the California Mandela Act,” said Holden in a statement. “California is no place for torture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters argue California has the authority to regulate conditions of confinement for people within its borders, but legislative analyses say \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2632\">it’s an open question\u003c/a> whether the bill can cover immigration detention centers, which are overseen by the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE arrested Mousa in December 2019 as he was released from Tehachapi State Prison in Southern California. Mousa had served a prison sentence for felonies related to an assault and possession of a firearm. The former film student, who lived in Los Angeles for years, has additional prior convictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mesa Verde, with 400 beds, currently holds 52 men and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/detain/detention-management\">meets ICE’s detention standards\u003c/a>, according to the agency’s statistics. Agency officials make custody determinations on a “case-by-case basis” and focus on cases that represent a threat to public safety or flight risk, an ICE spokesperson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mousa will remain in custody pending a review of his case at the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, according to ICE. Immigration judges had granted him protections from deportation in 2014 and then again in 2020, but ICE appealed, said Mousa’s attorney Kelsey Morales with the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "ICE Detainees Protested $1-a-Day Wage. Now They're in Solitary Confinement",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update, 5 p.m. July 11: \u003c/strong>Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center staff moved Pedro Figueroa out of solitary confinement on July 8, shortly after KQED published this story, according to his attorney. Mohamed Mousa remains in what’s officially known as “administrative segregation,” his attorney said. Both men were found guilty of “inciting or engaging in a demonstration,” charges allegedly related to a monthslong labor strike by immigration detainees seeking higher wages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesman with The GEO Group, which operates the immigration detention center, declined to confirm the status of the men, and referred questions to ICE. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Original story, July 8:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nTwo immigrant detainees have been held in solitary confinement for over a week for backing a labor strike seeking better wages and conditions at the privately run facility where they are held in Bakersfield, the men told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The alleged retaliation fuels fear and intimidation, according to interviews with the men, their attorneys and advocates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mohamed Mousa and Pedro Figueroa said they were moved to a restricted housing unit after signing a declaration on June 28 that they and 15 others were joining a months-long peaceful work stoppage by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees who are paid $1 a day to clean dormitories and bathrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Pedro Figueroa, ICE detainee\"]‘I chose not to work and voice my opinion respectfully, and that’s within my right … What did I do wrong?’[/pullquote]Employees with The GEO Group, a large private prison company that operates the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield, transferred the men separately to “administrative segregation” on June 29 and June 30, according to GEO forms viewed by KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is what they’re doing to retaliate against people who speak up. This is what they’re doing to intimidate us, which I am intimidated,” Figueroa, 33, said by phone as he sat in what he described as a small, windowless cell detainees refer to as “the hole.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I chose not to work and voice my opinion respectfully, and that’s within my right,” added Figueroa, a former incarcerated firefighter who battled the massive August Complex fire in 2020. “I’m trying to understand, what did I do wrong?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Documents show GEO staffers charged Figueroa and Mousa with “inciting or engaging in a demonstration” and “conduct that disrupts/interferes with the security or operation of the facility.” Both are \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/pbnds2011r2016.pdf\">labeled as high offenses under ICE guidelines\u003c/a> for the detention center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Figueroa and Mousa said they are kept in their cells — about 6 by 12 feet, with a sink, toilet and a cot — for 22 hours a day or longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gives you anxiety, raises your stress level. It raises your depression level,” said Mousa, a 41-year-old immigrant from Egypt and former film student in Los Angeles. “It’s a terrible place to be. It’s like they dig a grave and throw you in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upon request, Mousa and Figueroa have access to a phone and an electronic tablet, which guards push through a slit in the room’s metal door. Calls and entertainment, such as music or books, may cost anywhere between $0.03 and $0.11 per minute, the detainees said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for GEO, \u003ca href=\"https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220502005931/en/The-GEO-Group-Reports-First-Quarter-2022-Results\">which reported total revenues of $551 million in the first quarter of 2022\u003c/a>, rebuffed allegations that the detainees are being punished for protesting their working and living conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strikers, including more than a dozen so-called “housing porters,” are calling for California’s $15 per hour minimum wage, fair treatment by Mesa Verde’s administration and more nutritious meals, among other demands. Some detainees at the facility have refused to work since April 28, but their demands have been largely ignored by GEO and ICE, said Esperanza Cuautle, a community organizer with Pangea Legal Services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11919181\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 648px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11919181\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/07/RS57176_Pedro_Firecamp.jpeg\" alt=\"a smiling bald man holds a chainsaw wearing work clothing\" width=\"648\" height=\"1017\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/07/RS57176_Pedro_Firecamp.jpeg 648w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/07/RS57176_Pedro_Firecamp-160x251.jpeg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 648px) 100vw, 648px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pedro Figueroa poses at the Antelope Fire camp in Siskiyou County in 2021. When he was incarcerated, before his ICE detention, Figueroa won a spot in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s fire camp program, and helped battle wildfires. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Figueroa family)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The GEO spokesperson repeatedly denied a labor strike is taking place at Mesa Verde and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11917597/immigrant-detainees-strike-over-working-conditions-california-regulators-investigate\">Golden State Annex, a nearby detention center also operated by the multinational company\u003c/a>, arguing that the detained workers are part of a voluntary program. But he declined to answer what demonstration or disruption the detainees were charged with engaging in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We continue to strongly reject these baseless allegations,” said the spokesperson for the Florida-based company. “Our facilities, including the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center, provide high-quality services in accordance with all federal contract requirements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center is maintained in accordance with all applicable federal sanitation standards, with or without the contributions of Voluntary Work Program participants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mesa Verde currently detains 51 men, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/detain/detention-management\">ICE’s most recent detention statistics\u003c/a>. Figueroa and Mousa were arrested by the agency after being released from state prisons for felony convictions, according to court records and their attorneys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Figueroa, however, felt no choice but to take a plea deal and continues to maintain his innocence, according to his lawyer, Katie Kavanagh, with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mousa entered the U.S. lawfully in 2006, and has since been granted protections against deportation by two separate immigration judges, but ICE has appealed, said Kelsey Morales, an immigration attorney with the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Figueroa, the father of four children born in the U.S., was brought to the country as a baby. He grew up in Orange County, according to Kavanagh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Detainees often opt to work for $1 a day to help their families afford what they describe as costly phone calls and commissary items such as dental floss and tortillas — and to ensure clean living areas, which they say no other janitorial service maintains at Mesa Verde.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Eunice Cho, attorney, ACLU\"]‘These private prison companies are profiting by millions of dollars every year by using these volunteer work programs.’[/pullquote]In California, immigrant detainees paid $1 a day in privately run facilities are entitled to pursue civil remedy for unpaid wages, and are considered “employees” based on a ruling by a federal judge in 2018, said Christina Cano, a spokesperson with the Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees the enforcement of minimum wage laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nationwide, for-profit operators of immigration detention centers commonly use the voluntary work program to do cleaning, maintenance, laundry and other tasks that keep facilities running, saving money on labor costs, according to Eunice Cho, an attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These private prison companies are profiting by millions of dollars every year by using these volunteer work programs,” Cho said. “Private prison companies have often used punishment to ask for more people to perform labor, doing things like threatening and putting people into solitary confinement, denying food.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Courts in California, Washington and other states are currently deciding whether these labor practices constitute illegal forced labor or minimum wage law violations, and whether companies like GEO are accountable, according to Cho.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11917597 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GoldenStateAnnex-1020x698.jpg']Moreover, immigrants who are detained by the federal government while they fight deportation — a civil, not criminal proceeding — have the right to freedom of speech, she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s long settled that the First Amendment prohibits the use of solitary confinement as punishment for speaking up against conditions of confinement in prisons and detention centers,” Cho said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s unclear whether ICE agrees. ICE did not return requests for comment on the rule, the labor strike or retaliation allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the reports of potentially exploitative work and retaliation at Mesa Verde are “alarming,” said a spokesperson for U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, D-Calif.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our office is working to gather additional information and ensure there is proper oversight,” she said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likewise, South Bay Congressmember Zoe Lofgren, D-San José, who chairs the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, said she has “long been concerned” about immigration authorities’ use of for-profit prisons and conditions for detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These new allegations are troubling, yet sadly unsurprising,” said Lofgren, who \u003ca href=\"https://lofgren.house.gov/media/press-releases/lofgren-correa-ca-dems-urge-dhs-close-three-ice-detention-centers\">led 22 Democratic colleagues in urging the Biden administration to close three detention centers in California\u003c/a>, including one operated by GEO. “I take these allegations seriously and expect a complete and thorough investigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update, 5 p.m. July 11: \u003c/strong>Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center staff moved Pedro Figueroa out of solitary confinement on July 8, shortly after KQED published this story, according to his attorney. Mohamed Mousa remains in what’s officially known as “administrative segregation,” his attorney said. Both men were found guilty of “inciting or engaging in a demonstration,” charges allegedly related to a monthslong labor strike by immigration detainees seeking higher wages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesman with The GEO Group, which operates the immigration detention center, declined to confirm the status of the men, and referred questions to ICE. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Original story, July 8:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nTwo immigrant detainees have been held in solitary confinement for over a week for backing a labor strike seeking better wages and conditions at the privately run facility where they are held in Bakersfield, the men told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The alleged retaliation fuels fear and intimidation, according to interviews with the men, their attorneys and advocates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mohamed Mousa and Pedro Figueroa said they were moved to a restricted housing unit after signing a declaration on June 28 that they and 15 others were joining a months-long peaceful work stoppage by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees who are paid $1 a day to clean dormitories and bathrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘I chose not to work and voice my opinion respectfully, and that’s within my right … What did I do wrong?’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Employees with The GEO Group, a large private prison company that operates the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield, transferred the men separately to “administrative segregation” on June 29 and June 30, according to GEO forms viewed by KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is what they’re doing to retaliate against people who speak up. This is what they’re doing to intimidate us, which I am intimidated,” Figueroa, 33, said by phone as he sat in what he described as a small, windowless cell detainees refer to as “the hole.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I chose not to work and voice my opinion respectfully, and that’s within my right,” added Figueroa, a former incarcerated firefighter who battled the massive August Complex fire in 2020. “I’m trying to understand, what did I do wrong?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Documents show GEO staffers charged Figueroa and Mousa with “inciting or engaging in a demonstration” and “conduct that disrupts/interferes with the security or operation of the facility.” Both are \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/pbnds2011r2016.pdf\">labeled as high offenses under ICE guidelines\u003c/a> for the detention center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Figueroa and Mousa said they are kept in their cells — about 6 by 12 feet, with a sink, toilet and a cot — for 22 hours a day or longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gives you anxiety, raises your stress level. It raises your depression level,” said Mousa, a 41-year-old immigrant from Egypt and former film student in Los Angeles. “It’s a terrible place to be. It’s like they dig a grave and throw you in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upon request, Mousa and Figueroa have access to a phone and an electronic tablet, which guards push through a slit in the room’s metal door. Calls and entertainment, such as music or books, may cost anywhere between $0.03 and $0.11 per minute, the detainees said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for GEO, \u003ca href=\"https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220502005931/en/The-GEO-Group-Reports-First-Quarter-2022-Results\">which reported total revenues of $551 million in the first quarter of 2022\u003c/a>, rebuffed allegations that the detainees are being punished for protesting their working and living conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strikers, including more than a dozen so-called “housing porters,” are calling for California’s $15 per hour minimum wage, fair treatment by Mesa Verde’s administration and more nutritious meals, among other demands. Some detainees at the facility have refused to work since April 28, but their demands have been largely ignored by GEO and ICE, said Esperanza Cuautle, a community organizer with Pangea Legal Services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11919181\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 648px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11919181\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/07/RS57176_Pedro_Firecamp.jpeg\" alt=\"a smiling bald man holds a chainsaw wearing work clothing\" width=\"648\" height=\"1017\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/07/RS57176_Pedro_Firecamp.jpeg 648w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/07/RS57176_Pedro_Firecamp-160x251.jpeg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 648px) 100vw, 648px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pedro Figueroa poses at the Antelope Fire camp in Siskiyou County in 2021. When he was incarcerated, before his ICE detention, Figueroa won a spot in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s fire camp program, and helped battle wildfires. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Figueroa family)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The GEO spokesperson repeatedly denied a labor strike is taking place at Mesa Verde and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11917597/immigrant-detainees-strike-over-working-conditions-california-regulators-investigate\">Golden State Annex, a nearby detention center also operated by the multinational company\u003c/a>, arguing that the detained workers are part of a voluntary program. But he declined to answer what demonstration or disruption the detainees were charged with engaging in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We continue to strongly reject these baseless allegations,” said the spokesperson for the Florida-based company. “Our facilities, including the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center, provide high-quality services in accordance with all federal contract requirements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center is maintained in accordance with all applicable federal sanitation standards, with or without the contributions of Voluntary Work Program participants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mesa Verde currently detains 51 men, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/detain/detention-management\">ICE’s most recent detention statistics\u003c/a>. Figueroa and Mousa were arrested by the agency after being released from state prisons for felony convictions, according to court records and their attorneys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Figueroa, however, felt no choice but to take a plea deal and continues to maintain his innocence, according to his lawyer, Katie Kavanagh, with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mousa entered the U.S. lawfully in 2006, and has since been granted protections against deportation by two separate immigration judges, but ICE has appealed, said Kelsey Morales, an immigration attorney with the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Figueroa, the father of four children born in the U.S., was brought to the country as a baby. He grew up in Orange County, according to Kavanagh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Detainees often opt to work for $1 a day to help their families afford what they describe as costly phone calls and commissary items such as dental floss and tortillas — and to ensure clean living areas, which they say no other janitorial service maintains at Mesa Verde.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In California, immigrant detainees paid $1 a day in privately run facilities are entitled to pursue civil remedy for unpaid wages, and are considered “employees” based on a ruling by a federal judge in 2018, said Christina Cano, a spokesperson with the Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees the enforcement of minimum wage laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nationwide, for-profit operators of immigration detention centers commonly use the voluntary work program to do cleaning, maintenance, laundry and other tasks that keep facilities running, saving money on labor costs, according to Eunice Cho, an attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These private prison companies are profiting by millions of dollars every year by using these volunteer work programs,” Cho said. “Private prison companies have often used punishment to ask for more people to perform labor, doing things like threatening and putting people into solitary confinement, denying food.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Courts in California, Washington and other states are currently deciding whether these labor practices constitute illegal forced labor or minimum wage law violations, and whether companies like GEO are accountable, according to Cho.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Moreover, immigrants who are detained by the federal government while they fight deportation — a civil, not criminal proceeding — have the right to freedom of speech, she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s long settled that the First Amendment prohibits the use of solitary confinement as punishment for speaking up against conditions of confinement in prisons and detention centers,” Cho said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s unclear whether ICE agrees. ICE did not return requests for comment on the rule, the labor strike or retaliation allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the reports of potentially exploitative work and retaliation at Mesa Verde are “alarming,” said a spokesperson for U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, D-Calif.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our office is working to gather additional information and ensure there is proper oversight,” she said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likewise, South Bay Congressmember Zoe Lofgren, D-San José, who chairs the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, said she has “long been concerned” about immigration authorities’ use of for-profit prisons and conditions for detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These new allegations are troubling, yet sadly unsurprising,” said Lofgren, who \u003ca href=\"https://lofgren.house.gov/media/press-releases/lofgren-correa-ca-dems-urge-dhs-close-three-ice-detention-centers\">led 22 Democratic colleagues in urging the Biden administration to close three detention centers in California\u003c/a>, including one operated by GEO. “I take these allegations seriously and expect a complete and thorough investigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "How a Young Gay Man Survived One of the Darkest Eras in California Queer History",
"title": "How a Young Gay Man Survived One of the Darkest Eras in California Queer History",
"headTitle": "The California Report Magazine | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story takes us back to an era before the rights of gay people were recognized as inherent to their humanity and right to privacy. This week, that era seems less far away than it used to.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friday's \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11917776/supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade\">U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade\u003c/a> makes clear that the removal of a woman's right to privacy and bodily autonomy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11913295/lgbtq-advocates-fear-implications-of-overturning-roe-v-wade\">might next mean the removal of federally protected rights for LGBTQ people\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Indeed, Justice Clarence Thomas, in his opinion concurring with the ruling, wrote that the court “should reconsider” three \"demonstrably erroneous decisions:” \u003c/i>\u003ca style=\"font-style: italic\" href=\"https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496\">Griswold v. Connecticut\u003c/a>\u003ci>, a 1965 decision granting married couples the constitutional right to contraception; \u003c/i>\u003ca style=\"font-style: italic\" href=\"https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/02-102\">Lawrence v. Texas\u003c/a>\u003ci>, a 2003 case that struck down anti-sodomy laws; and \u003c/i>\u003ca style=\"font-style: italic\" href=\"https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556\">Obergefell v. Hodges\u003c/a>\u003ci>, the 2015 case granting gay couples the constitutional right to marry.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is a collaboration between MindSite News and KQED's The California Report Magazine.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]G[/dropcap]ene Ampon committed the poem he called “Spider Spider” to memory when he was a teenager locked in solitary confinement at Atascadero State Hospital. It was the early 1960s, and across the country, state laws and psychiatric diagnoses had converged to create a dark era for LGBTQIA+ people – especially gay men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Spider, spider, along the ceiling slide\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">spin your prison cell locking me inside,\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">now should my fearful trembling send\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a tremor through your webbed descent\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">then it is true what I surmise\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">that men their dreadful dooms devise\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">on as thin a silk as yours.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">- Gene Ampon, #11302\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Atascadero State Hospital, circa 1962\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The state psychiatric facility on California’s central coast had opened just eight years before Ampon got there, proudly proclaiming to be the only one in the world to specialize in the treatment of “sexual deviants.” Scholars would come to \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066356-dishonorablepassions_atascadero\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">describe it\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> as the most notorious facility in the Western United States to confine and mistreat gay men. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Gene Ampon\"]'It wasn’t like I’d killed somebody or stole something, but they didn’t really have any idea what to do with gay kids.’[/pullquote]Most patients were adults who’d been targeted, entrapped and arrested for public displays of gay behavior. And because “homosexuality” was considered a \u003ca href=\"https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=orwwu\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">psychiatric disorder\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, judges could commit them to Atascadero – sometimes before their criminal cases had been adjudicated – for evaluation and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066374-uncontrolleddesires\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">indefinite treatment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Others weren’t even adults. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ampon was just 16 years old when law enforcement delivered him to the locked hospital. His story is part of a dreadful chapter in California history, when gay men, and even teens, were confined by the state and subjected to treatments that today would be considered torture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a time that’s been largely forgotten, crowded out by celebrations of LBGTQIA+ Pride. Yet it’s essential that we remember. Because gay rights are once again under attack – in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1089221657/dont-say-gay-florida-desantis\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Florida\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/texas-gops-new-platform-calls-gay-people-abnormal-rejects-trans-identi-rcna34530\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Texas\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2022/04/08/families-share-questions-fear-alabama-approves-anti-trans-bills/9510912002/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alabama\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and beyond. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As in most bleak chapters of history, there are points of light – heroes who rejected the notion of “homosexuality” as a mental illness, and galvanized a movement that brought about radical change.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917719\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11917719\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"Two men stand next to each other inside a house.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1919\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-1536x1151.jpeg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-2048x1535.jpeg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-1920x1439.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gene Ampon and Roger Anderson had been together for 44 years when a reporter visited their Seattle home on Queen Anne hill in August 2021. Their walls are covered in photos and postcards of their global adventures. \u003ccite>(Lee Romney/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The 75-year-old Gene Ampon agreed to an interview in August 2021. The Seattle home he’s shared with his life partner for four decades sits atop peaceful Queen Anne Hill. Wind chimes that Ampon collected cover the porch.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He suffered a stroke in 2019, and at the time of the interview he had just completed a round of chemotherapy for cancer in his liver and lungs. His hope in openly sharing his experience, he said, was that “moving forward,” the country and world would have more “enlightened attitudes toward dealing with gay people, especially young gay people.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ampon was born in the Bay Area in 1946 to a Filipino father and Irish mother, who soon split up. Money was tight and chaos in his home life gave him some freedom to roam. At age 13, he was spending school days at an arcade near San Francisco’s Tenderloin and its thriving gay scene. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I used to like pinball machines,” he said. “And there were always older men who would say, ‘Oh you need another quarter?’ I said sure, why not?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Soon, Ampon was lying about where he was spending the night in order to hang out with other gay teens – and hook up with men for a place to sleep and a free meal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We did actually a lot of cuddling,” he said, “and there was some sex.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He’d been picked up for truancy before, so Ampon was on the radar of local police. One day, while he was having lunch at a diner, officers strolled in to question him. He landed in juvenile hall and “it snowballed from there.” He said youth corrections officials told him they didn't want his “homosexuality” to corrupt other kids, so they moved him through a series of youth facilities for nearly five months.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Men in Ampon’s era were \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066379-criminallawsusedagainstlgbtq\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">often criminalized for being gay\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. They could be charged with “lewd and lascivious behavior” for simply holding hands, kissing in public or dancing in a bar. Undercover cops who posed as potential sex partners entrapped men in public parks and restrooms. Charges included solicitation, loitering, vagrancy and indecent exposure. Oral and anal copulation carried more serious consequences. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Ampon was a juvenile, so all he had to do to get locked up was skip school and hang around the gay scene. Because back then, a judge could find a teen to be a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066368-psychopathicdelinquent\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“psychopathic delinquent”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> simply for violating social norms. If their parents or guardians agreed, they’d get shipped off to a state facility for an indefinite stay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the perspective of time, Ampon can laugh at the label.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It kind of sounds like you're little monsters,” he said. “It wasn’t like I’d killed somebody or stole something, but they didn’t really have any idea what to do with gay kids.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917722\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1294px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11917722\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1294\" height=\"1464\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene.jpeg 1294w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene-800x905.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene-1020x1154.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene-160x181.jpeg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1294px) 100vw, 1294px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gene Ampon shortly after his release from Atascadero State Hospital. The photo is among many that cover the walls of the Seattle home that he and Roger Anderson have shared for decades. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Roger Anderson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ampon insisted that his years at Atascadero do not define him. But as a young man, he conceded, “I was angry.” He wrote an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066382-insideatascaderogeneampon\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">account of his confinement\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> after his release that was published by two gay newspapers in the early 1970s. He dedicated his prose poem to “all homosexual prisoners who must daily endure heterosexual justice-oppression.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In that written account, he described how guards came to his cell with the judge’s order, signed by his parents, too. Soon, he was in handcuffs in the back of a Sheriff’s car, headed to Atascadero. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The car sped south along the California coast\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">stretching, snapping the ties of family and home.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sitting, watching his childhood fade thru\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the rear-view mirror into mile-long years of fog behind.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reminding himself to not let them know they’d hurt him;\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">his defiance shackled to the backseat.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Imprisoned by names he’d been labeled with:\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Incorrigable, truant, vagrant, queer, faggot, punk. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“A Menace to Society,” he recalled them saying;\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a crime whose only victim was himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like everyone committed to Atascadero, Ampon was considered a patient, not a prisoner. He was there for “treatment,” because “homosexuality” had been listed in the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – since the first edition was published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1952. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 1973, the APA removed the diagnosis of \"homosexuality\" as a mental illness from the DSM. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917726\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2310px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11917726\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM.jpeg\" alt='An old pamphlet that reads \"Mental Disorders\" on the front.' width=\"2310\" height=\"1733\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM.jpeg 2310w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2310px) 100vw, 2310px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">'Homosexuality' was listed in the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – beginning with the first edition, published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952. Gene Ampon’s life partner, Roger Anderson, obtained a rare copy of this 1965 supplement. It moved all types of so-called 'sexual deviance,' homosexuality included, to the catagory of 'sociopathic personality disturbance,' from the former 'psychopathic personality disorder with pathologic sexuality.' \u003ccite>(Lee Romney/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But if you were gay in 1962, when Ampon got to the hospital, you’d be diagnosed with \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066383-1965dsm\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“psychopathic personality disorder with pathologic sexuality.” \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The teens at Atascadero were in the minority, housed with grown men, some of whom were seriously mentally ill and had committed violent crimes. On Ampon’s second day, a group of adult patients sexually assaulted him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It was in the utility room, one of the few rooms that didn’t really have a door,” he said. “It’s where the buckets and mops were.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To reclaim some power, he converted future assaults into transactions – agreeing to sex in exchange for cigarettes and food. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I guess I was a growing boy and I always wanted more,” he said, “kind of like Oliver Twist.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Atascadero would get excoriated in the radical gay press in the early 1970s for a host of inhumane treatments. One headline picked up nationwide described the facility as a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066385-dachau\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Dachau for Queers.”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A review of historical records indicates that by the time those reports were circulating, the worst was over. But in Ampon’s day, there was no radical gay press in existence to call attention to the horrors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/243118795\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Transorbital lobotomies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, performed with an ice pick, occurred largely during the 1950s and were rare by Ampon’s time. But electroconvulsive shock therapy was in full force for all kinds of patients, not just gay patients. Some received as many as 60 treatments in a single year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917727\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality.jpeg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11917727\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality-800x268.jpeg\" alt=\"A handwritten note.\" width=\"800\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality-800x268.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality-1020x341.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality-160x54.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Handwritten notes from an Atascadero research assistant describe one gay patient’s experience. \u003ccite>(Lee Romney)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066388-ect4homosexuality\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Handwritten notes\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from an Atascadero research assistant describe one gay patient’s experience. He was given ECT in the late 1960s to “cure” his attraction to men. Then the doctor taunted him, “I bet you won’t do that again.” Ampon knew about these treatments, and wrote about them in his prose poem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He saw the electric shock box wheeling down the hall\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">stopping at someone else’s room; the guards taunting\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">him with the threat, “Your turn next.”\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A new terror shot through his thoughts as the overhead light \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">flickered while each jolt burned into some unfortunate brain. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ampon’s age spared him the electroshock. Instead, for more than two years, he got a morning dose of phenobarbital – a barbiturate used to control seizures or, for very short periods, to control anxiety. Psychiatric medication was relatively new but widely used, often with the sole goal of sedating patients. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ampon was also punished with solitary confinement, he said. The longest stint stemmed from “a puppy love” crush. When hospital guards noticed the friendship, they shipped his crush off to prison, and Ampon to a sweltering windowless concrete cell, with nothing but a thin sleeping mat. He spent a month there, lost in thought, composing poems about spiders and doom.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beyond punishment and pills, \"treatment\" consisted of pressuring Ampon to not be gay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I remember this one doctor who was talking about homosexuality,” Ampon recalled with a mischievous smile. “And he said, 'Well, there is a normal homosexual period between 8 and 12 and then beyond that it’s abnormal.' So I piped up and said, ‘Is that a.m. or p.m.?’” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">His humor was a testament to his resilience even then. But Ampon wanted out, and he’d end up trying to play the game, telling his treatment team he wanted to “explore” heterosexual experiences “They thought that was good,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Gene Ampon turned 18, in mid-1964, he was released. His parents had hardly visited. He was on his own, with no follow-up support. As it happens, he got out just in time. Because “treatment” at Atascadero was about to become even more sadistic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://mindsitenews.org/2022/06/24/when-gayness-was-a-crime-and-a-mental-illness-one-mans-journey-from-involuntary-confinement-to-pride/\">Read a full-length version of this story at MindSite News\u003c/a>, and learn about a few key people who stepped in to fight on behalf of gay men while they were confined at Atascadero, and as they were released to the community.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Lee Romney is an independent journalist with a specialty in mental health and criminal justice. Jenny Johnson is a former public defender who co-founded San Francisco’s Behavioral Health Court. This story is a preview of their podcast-in-production, \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://novemberinmysoul.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">November In My Soul\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, about mental illness, confinement and liberty in California. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Their reporting has received support from a California Humanities California Documentary Project Production grant; the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism California Impact Fund; and the California Health Care Foundation. Also, t\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hey also thank the research librarians at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC, and at the California State Archives.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story takes us back to an era before the rights of gay people were recognized as inherent to their humanity and right to privacy. This week, that era seems less far away than it used to.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friday's \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11917776/supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade\">U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade\u003c/a> makes clear that the removal of a woman's right to privacy and bodily autonomy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11913295/lgbtq-advocates-fear-implications-of-overturning-roe-v-wade\">might next mean the removal of federally protected rights for LGBTQ people\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Indeed, Justice Clarence Thomas, in his opinion concurring with the ruling, wrote that the court “should reconsider” three \"demonstrably erroneous decisions:” \u003c/i>\u003ca style=\"font-style: italic\" href=\"https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496\">Griswold v. Connecticut\u003c/a>\u003ci>, a 1965 decision granting married couples the constitutional right to contraception; \u003c/i>\u003ca style=\"font-style: italic\" href=\"https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/02-102\">Lawrence v. Texas\u003c/a>\u003ci>, a 2003 case that struck down anti-sodomy laws; and \u003c/i>\u003ca style=\"font-style: italic\" href=\"https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556\">Obergefell v. Hodges\u003c/a>\u003ci>, the 2015 case granting gay couples the constitutional right to marry.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is a collaboration between MindSite News and KQED's The California Report Magazine.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">G\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ene Ampon committed the poem he called “Spider Spider” to memory when he was a teenager locked in solitary confinement at Atascadero State Hospital. It was the early 1960s, and across the country, state laws and psychiatric diagnoses had converged to create a dark era for LGBTQIA+ people – especially gay men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Spider, spider, along the ceiling slide\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">spin your prison cell locking me inside,\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">now should my fearful trembling send\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a tremor through your webbed descent\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">then it is true what I surmise\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">that men their dreadful dooms devise\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">on as thin a silk as yours.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">- Gene Ampon, #11302\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Atascadero State Hospital, circa 1962\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The state psychiatric facility on California’s central coast had opened just eight years before Ampon got there, proudly proclaiming to be the only one in the world to specialize in the treatment of “sexual deviants.” Scholars would come to \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066356-dishonorablepassions_atascadero\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">describe it\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> as the most notorious facility in the Western United States to confine and mistreat gay men. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Most patients were adults who’d been targeted, entrapped and arrested for public displays of gay behavior. And because “homosexuality” was considered a \u003ca href=\"https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=orwwu\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">psychiatric disorder\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, judges could commit them to Atascadero – sometimes before their criminal cases had been adjudicated – for evaluation and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066374-uncontrolleddesires\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">indefinite treatment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Others weren’t even adults. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ampon was just 16 years old when law enforcement delivered him to the locked hospital. His story is part of a dreadful chapter in California history, when gay men, and even teens, were confined by the state and subjected to treatments that today would be considered torture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a time that’s been largely forgotten, crowded out by celebrations of LBGTQIA+ Pride. Yet it’s essential that we remember. Because gay rights are once again under attack – in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1089221657/dont-say-gay-florida-desantis\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Florida\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/texas-gops-new-platform-calls-gay-people-abnormal-rejects-trans-identi-rcna34530\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Texas\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2022/04/08/families-share-questions-fear-alabama-approves-anti-trans-bills/9510912002/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alabama\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and beyond. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As in most bleak chapters of history, there are points of light – heroes who rejected the notion of “homosexuality” as a mental illness, and galvanized a movement that brought about radical change.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917719\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11917719\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"Two men stand next to each other inside a house.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1919\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-1536x1151.jpeg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-2048x1535.jpeg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/GeneRogerAtHomeInSeattle-1920x1439.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gene Ampon and Roger Anderson had been together for 44 years when a reporter visited their Seattle home on Queen Anne hill in August 2021. Their walls are covered in photos and postcards of their global adventures. \u003ccite>(Lee Romney/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The 75-year-old Gene Ampon agreed to an interview in August 2021. The Seattle home he’s shared with his life partner for four decades sits atop peaceful Queen Anne Hill. Wind chimes that Ampon collected cover the porch.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He suffered a stroke in 2019, and at the time of the interview he had just completed a round of chemotherapy for cancer in his liver and lungs. His hope in openly sharing his experience, he said, was that “moving forward,” the country and world would have more “enlightened attitudes toward dealing with gay people, especially young gay people.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ampon was born in the Bay Area in 1946 to a Filipino father and Irish mother, who soon split up. Money was tight and chaos in his home life gave him some freedom to roam. At age 13, he was spending school days at an arcade near San Francisco’s Tenderloin and its thriving gay scene. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I used to like pinball machines,” he said. “And there were always older men who would say, ‘Oh you need another quarter?’ I said sure, why not?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Soon, Ampon was lying about where he was spending the night in order to hang out with other gay teens – and hook up with men for a place to sleep and a free meal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We did actually a lot of cuddling,” he said, “and there was some sex.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He’d been picked up for truancy before, so Ampon was on the radar of local police. One day, while he was having lunch at a diner, officers strolled in to question him. He landed in juvenile hall and “it snowballed from there.” He said youth corrections officials told him they didn't want his “homosexuality” to corrupt other kids, so they moved him through a series of youth facilities for nearly five months.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Men in Ampon’s era were \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066379-criminallawsusedagainstlgbtq\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">often criminalized for being gay\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. They could be charged with “lewd and lascivious behavior” for simply holding hands, kissing in public or dancing in a bar. Undercover cops who posed as potential sex partners entrapped men in public parks and restrooms. Charges included solicitation, loitering, vagrancy and indecent exposure. Oral and anal copulation carried more serious consequences. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Ampon was a juvenile, so all he had to do to get locked up was skip school and hang around the gay scene. Because back then, a judge could find a teen to be a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066368-psychopathicdelinquent\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“psychopathic delinquent”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> simply for violating social norms. If their parents or guardians agreed, they’d get shipped off to a state facility for an indefinite stay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the perspective of time, Ampon can laugh at the label.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It kind of sounds like you're little monsters,” he said. “It wasn’t like I’d killed somebody or stole something, but they didn’t really have any idea what to do with gay kids.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917722\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1294px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11917722\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1294\" height=\"1464\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene.jpeg 1294w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene-800x905.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene-1020x1154.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/YoungGene-160x181.jpeg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1294px) 100vw, 1294px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gene Ampon shortly after his release from Atascadero State Hospital. The photo is among many that cover the walls of the Seattle home that he and Roger Anderson have shared for decades. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Roger Anderson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ampon insisted that his years at Atascadero do not define him. But as a young man, he conceded, “I was angry.” He wrote an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066382-insideatascaderogeneampon\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">account of his confinement\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> after his release that was published by two gay newspapers in the early 1970s. He dedicated his prose poem to “all homosexual prisoners who must daily endure heterosexual justice-oppression.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In that written account, he described how guards came to his cell with the judge’s order, signed by his parents, too. Soon, he was in handcuffs in the back of a Sheriff’s car, headed to Atascadero. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The car sped south along the California coast\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">stretching, snapping the ties of family and home.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sitting, watching his childhood fade thru\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the rear-view mirror into mile-long years of fog behind.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reminding himself to not let them know they’d hurt him;\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">his defiance shackled to the backseat.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Imprisoned by names he’d been labeled with:\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Incorrigable, truant, vagrant, queer, faggot, punk. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“A Menace to Society,” he recalled them saying;\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a crime whose only victim was himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like everyone committed to Atascadero, Ampon was considered a patient, not a prisoner. He was there for “treatment,” because “homosexuality” had been listed in the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – since the first edition was published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1952. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 1973, the APA removed the diagnosis of \"homosexuality\" as a mental illness from the DSM. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917726\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2310px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11917726\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM.jpeg\" alt='An old pamphlet that reads \"Mental Disorders\" on the front.' width=\"2310\" height=\"1733\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM.jpeg 2310w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/1965DSM-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2310px) 100vw, 2310px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">'Homosexuality' was listed in the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – beginning with the first edition, published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952. Gene Ampon’s life partner, Roger Anderson, obtained a rare copy of this 1965 supplement. It moved all types of so-called 'sexual deviance,' homosexuality included, to the catagory of 'sociopathic personality disturbance,' from the former 'psychopathic personality disorder with pathologic sexuality.' \u003ccite>(Lee Romney/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But if you were gay in 1962, when Ampon got to the hospital, you’d be diagnosed with \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066383-1965dsm\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“psychopathic personality disorder with pathologic sexuality.” \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The teens at Atascadero were in the minority, housed with grown men, some of whom were seriously mentally ill and had committed violent crimes. On Ampon’s second day, a group of adult patients sexually assaulted him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It was in the utility room, one of the few rooms that didn’t really have a door,” he said. “It’s where the buckets and mops were.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To reclaim some power, he converted future assaults into transactions – agreeing to sex in exchange for cigarettes and food. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I guess I was a growing boy and I always wanted more,” he said, “kind of like Oliver Twist.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Atascadero would get excoriated in the radical gay press in the early 1970s for a host of inhumane treatments. One headline picked up nationwide described the facility as a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066385-dachau\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Dachau for Queers.”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A review of historical records indicates that by the time those reports were circulating, the worst was over. But in Ampon’s day, there was no radical gay press in existence to call attention to the horrors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/243118795\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Transorbital lobotomies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, performed with an ice pick, occurred largely during the 1950s and were rare by Ampon’s time. But electroconvulsive shock therapy was in full force for all kinds of patients, not just gay patients. Some received as many as 60 treatments in a single year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917727\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality.jpeg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11917727\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality-800x268.jpeg\" alt=\"A handwritten note.\" width=\"800\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality-800x268.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality-1020x341.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality-160x54.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/ECT4Homosexuality.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Handwritten notes from an Atascadero research assistant describe one gay patient’s experience. \u003ccite>(Lee Romney)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22066388-ect4homosexuality\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Handwritten notes\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from an Atascadero research assistant describe one gay patient’s experience. He was given ECT in the late 1960s to “cure” his attraction to men. Then the doctor taunted him, “I bet you won’t do that again.” Ampon knew about these treatments, and wrote about them in his prose poem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He saw the electric shock box wheeling down the hall\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">stopping at someone else’s room; the guards taunting\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">him with the threat, “Your turn next.”\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A new terror shot through his thoughts as the overhead light \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">flickered while each jolt burned into some unfortunate brain. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ampon’s age spared him the electroshock. Instead, for more than two years, he got a morning dose of phenobarbital – a barbiturate used to control seizures or, for very short periods, to control anxiety. Psychiatric medication was relatively new but widely used, often with the sole goal of sedating patients. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ampon was also punished with solitary confinement, he said. The longest stint stemmed from “a puppy love” crush. When hospital guards noticed the friendship, they shipped his crush off to prison, and Ampon to a sweltering windowless concrete cell, with nothing but a thin sleeping mat. He spent a month there, lost in thought, composing poems about spiders and doom.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beyond punishment and pills, \"treatment\" consisted of pressuring Ampon to not be gay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I remember this one doctor who was talking about homosexuality,” Ampon recalled with a mischievous smile. “And he said, 'Well, there is a normal homosexual period between 8 and 12 and then beyond that it’s abnormal.' So I piped up and said, ‘Is that a.m. or p.m.?’” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">His humor was a testament to his resilience even then. But Ampon wanted out, and he’d end up trying to play the game, telling his treatment team he wanted to “explore” heterosexual experiences “They thought that was good,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Gene Ampon turned 18, in mid-1964, he was released. His parents had hardly visited. He was on his own, with no follow-up support. As it happens, he got out just in time. Because “treatment” at Atascadero was about to become even more sadistic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://mindsitenews.org/2022/06/24/when-gayness-was-a-crime-and-a-mental-illness-one-mans-journey-from-involuntary-confinement-to-pride/\">Read a full-length version of this story at MindSite News\u003c/a>, and learn about a few key people who stepped in to fight on behalf of gay men while they were confined at Atascadero, and as they were released to the community.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Lee Romney is an independent journalist with a specialty in mental health and criminal justice. Jenny Johnson is a former public defender who co-founded San Francisco’s Behavioral Health Court. This story is a preview of their podcast-in-production, \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://novemberinmysoul.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">November In My Soul\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, about mental illness, confinement and liberty in California. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Their reporting has received support from a California Humanities California Documentary Project Production grant; the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism California Impact Fund; and the California Health Care Foundation. Also, t\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hey also thank the research librarians at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC, and at the California State Archives.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "How a Garden at UC Santa Cruz Led to an Exoneration Campaign for a Man on Death Row",
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"content": "\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://ias.ucsc.edu/content/2021/solitary-garden\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Solitary Garden\u003c/a> on the UC Santa Cruz campus is a small space, 9 feet long by 6 feet wide, flanked by old-growth oaks and sweeping views of the Monterey Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a little oasis, with its bushy plantings of rosemary, daisies and agave. The dimensions of the public sculpture are intentional — it's the size of an average solitary confinement cell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Timothy James Young, the person tasked with curating the Solitary Garden, has never himself set foot on campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I am a wrongfully convicted prisoner on San Quentin's death row,\" said Young when he introduced himself at the start of a recent phone interview with KQED from the maximum security state prison in Marin County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 52-year-old, also known as \"the solitary gardener,\" is one among \u003ca href=\"https://documents.deathpenaltyinfo.org/pdf/FactSheet.pdf\">nearly 700 people on death row in California\u003c/a> — the highest number in the U.S. Young said he's been locked up for 23 years on scant evidence. With his appeal process moving at a glacial pace, Young said he had given up hope of ever getting out — until students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz came along to campaign for his innocence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My journey to freedom didn't necessarily begin until I was introduced to Solitary Garden and the folks at UC Santa Cruz,\" said Young, who's been the curator of the garden since its inception on campus three years ago, thanks to a nationwide public art project protesting solitary confinement created by multidisciplinary artist and prison reform activist \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Sumell\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jackie Sumell\u003c/a>. The campus community does the actual gardening on Young's behalf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917030\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917030 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A 9-by-6-foot raised bed on a grassy hillside has in its center three-dimensional concrete shapes that resemble a bed, a toilet, and two low pillars. On the front side is a cell door, with what indoors would be floor-to-ceiling bars. Plantings surround the concrete shapes -- low green bushes and a succulent in one corner. Beyond the plot is another low grassy hillside, oak trees and, beyond that, in the distance, the ocean. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Solitary Garden at UC Santa Cruz. \u003ccite>(Chloe Veltman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sumell put Young in touch with UC Santa Cruz after he reached out to her as an admirer of her work and they struck up a correspondence. Young said he has forged deep friendships as a result of with students and faculty on campus as a result of being involved with the project. The feeling is mutual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We want everyone to understand that this is not a relationship you can just walk away from. As long as he's in that cell, we need to continue to tend to that relationship, just as we tend the garden,\" said Rachel Nelson, who commissioned the Solitary Garden in her role as director of \u003ca href=\"https://ias.ucsc.edu/\">UC Santa Cruz's Institute of the Arts and Sciences\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Journey through the system\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Young said it's been a long journey since the day of his arrest in April 1999. He said law enforcement officers pulled him over while he was leaving an Easter celebration in the San Joaquin Valley town of Lemoore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I look around and there's like assault rifles being pointed at me from every direction, and I'm just trying to figure out what the heck is going on,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The arrest happened four years after the crime Young eventually found out he was accused of committing — the murder of five people in a bar in the nearby town of Tulare — took place. Stuck in county jail, Young said he assumed the criminal legal system would work in his favor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My initial thought was, 'Well, I'm an American. I have rights. Once we get to a preliminary hearing, this case will be dismissed,'\" Young said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 723px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917035 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56597_sdfqvw-qut.jpg\" alt='A Black man with brown eyes, chin-length locs and a graying goatee sits backward on a red plastic chair. He wears a light-blue short-sleeved prison tunic and navy blue sweatpants; on the right leg are yellow, vertical letters spelling \"SONER\" (as if they are part of the word \"PRISONER\"). He rests the fingertips of his hands, including his thumbs, together as he leans forward against the back of the chair, looking straight at the camera with a confident smile. To his right is a white-painted barred door; he appears to be inside a cell.' width=\"723\" height=\"721\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56597_sdfqvw-qut.jpg 723w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56597_sdfqvw-qut-160x160.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Timothy James Young. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Timothy James Young)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The case went to trial despite shaky evidence and unreliable witnesses, including Anthony Wolfe, a man convicted of a felony who served as a paid informant in return for a reduced sentence for himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December 2005, an all-white jury convicted Young, who is Black, of murder. A month later, he was sentenced to death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I sat thinking, 'The truth will come out. Just hang in there. This will all be exposed and it’ll all be over with,'\" Young said. \"The truth \u003ci>did\u003c/i> come out. But everybody discarded it. And so 23 years later, I'm still wrongfully imprisoned and the nightmare continues.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A growing connection to students\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In recent months, a small group of film and digital media students at UC Santa Cruz has been working to make a case for exonerating Young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoDy1jgVVxo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their eight-minute documentary, \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoDy1jgVVxo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">I Am More: The Story of Tim Young\u003c/a>,\" is the centerpiece of a new collaboration with students mostly majoring in government at \u003ca href=\"https://www.georgetown.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Georgetown University\u003c/a>, as part of a class there called \"\u003ca href=\"https://prisonsandjustice.georgetown.edu/news/wrongful-convictions-making-an-exoneree-2022/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Making an Exoneree\u003c/a>.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014RcN6AAK/marc-howard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marc Howard,\u003c/a> professor of government and law at Georgetown, said that since the class launched in 2018, it has contributed to the exonerations of three wrongfully convicted people out of the 25 cases it has tackled so far. He and his students typically take on five cases a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What started out as an experiment has actually turned into an extraordinary machine for justice,\" Howard said. \"We have another prison release in the coming weeks. We may have another one still this year. And we've made great progress in a number of cases where the person initially had very little hope and we've at least helped them to obtain legal counsel.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now with enhanced creative input from UC Santa Cruz on the filmmaking side for the first time this year, the schools joined forces to help get more people dealing with tough cases out of prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917031\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917031 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A white, middled-aged woman with long, curly salt-and-pepper hair and large, black-framed glasses poses indoors in front of a framed photograph of a torn cardboard box set against a sunlit white wall. She is smiling and wears a black cardigan sweater over a dark gray T-shirt. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">UC Santa Cruz Film and Digital Media professor Sharon Daniel. \u003ccite>(Chloe Veltman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"Documentary works of art in particular have a lot of power to persuade, to change people's perceptions,\" said UC Santa Cruz film and digital media professor \u003ca href=\"https://film.ucsc.edu/faculty/sharon_daniel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sharon Daniel\u003c/a>, who co-teaches the class. \"It's a way of addressing a general public, an audience that maybe doesn't know anything about what's wrong with the criminal legal system.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel said she approached Georgetown about Young's case after she developed her own close friendship with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She first got to know him from the letters he wrote as part of the Solitary Garden project. Young went on to contribute to an \u003ca href=\"https://www.unjustlyexposed.com/\">interactive documentary Daniel made in 2020 about the impact of COVID-19 on the prison system\u003c/a> (Young said he contracted the virus in 2020 and still suffers from long COVID symptoms). The two were starting to collaborate on another long-form documentary, this time about Young's case, when Daniel heard about the Georgetown class on a podcast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Daniel reached out to the professor there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"And he [Howard] could clearly see that it was the kind of case that they really like to take on with the class,\" she said. \"Really, really tough cases — cases where there seemed like there was no hope.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cracking a tough case\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>UC Santa Cruz undergrad Allison Dean, part of the student team working on Young’s case, said she and her colleagues combed through more than 11,000 pages of legal documents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The evidence in the case was horribly mismanaged,\" she said. \"There's just so many different small pieces that led to this wrongful conviction.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917032\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917032 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A young white woman in a black turtleneck sweater with long reddish hair smiles shoulder-to-shoulder with a young white man in a blue patterned button-down shirt, mustache and glasses, also smiling, with his right arm around her shoulders. They both look happy.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">UC Santa Cruz undergrads Allison Dean and Sullivan Gaudreault. \u003ccite>(Chloe Veltman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fellow undergrad Sullivan Gaudreault said the team traveled to Tulare, where the crime was committed, and surrounding cities, to conduct interviews with as many people as they could find who were involved in the original investigation and trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We interviewed the judge who oversaw the case,\" Gaudreault said. \"We interviewed one of the lead investigators, people who knew Tim, his defense counsel.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team also created a \u003ca href=\"https://www.timothyjamesyoung.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">website\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.change.org/p/free-tim-young?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_32847146_en-US%3A7&recruiter=1259071583&recruited_by_id=dcaf1200-af78-11ec-8660-53abd4361a7d&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&share_bandit_exp=initial-32847146-en-US\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">petition\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/freetimyoung/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">social media campaign\u003c/a> to gather support for Young. Right now, they have more than 700 followers on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/freetimyoung/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Instagram\u003c/a>. The immediate goal is to get pro bono legal representation for Young as he moves through an appeal process that could overturn his conviction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11904934,news_11916767,news_11882320 label='Related Stories']A legal firm is currently reviewing the students’ media campaign to decide whether to take on the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I talk to Tim almost every day,\" Dean said. \"And probably the hardest thing is when he calls and he asks for updates. And I have no updates for him.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Georgetown-UC Santa Cruz class is part of a long tradition that dates back at least to the 1990s, of college students working to free wrongfully convicted prisoners — like \u003ca href=\"https://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/northwestern/spring99/convictions.htm\">a landmark program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and Legal Clinic\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We're always going to need heroic students,\" said Robert Dunham, executive director of the independent nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Death Penalty Information Center\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Data from the center shows just \u003ca href=\"https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence-database?state=California\">how tough it is to get someone exonerated\u003c/a>, especially in California and especially for someone on death row, where only five of the 692 people on death row have been exonerated since the early 1970s. (The state currently has a stay on executions.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There aren't enough lawyers and enough resources and enough courts with open hearts to correct all of the injustices that we see,\" Dunham said. \"So there will always be a need for people on the outside to bring attention to things that are not being corrected.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>In it for the long haul\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though the class is over, Dean and Gaudreault both said they plan to keep on fighting for Young’s freedom for as long as it takes. And their professors said they are planning for the bi-coastal collaboration to continue, with a crop of new cases next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaudreault said the class has inspired him to rethink his career path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917033\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917033 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Two young white women with long, flat hair -- one wearing a yellow scarf holding back her hair -- sit behind a video camera in a neat, clean room with a drop ceiling and fluorescent overhead lights. The walls are pink-beige with nothing but a flatscreen TV on the walls. They are dressed casually and face a man who sits facing the camera. He is white and middle-aged, with thick, neat white-and-gray hair and a white goatee. He wears dark jeans and a blue button-down shirt tucked into his jeans, knees splayed, ankles crossed, fingers interlaced in his lap. A standing light lights him from the left. The woman on the left holds a notebook on her lap and a pen in her right hand. The woman on the right, with the yellow scarf, wears jean shorts and a T-shirt and has her legs crossed and arms folded.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students re-investigated Timothy James Young's case by traveling to Tulare and interviewing as many people as they could find who were involved in the original investigation and trial. \u003ccite>(Chloe Veltman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"For the longest time, I've been wanting to go into the marketing and advertising industry,\" he said. \"I now want to pursue a career in nonprofit work and advocacy in terms of film, helping wrongfully convicted people have a voice and tell their story through digital media.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For his part, Young said he’s grateful for the students’ friendship and support. He’s optimistic their efforts will not only get him legal help, but also raise greater awareness about the urgent need to overhaul the penal system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They have committed to the long, hard fight,\" said Young. \"That's not only a testament to the kind of people that they are, but it's a testament to the kind of relationships that we build.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young is dreaming of the day when he can visit the UC Santa Cruz campus and his Solitary Garden in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I want to just be in nature,\" he said. \"I want to feel the soil running through my fingers.\"\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Incarcerated in San Quentin for the past 23 years, Timothy James Young said he had given up hope of getting out — until students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz helped kick off a campaign for his exoneration.",
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"description": "Incarcerated in San Quentin for the past 23 years, Timothy James Young said he had given up hope of getting out — until students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz helped kick off a campaign for his exoneration.",
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"headline": "How a Garden at UC Santa Cruz Led to an Exoneration Campaign for a Man on Death Row",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://ias.ucsc.edu/content/2021/solitary-garden\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Solitary Garden\u003c/a> on the UC Santa Cruz campus is a small space, 9 feet long by 6 feet wide, flanked by old-growth oaks and sweeping views of the Monterey Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a little oasis, with its bushy plantings of rosemary, daisies and agave. The dimensions of the public sculpture are intentional — it's the size of an average solitary confinement cell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Timothy James Young, the person tasked with curating the Solitary Garden, has never himself set foot on campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I am a wrongfully convicted prisoner on San Quentin's death row,\" said Young when he introduced himself at the start of a recent phone interview with KQED from the maximum security state prison in Marin County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 52-year-old, also known as \"the solitary gardener,\" is one among \u003ca href=\"https://documents.deathpenaltyinfo.org/pdf/FactSheet.pdf\">nearly 700 people on death row in California\u003c/a> — the highest number in the U.S. Young said he's been locked up for 23 years on scant evidence. With his appeal process moving at a glacial pace, Young said he had given up hope of ever getting out — until students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz came along to campaign for his innocence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My journey to freedom didn't necessarily begin until I was introduced to Solitary Garden and the folks at UC Santa Cruz,\" said Young, who's been the curator of the garden since its inception on campus three years ago, thanks to a nationwide public art project protesting solitary confinement created by multidisciplinary artist and prison reform activist \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Sumell\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jackie Sumell\u003c/a>. The campus community does the actual gardening on Young's behalf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917030\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917030 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A 9-by-6-foot raised bed on a grassy hillside has in its center three-dimensional concrete shapes that resemble a bed, a toilet, and two low pillars. On the front side is a cell door, with what indoors would be floor-to-ceiling bars. Plantings surround the concrete shapes -- low green bushes and a succulent in one corner. Beyond the plot is another low grassy hillside, oak trees and, beyond that, in the distance, the ocean. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56607_IMG-6838-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Solitary Garden at UC Santa Cruz. \u003ccite>(Chloe Veltman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sumell put Young in touch with UC Santa Cruz after he reached out to her as an admirer of her work and they struck up a correspondence. Young said he has forged deep friendships as a result of with students and faculty on campus as a result of being involved with the project. The feeling is mutual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We want everyone to understand that this is not a relationship you can just walk away from. As long as he's in that cell, we need to continue to tend to that relationship, just as we tend the garden,\" said Rachel Nelson, who commissioned the Solitary Garden in her role as director of \u003ca href=\"https://ias.ucsc.edu/\">UC Santa Cruz's Institute of the Arts and Sciences\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Journey through the system\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Young said it's been a long journey since the day of his arrest in April 1999. He said law enforcement officers pulled him over while he was leaving an Easter celebration in the San Joaquin Valley town of Lemoore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I look around and there's like assault rifles being pointed at me from every direction, and I'm just trying to figure out what the heck is going on,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The arrest happened four years after the crime Young eventually found out he was accused of committing — the murder of five people in a bar in the nearby town of Tulare — took place. Stuck in county jail, Young said he assumed the criminal legal system would work in his favor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My initial thought was, 'Well, I'm an American. I have rights. Once we get to a preliminary hearing, this case will be dismissed,'\" Young said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 723px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917035 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56597_sdfqvw-qut.jpg\" alt='A Black man with brown eyes, chin-length locs and a graying goatee sits backward on a red plastic chair. He wears a light-blue short-sleeved prison tunic and navy blue sweatpants; on the right leg are yellow, vertical letters spelling \"SONER\" (as if they are part of the word \"PRISONER\"). He rests the fingertips of his hands, including his thumbs, together as he leans forward against the back of the chair, looking straight at the camera with a confident smile. To his right is a white-painted barred door; he appears to be inside a cell.' width=\"723\" height=\"721\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56597_sdfqvw-qut.jpg 723w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56597_sdfqvw-qut-160x160.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Timothy James Young. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Timothy James Young)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The case went to trial despite shaky evidence and unreliable witnesses, including Anthony Wolfe, a man convicted of a felony who served as a paid informant in return for a reduced sentence for himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December 2005, an all-white jury convicted Young, who is Black, of murder. A month later, he was sentenced to death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I sat thinking, 'The truth will come out. Just hang in there. This will all be exposed and it’ll all be over with,'\" Young said. \"The truth \u003ci>did\u003c/i> come out. But everybody discarded it. And so 23 years later, I'm still wrongfully imprisoned and the nightmare continues.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A growing connection to students\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In recent months, a small group of film and digital media students at UC Santa Cruz has been working to make a case for exonerating Young.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/qoDy1jgVVxo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/qoDy1jgVVxo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Their eight-minute documentary, \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoDy1jgVVxo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">I Am More: The Story of Tim Young\u003c/a>,\" is the centerpiece of a new collaboration with students mostly majoring in government at \u003ca href=\"https://www.georgetown.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Georgetown University\u003c/a>, as part of a class there called \"\u003ca href=\"https://prisonsandjustice.georgetown.edu/news/wrongful-convictions-making-an-exoneree-2022/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Making an Exoneree\u003c/a>.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014RcN6AAK/marc-howard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marc Howard,\u003c/a> professor of government and law at Georgetown, said that since the class launched in 2018, it has contributed to the exonerations of three wrongfully convicted people out of the 25 cases it has tackled so far. He and his students typically take on five cases a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What started out as an experiment has actually turned into an extraordinary machine for justice,\" Howard said. \"We have another prison release in the coming weeks. We may have another one still this year. And we've made great progress in a number of cases where the person initially had very little hope and we've at least helped them to obtain legal counsel.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now with enhanced creative input from UC Santa Cruz on the filmmaking side for the first time this year, the schools joined forces to help get more people dealing with tough cases out of prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917031\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917031 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A white, middled-aged woman with long, curly salt-and-pepper hair and large, black-framed glasses poses indoors in front of a framed photograph of a torn cardboard box set against a sunlit white wall. She is smiling and wears a black cardigan sweater over a dark gray T-shirt. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56604_IMG-6827-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">UC Santa Cruz Film and Digital Media professor Sharon Daniel. \u003ccite>(Chloe Veltman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"Documentary works of art in particular have a lot of power to persuade, to change people's perceptions,\" said UC Santa Cruz film and digital media professor \u003ca href=\"https://film.ucsc.edu/faculty/sharon_daniel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sharon Daniel\u003c/a>, who co-teaches the class. \"It's a way of addressing a general public, an audience that maybe doesn't know anything about what's wrong with the criminal legal system.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel said she approached Georgetown about Young's case after she developed her own close friendship with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She first got to know him from the letters he wrote as part of the Solitary Garden project. Young went on to contribute to an \u003ca href=\"https://www.unjustlyexposed.com/\">interactive documentary Daniel made in 2020 about the impact of COVID-19 on the prison system\u003c/a> (Young said he contracted the virus in 2020 and still suffers from long COVID symptoms). The two were starting to collaborate on another long-form documentary, this time about Young's case, when Daniel heard about the Georgetown class on a podcast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Daniel reached out to the professor there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"And he [Howard] could clearly see that it was the kind of case that they really like to take on with the class,\" she said. \"Really, really tough cases — cases where there seemed like there was no hope.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cracking a tough case\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>UC Santa Cruz undergrad Allison Dean, part of the student team working on Young’s case, said she and her colleagues combed through more than 11,000 pages of legal documents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The evidence in the case was horribly mismanaged,\" she said. \"There's just so many different small pieces that led to this wrongful conviction.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917032\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917032 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A young white woman in a black turtleneck sweater with long reddish hair smiles shoulder-to-shoulder with a young white man in a blue patterned button-down shirt, mustache and glasses, also smiling, with his right arm around her shoulders. They both look happy.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56603_IMG-6826-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">UC Santa Cruz undergrads Allison Dean and Sullivan Gaudreault. \u003ccite>(Chloe Veltman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fellow undergrad Sullivan Gaudreault said the team traveled to Tulare, where the crime was committed, and surrounding cities, to conduct interviews with as many people as they could find who were involved in the original investigation and trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We interviewed the judge who oversaw the case,\" Gaudreault said. \"We interviewed one of the lead investigators, people who knew Tim, his defense counsel.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team also created a \u003ca href=\"https://www.timothyjamesyoung.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">website\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.change.org/p/free-tim-young?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_32847146_en-US%3A7&recruiter=1259071583&recruited_by_id=dcaf1200-af78-11ec-8660-53abd4361a7d&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&share_bandit_exp=initial-32847146-en-US\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">petition\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/freetimyoung/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">social media campaign\u003c/a> to gather support for Young. Right now, they have more than 700 followers on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/freetimyoung/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Instagram\u003c/a>. The immediate goal is to get pro bono legal representation for Young as he moves through an appeal process that could overturn his conviction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A legal firm is currently reviewing the students’ media campaign to decide whether to take on the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I talk to Tim almost every day,\" Dean said. \"And probably the hardest thing is when he calls and he asks for updates. And I have no updates for him.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Georgetown-UC Santa Cruz class is part of a long tradition that dates back at least to the 1990s, of college students working to free wrongfully convicted prisoners — like \u003ca href=\"https://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/northwestern/spring99/convictions.htm\">a landmark program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and Legal Clinic\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We're always going to need heroic students,\" said Robert Dunham, executive director of the independent nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Death Penalty Information Center\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Data from the center shows just \u003ca href=\"https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence-database?state=California\">how tough it is to get someone exonerated\u003c/a>, especially in California and especially for someone on death row, where only five of the 692 people on death row have been exonerated since the early 1970s. (The state currently has a stay on executions.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There aren't enough lawyers and enough resources and enough courts with open hearts to correct all of the injustices that we see,\" Dunham said. \"So there will always be a need for people on the outside to bring attention to things that are not being corrected.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>In it for the long haul\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though the class is over, Dean and Gaudreault both said they plan to keep on fighting for Young’s freedom for as long as it takes. And their professors said they are planning for the bi-coastal collaboration to continue, with a crop of new cases next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaudreault said the class has inspired him to rethink his career path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917033\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11917033 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Two young white women with long, flat hair -- one wearing a yellow scarf holding back her hair -- sit behind a video camera in a neat, clean room with a drop ceiling and fluorescent overhead lights. The walls are pink-beige with nothing but a flatscreen TV on the walls. They are dressed casually and face a man who sits facing the camera. He is white and middle-aged, with thick, neat white-and-gray hair and a white goatee. He wears dark jeans and a blue button-down shirt tucked into his jeans, knees splayed, ankles crossed, fingers interlaced in his lap. A standing light lights him from the left. The woman on the left holds a notebook on her lap and a pen in her right hand. The woman on the right, with the yellow scarf, wears jean shorts and a T-shirt and has her legs crossed and arms folded.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56601_MAE-Tulare-Trip-Photos-16-of-55-qut-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students re-investigated Timothy James Young's case by traveling to Tulare and interviewing as many people as they could find who were involved in the original investigation and trial. \u003ccite>(Chloe Veltman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"For the longest time, I've been wanting to go into the marketing and advertising industry,\" he said. \"I now want to pursue a career in nonprofit work and advocacy in terms of film, helping wrongfully convicted people have a voice and tell their story through digital media.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For his part, Young said he’s grateful for the students’ friendship and support. He’s optimistic their efforts will not only get him legal help, but also raise greater awareness about the urgent need to overhaul the penal system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They have committed to the long, hard fight,\" said Young. \"That's not only a testament to the kind of people that they are, but it's a testament to the kind of relationships that we build.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young is dreaming of the day when he can visit the UC Santa Cruz campus and his Solitary Garden in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I want to just be in nature,\" he said. \"I want to feel the soil running through my fingers.\"\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "ICE Misusing Solitary Confinement for COVID-19 Quarantine, Detainees Say",
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"headTitle": "ICE Misusing Solitary Confinement for COVID-19 Quarantine, Detainees Say | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Alton Edmondson is no longer in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the Jamaican construction worker can’t shake off the feeling of being locked up alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As COVID-19 sickened dozens of people at a for-profit immigration detention center in Bakersfield this summer, staffers put Edmondson in isolation for weeks, including placing him in a cell used for disciplinary segregation that detainees call “the hole,” court records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE officials said Edmondson, who repeatedly tested negative for the coronavirus, was being quarantined and housed apart from other detainees for his own protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Elizabeth Jordan, civil rights attorney\"]‘This is really dangerous because it places a serious strain on people’s mental health.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to Edmondson, the three-week isolation he said he experienced amounted to punishing solitary confinement. Officials at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center locked him up for about 23 hours per day, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was depressed. I felt helpless,” said Edmondson, who has lived in this country for nearly 20 years and has three U.S.-born sons. “They served me food through a hole in the door. They made me feel like I’m a terrorist or a murderer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson’s experience is echoed by other ICE detainees, whose reports to advocates and in court records suggest widespread use of solitary confinement as COVID-19 proliferated in immigration detention centers around the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Based on evidence we’ve gathered, this is the practice that they are allowing their contractors to use,” said Elizabeth Jordan, an attorney with the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center in Denver, who represents plaintiffs in \u003ca href=\"https://creeclaw.org/fraihat-v-immigration-and-customs-enforcement/\">Fraihat v. ICE\u003c/a>, a class-action lawsuit challenging ICE detention conditions, including the use of punitive segregation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is really dangerous because it places a serious strain on people’s mental health,” added Jordan, who said those held in solitary confinement conditions include some immigrants who were sick with COVID-19. “It’s not what public health officials have in mind when they suggest separating people out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The coronavirus has infected more than 6,300 immigrants held by ICE, including hundreds in California, according to the agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE requires that immigrants kept in isolation for medical reasons must not be treated as if they are in solitary confinement, even if placed in the same cells used for disciplinary reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But detainees report being locked by themselves for more than 20 hours a day as a means of quarantine during the pandemic, advocates say, and some immigrants refuse to disclose their COVID-19 symptoms out of fear of being thrown in “the hole.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Week in a Windowless Cell With No Bed\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 4, at least six men at Mesa Verde’s Dorm B were confirmed to have the coronavirus, and staffers cleared the dorm to house only positive cases. Edmondson expected guards to move him to one of three other dorms in the facility with other detainees who had tested negative. Instead, they took him to an intake cell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The windowless room, used by staff to interview new detainees, was very small, with a toilet but no bed, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was horrible. I didn’t want to be there,” Edmondson said. “No fresh air. I’ve never been in a place like that for so long in my life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guards brought in a TV and DVD-player for Edmondson to watch movies on. But he was forced to sleep on a mat on the floor and had no access to the commissary, which he depended on to comply with his plant-based, Rastafarian diet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People must not be kept in such a hold room for more than 12 hours, according to ICE’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/2-6.pdf\">standards\u003c/a>. But Edmondson said officials left him there for seven days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, guards confined him in a Restricted Housing Unit (known as a RHU) for two more weeks, according to ICE reports to a district court in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson said he only had his Bible to read. Sometimes, he stood by a small window on his cell’s metal door to watch a TV in the hall outside, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immigration officials did not explain why he could not live in a dorm with others who had also tested negative, according to Edmondson and his attorney.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The GEO Group, which owns and operates Mesa Verde, referred questions to ICE. An ICE spokesman declined to comment on Edmondson’s case.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>More ICE Detainees Isolated During Pandemic\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Since June, ICE facilities have been isolating detainees with coronavirus symptoms and placing new arrivals in quarantine for 14 days, according to the agency’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/coronavirus\">guidance on COVID-19\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But detainees are usually housed in dorms; most detention centers only have a few units where people can be isolated for disciplinary or other reasons, such as medical isolation, according to advocates and researchers who have visited ICE facilities in California and other states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mesa Verde, where Edmondson was detained, has at least one medical isolation room and at least one intake cell, and three RHUs that have been generally full since August, when ICE began reporting on the facility’s COVID-19 outbreak to a district court. The facility has a maximum capacity of 400 detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11841232\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 840px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11841232 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1.jpg 840w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1-160x90.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Drone-captured footage shows detainees on a hunger strike forming a heart in the yard of Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in April in protest over the facility’s coronavirus response. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kern Youth Abolitionists)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>ICE requires that during the pandemic, individuals quarantined in cells used for solitary confinement get regular visits from medical staff, and have access to mental health services and other benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Make efforts to provide similar access to radio, TV, reading materials, personal property, and commissary as would be available in individuals’ regular housing units,” reads the agency’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/coronavirus/prr\">Pandemic Response Requirements\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But advocates say that has not been happening. As part of the Fraihat case, Jordan presented a federal court in Los Angeles with sworn declarations from two men held in solitary confinement during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 28, Oscar Perez Aguirre returned to the Aurora Contract Detention Facility in Colorado from a local hospital where he was treated for COVID-19. He said he was held for two weeks in a solitary confinement unit that was filthy and freezing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perez Aguirre said he was so sick he couldn’t stand up, but he was not seen by a doctor or a mental health staffer while in isolation. A nurse did come by daily to take his temperature and blood pressure, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While I was in disciplinary segregation … I felt really down and did not have anything to do,” said Perez Aguirre, 57. “I asked for cards (to pass the time) and was told I could not have any.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ruben Mencias Soto had a similar experience in May after he was treated for chest pain at a hospital and returned to California’s largest immigrant detention center in the Inland Empire city of Adelanto. A COVID-19 outbreak at the privately run facility has already infected more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/coronavirus\">120 detainees\u003c/a> and is growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am locked in a cell by myself approximately 23 hours a day,” said Mencias Soto, 37. “I am very worried that I am going to have more heart issues and I will die without them noticing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the Aurora and Adelanto detention facilities are also run by The GEO Group, the Florida-based private prison firm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ICE spokesman declined to comment on the court declarations by Mencias Soto or Perez Aguirre about their quarantine, citing the lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot comment further due to pending litigation,” said ICE spokesman Jonathan Moor in a statement. “However, lack of comment should not be construed as agreement with or stipulation to any of the litigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants \u003ca href=\"https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/covid19\">reports\u003c/a> that dozens of people detained at several ICE facilities have called the organization’s hotline saying they were afraid to disclose COVID-19 symptoms for fear of being isolated. Other callers who tested positive said they were held for 14 days in solitary confinement without appropriate medical care, according to the organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"related coverage\" tag=\"ice-detention\"]“COVID-19 has exacerbated issues that have long existed within the U.S. immigration detention system, which has had an impact on the mental health of those in custody,” said Rebekah Entralgo, a spokeswoman for the organization, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Resources like phone calls, outside recreational time, and timely meals — which are difficult to come by even under normal circumstances — are severely limited during the pandemic, which adds to the isolation of immigration detention,” Entralgo added.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Suicide in Quarantine\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The United Nations has argued that prolonged solitary confinement for more than 15 days should be banned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The practice should never be used on juveniles or people with mental disabilities because it can amount to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” Juan Méndez, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, \u003ca href=\"https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/392012-solitary-confinement-should-be-banned-most-cases-un-expert-says\">warned in 2011\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The stress and suffering of solitary confinement can also lead to the onset or worsening of mental illness, researchers say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strain of isolation was particularly detrimental to Choung Woong Ahn, a detainee who committed suicide at the Mesa Verde detention center in May, according to his attorney Trevor Kosmo, with Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ahn, a 74-year-old man from South Korea, killed himself in the shower of a medical isolation unit while in quarantine after he returned from a hospital. ICE knew Ahn had a history of \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/reports/ddrAHNChoungWoong.pdf\">suicide attempts\u003c/a>, Kosmo said, but failed to continuously \u003ca href=\"https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2020/08/07/family-asks-newsom-probe-choung-woohn-ahn-suicide-ice-mesa-verde/5504694002/\">monitor him\u003c/a>, as required for at-risk detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe that my client, Mr. Ahn, died due to ICE’s negligence,” Kosmo said. “And because they quarantined him in solitary confinement without giving him the one-on-one observation that he was required to have under their own detention standards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kosmo, who also represents Alton Edmondson, said ICE does not need to lock up people who are awaiting immigration court hearings, and the pandemic has highlighted long-standing problems with detention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s completely inhumane to put people in a windowless room for 23 hours to quarantine them,” he said. “If they can’t properly quarantine them, they need to release everyone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ahn’s family and Edmondson could both sue The GEO Group under a new California law signed last month by Gov. Gavin Newsom. \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB3228\">AB 3228\u003c/a> makes it easier for individuals to bring legal charges in state court against private detention companies for failing to abide by the terms of their contracts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters of AB 3228 say the new law provides a path to state-level accountability for violations of ICE’s standards at for-profit facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>ICE’s History With Solitary Confinement\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Concerns about ICE’s use of solitary confinement predate the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A recent congressional \u003ca href=\"https://homeland.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Homeland%20ICE%20facility%20staff%20report.pdf\">investigation\u003c/a> found that ICE regularly contracts with facilities that are “poorly equipped” to meet the agency’s detention guidelines, and that ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, rarely enforce corrections of identified problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report by the House Committee on Homeland Security also found that detainees are often denied adequate medical and mental health care, and that ICE facilities “improperly use segregation as retaliation,” sometimes on detainees who have participated in hunger strikes to protest detention conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unfortunately, ICE appears to prioritize obtaining bed space over the wellbeing of detainees in its custody,” concluded the committee staffers who visited eight detention centers, including two in California and interviewed more than 400 immigrants held there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ICE spokeswoman defended the agency and said it will review the committee’s report. She added that ICE’s “aggressive inspections program” includes targeted site visits and independent third-party compliance reviews, and that the agency has made improvements to detention conditions based on recommendations by the DHS Office of the Inspector General.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE “is fully committed to the health and safety of those in our care,” said Stacey Daniels, who directs public affairs at the agency. “However, it is clear this one-sided review of our facilities was done to tarnish our agency’s reputation, as opposed to actually reviewing the care detainees receive while in our custody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE refers to the practice of isolating a detainee from the general population as “segregation,” and allows it for disciplinary or other reasons, including for a vulnerable detainee’s own protection. Facility administrators are required to notify ICE field office directors when detainees are segregated for 14 days or longer, according to the agency’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/2-12.pdf\">standards\u003c/a>.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Caitlin Patler, UC Davis sociology professor\"]‘It’s a really, really punitive experience, regardless of the reason for someone’s placement into solitary confinement.’[/pullquote]Between 2013 to 2017, ICE facilities nationwide logged more than 5,300 cases of segregation that lasted two weeks or more, according to Caitlin Patler, an assistant professor of sociology at UC Davis who analyzed the incident reports. One person was isolated for more than two years, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a really, really punitive experience, regardless of the reason for someone’s placement into solitary confinement,” Patler said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patler was troubled to find that people with mental illness were overrepresented in ICE segregation cases. And immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean — with majority Black populations — experienced a quarter of all the incidents, though they comprised only 4% of the detainee population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There might be some really problematic racialized practices happening within detention facilities where a situation involving a Black detained person results in solitary confinement much more frequently than we would expect based on their portion of the detained population,” said Patler, who co-authored a \u003ca href=\"https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/zdy7f/\">study\u003c/a> on the issue soon to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Punishment and Society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ICE spokesman declined to comment on Patler’s findings, saying they haven’t been published yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11841227\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11841227\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1294\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1-800x539.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1-1020x687.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1-1536x1035.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A guard escorts an immigrant detainee from his ‘segregation cell’ back into the general population at the Adelanto Detention Center. \u003ccite>(John Moore/Getty images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>ICE is currently jailing about \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/detention-management\">20,000 people\u003c/a> across the country, compared to about 38,000 immigrants who were in custody in late March. About half of those detained have criminal convictions, while the rest have pending criminal charges or have only violated immigration laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>From Plea Deal to Detention\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Alton Edmondson had been jailed for 14 months in Nevada County, California, when he pled guilty to a serious felony conviction for assault with a firearm during a robbery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout his criminal proceedings, Edmondson, who is Black, insisted that he was wrongly accused of the offense. He maintains his arrest stemmed from a racially-motivated traffic stop in a county where only about 1% of the population is Black.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The criminal court had granted him bail, but he and his family could not afford to pay it, he said, and he remained behind bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The whole thing was racial profiling,” said Edmondson, who was visiting a friend in California when he was arrested. “I was innocent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When they arrested Edmondson in Nov. 2018, sheriff’s deputies did not find a firearm in the vehicle he was in, and the charges were filed based on a dubious eyewitness identification, according to court documents submitted by San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. The office sued, along with the ACLU and other legal aid nonprofits, to force ICE to release vulnerable detainees from Mesa Verde during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson was told that if he lost his criminal trial, he faced up to 12 years of incarceration, but if he took the plea deal, he would be let out in four months, court records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because of the racial demographics of the county, and pervasive racial bias among the likely juror pool, his attorney advised that his chances of winning at trial were slim,” according to the request for Edmond’s release from ICE detention filed by Genna Beier, a San Francisco deputy public defender.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 26, as Edmondson was released from the Nevada County Jail, ICE officials arrested him and detained him at Mesa Verde.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson said he didn’t understand at the time that pleading guilty to the felony would lead to deportation proceedings and losing his green card, which has allowed him to lawfully work and live in the U.S. for nearly 20 years. But ICE disputes that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He signed an agreement acknowledging that he understood the nature of the crimes and allegations and the consequences of his plea,” said agency officials opposing his release, adding that Edmondson had two prior misdemeanor offenses related to marijuana possession and a DUI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But on Sept. 23, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ordered ICE to release Edmondson, who has asthma, along with more than 140 other detainees at Mesa Verde, where COVID-19 has infected nearly 60 detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chhabria’s release orders weigh each person’s health risk in detention against the likelihood that he or she will endanger the community or will fail to show up for immigration court proceedings if released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson is quarantining at a hotel in Bakersfield until Oct. 7, following the judge’s orders. He then plans to go home to Georgia, where two of his three sons live. The youngest is just 6, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel great, I feel freedom,” he said. “I want to see my kids. Missed them a lot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson said he hopes that talking about his experience of isolation at Mesa Verde will make ICE detention more humane for others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s not right the way they treated me,” he said. “I think it’s very important for people to hear my story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Alton Edmondson is no longer in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the Jamaican construction worker can’t shake off the feeling of being locked up alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As COVID-19 sickened dozens of people at a for-profit immigration detention center in Bakersfield this summer, staffers put Edmondson in isolation for weeks, including placing him in a cell used for disciplinary segregation that detainees call “the hole,” court records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE officials said Edmondson, who repeatedly tested negative for the coronavirus, was being quarantined and housed apart from other detainees for his own protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to Edmondson, the three-week isolation he said he experienced amounted to punishing solitary confinement. Officials at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center locked him up for about 23 hours per day, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was depressed. I felt helpless,” said Edmondson, who has lived in this country for nearly 20 years and has three U.S.-born sons. “They served me food through a hole in the door. They made me feel like I’m a terrorist or a murderer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson’s experience is echoed by other ICE detainees, whose reports to advocates and in court records suggest widespread use of solitary confinement as COVID-19 proliferated in immigration detention centers around the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Based on evidence we’ve gathered, this is the practice that they are allowing their contractors to use,” said Elizabeth Jordan, an attorney with the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center in Denver, who represents plaintiffs in \u003ca href=\"https://creeclaw.org/fraihat-v-immigration-and-customs-enforcement/\">Fraihat v. ICE\u003c/a>, a class-action lawsuit challenging ICE detention conditions, including the use of punitive segregation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is really dangerous because it places a serious strain on people’s mental health,” added Jordan, who said those held in solitary confinement conditions include some immigrants who were sick with COVID-19. “It’s not what public health officials have in mind when they suggest separating people out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The coronavirus has infected more than 6,300 immigrants held by ICE, including hundreds in California, according to the agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE requires that immigrants kept in isolation for medical reasons must not be treated as if they are in solitary confinement, even if placed in the same cells used for disciplinary reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But detainees report being locked by themselves for more than 20 hours a day as a means of quarantine during the pandemic, advocates say, and some immigrants refuse to disclose their COVID-19 symptoms out of fear of being thrown in “the hole.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Week in a Windowless Cell With No Bed\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 4, at least six men at Mesa Verde’s Dorm B were confirmed to have the coronavirus, and staffers cleared the dorm to house only positive cases. Edmondson expected guards to move him to one of three other dorms in the facility with other detainees who had tested negative. Instead, they took him to an intake cell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The windowless room, used by staff to interview new detainees, was very small, with a toilet but no bed, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was horrible. I didn’t want to be there,” Edmondson said. “No fresh air. I’ve never been in a place like that for so long in my life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guards brought in a TV and DVD-player for Edmondson to watch movies on. But he was forced to sleep on a mat on the floor and had no access to the commissary, which he depended on to comply with his plant-based, Rastafarian diet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People must not be kept in such a hold room for more than 12 hours, according to ICE’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/2-6.pdf\">standards\u003c/a>. But Edmondson said officials left him there for seven days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, guards confined him in a Restricted Housing Unit (known as a RHU) for two more weeks, according to ICE reports to a district court in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson said he only had his Bible to read. Sometimes, he stood by a small window on his cell’s metal door to watch a TV in the hall outside, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immigration officials did not explain why he could not live in a dorm with others who had also tested negative, according to Edmondson and his attorney.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The GEO Group, which owns and operates Mesa Verde, referred questions to ICE. An ICE spokesman declined to comment on Edmondson’s case.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>More ICE Detainees Isolated During Pandemic\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Since June, ICE facilities have been isolating detainees with coronavirus symptoms and placing new arrivals in quarantine for 14 days, according to the agency’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/coronavirus\">guidance on COVID-19\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But detainees are usually housed in dorms; most detention centers only have a few units where people can be isolated for disciplinary or other reasons, such as medical isolation, according to advocates and researchers who have visited ICE facilities in California and other states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mesa Verde, where Edmondson was detained, has at least one medical isolation room and at least one intake cell, and three RHUs that have been generally full since August, when ICE began reporting on the facility’s COVID-19 outbreak to a district court. The facility has a maximum capacity of 400 detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11841232\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 840px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11841232 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1.jpg 840w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS44334_IMG-20200810-WA0001_104405150868869-1-160x90.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Drone-captured footage shows detainees on a hunger strike forming a heart in the yard of Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in April in protest over the facility’s coronavirus response. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kern Youth Abolitionists)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>ICE requires that during the pandemic, individuals quarantined in cells used for solitary confinement get regular visits from medical staff, and have access to mental health services and other benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Make efforts to provide similar access to radio, TV, reading materials, personal property, and commissary as would be available in individuals’ regular housing units,” reads the agency’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/coronavirus/prr\">Pandemic Response Requirements\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But advocates say that has not been happening. As part of the Fraihat case, Jordan presented a federal court in Los Angeles with sworn declarations from two men held in solitary confinement during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 28, Oscar Perez Aguirre returned to the Aurora Contract Detention Facility in Colorado from a local hospital where he was treated for COVID-19. He said he was held for two weeks in a solitary confinement unit that was filthy and freezing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perez Aguirre said he was so sick he couldn’t stand up, but he was not seen by a doctor or a mental health staffer while in isolation. A nurse did come by daily to take his temperature and blood pressure, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While I was in disciplinary segregation … I felt really down and did not have anything to do,” said Perez Aguirre, 57. “I asked for cards (to pass the time) and was told I could not have any.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ruben Mencias Soto had a similar experience in May after he was treated for chest pain at a hospital and returned to California’s largest immigrant detention center in the Inland Empire city of Adelanto. A COVID-19 outbreak at the privately run facility has already infected more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/coronavirus\">120 detainees\u003c/a> and is growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am locked in a cell by myself approximately 23 hours a day,” said Mencias Soto, 37. “I am very worried that I am going to have more heart issues and I will die without them noticing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the Aurora and Adelanto detention facilities are also run by The GEO Group, the Florida-based private prison firm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ICE spokesman declined to comment on the court declarations by Mencias Soto or Perez Aguirre about their quarantine, citing the lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot comment further due to pending litigation,” said ICE spokesman Jonathan Moor in a statement. “However, lack of comment should not be construed as agreement with or stipulation to any of the litigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants \u003ca href=\"https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/covid19\">reports\u003c/a> that dozens of people detained at several ICE facilities have called the organization’s hotline saying they were afraid to disclose COVID-19 symptoms for fear of being isolated. Other callers who tested positive said they were held for 14 days in solitary confinement without appropriate medical care, according to the organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“COVID-19 has exacerbated issues that have long existed within the U.S. immigration detention system, which has had an impact on the mental health of those in custody,” said Rebekah Entralgo, a spokeswoman for the organization, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Resources like phone calls, outside recreational time, and timely meals — which are difficult to come by even under normal circumstances — are severely limited during the pandemic, which adds to the isolation of immigration detention,” Entralgo added.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Suicide in Quarantine\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The United Nations has argued that prolonged solitary confinement for more than 15 days should be banned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The practice should never be used on juveniles or people with mental disabilities because it can amount to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” Juan Méndez, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, \u003ca href=\"https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/392012-solitary-confinement-should-be-banned-most-cases-un-expert-says\">warned in 2011\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The stress and suffering of solitary confinement can also lead to the onset or worsening of mental illness, researchers say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strain of isolation was particularly detrimental to Choung Woong Ahn, a detainee who committed suicide at the Mesa Verde detention center in May, according to his attorney Trevor Kosmo, with Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ahn, a 74-year-old man from South Korea, killed himself in the shower of a medical isolation unit while in quarantine after he returned from a hospital. ICE knew Ahn had a history of \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/reports/ddrAHNChoungWoong.pdf\">suicide attempts\u003c/a>, Kosmo said, but failed to continuously \u003ca href=\"https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2020/08/07/family-asks-newsom-probe-choung-woohn-ahn-suicide-ice-mesa-verde/5504694002/\">monitor him\u003c/a>, as required for at-risk detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe that my client, Mr. Ahn, died due to ICE’s negligence,” Kosmo said. “And because they quarantined him in solitary confinement without giving him the one-on-one observation that he was required to have under their own detention standards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kosmo, who also represents Alton Edmondson, said ICE does not need to lock up people who are awaiting immigration court hearings, and the pandemic has highlighted long-standing problems with detention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s completely inhumane to put people in a windowless room for 23 hours to quarantine them,” he said. “If they can’t properly quarantine them, they need to release everyone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ahn’s family and Edmondson could both sue The GEO Group under a new California law signed last month by Gov. Gavin Newsom. \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB3228\">AB 3228\u003c/a> makes it easier for individuals to bring legal charges in state court against private detention companies for failing to abide by the terms of their contracts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters of AB 3228 say the new law provides a path to state-level accountability for violations of ICE’s standards at for-profit facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>ICE’s History With Solitary Confinement\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Concerns about ICE’s use of solitary confinement predate the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A recent congressional \u003ca href=\"https://homeland.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Homeland%20ICE%20facility%20staff%20report.pdf\">investigation\u003c/a> found that ICE regularly contracts with facilities that are “poorly equipped” to meet the agency’s detention guidelines, and that ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, rarely enforce corrections of identified problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report by the House Committee on Homeland Security also found that detainees are often denied adequate medical and mental health care, and that ICE facilities “improperly use segregation as retaliation,” sometimes on detainees who have participated in hunger strikes to protest detention conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unfortunately, ICE appears to prioritize obtaining bed space over the wellbeing of detainees in its custody,” concluded the committee staffers who visited eight detention centers, including two in California and interviewed more than 400 immigrants held there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ICE spokeswoman defended the agency and said it will review the committee’s report. She added that ICE’s “aggressive inspections program” includes targeted site visits and independent third-party compliance reviews, and that the agency has made improvements to detention conditions based on recommendations by the DHS Office of the Inspector General.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE “is fully committed to the health and safety of those in our care,” said Stacey Daniels, who directs public affairs at the agency. “However, it is clear this one-sided review of our facilities was done to tarnish our agency’s reputation, as opposed to actually reviewing the care detainees receive while in our custody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ICE refers to the practice of isolating a detainee from the general population as “segregation,” and allows it for disciplinary or other reasons, including for a vulnerable detainee’s own protection. Facility administrators are required to notify ICE field office directors when detainees are segregated for 14 days or longer, according to the agency’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/2-12.pdf\">standards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘It’s a really, really punitive experience, regardless of the reason for someone’s placement into solitary confinement.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Between 2013 to 2017, ICE facilities nationwide logged more than 5,300 cases of segregation that lasted two weeks or more, according to Caitlin Patler, an assistant professor of sociology at UC Davis who analyzed the incident reports. One person was isolated for more than two years, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a really, really punitive experience, regardless of the reason for someone’s placement into solitary confinement,” Patler said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patler was troubled to find that people with mental illness were overrepresented in ICE segregation cases. And immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean — with majority Black populations — experienced a quarter of all the incidents, though they comprised only 4% of the detainee population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There might be some really problematic racialized practices happening within detention facilities where a situation involving a Black detained person results in solitary confinement much more frequently than we would expect based on their portion of the detained population,” said Patler, who co-authored a \u003ca href=\"https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/zdy7f/\">study\u003c/a> on the issue soon to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Punishment and Society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ICE spokesman declined to comment on Patler’s findings, saying they haven’t been published yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11841227\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11841227\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1294\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1-800x539.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1-1020x687.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS22944_GettyImages-450371255-qut-1-1536x1035.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A guard escorts an immigrant detainee from his ‘segregation cell’ back into the general population at the Adelanto Detention Center. \u003ccite>(John Moore/Getty images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>ICE is currently jailing about \u003ca href=\"https://www.ice.gov/detention-management\">20,000 people\u003c/a> across the country, compared to about 38,000 immigrants who were in custody in late March. About half of those detained have criminal convictions, while the rest have pending criminal charges or have only violated immigration laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>From Plea Deal to Detention\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Alton Edmondson had been jailed for 14 months in Nevada County, California, when he pled guilty to a serious felony conviction for assault with a firearm during a robbery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout his criminal proceedings, Edmondson, who is Black, insisted that he was wrongly accused of the offense. He maintains his arrest stemmed from a racially-motivated traffic stop in a county where only about 1% of the population is Black.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The criminal court had granted him bail, but he and his family could not afford to pay it, he said, and he remained behind bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The whole thing was racial profiling,” said Edmondson, who was visiting a friend in California when he was arrested. “I was innocent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When they arrested Edmondson in Nov. 2018, sheriff’s deputies did not find a firearm in the vehicle he was in, and the charges were filed based on a dubious eyewitness identification, according to court documents submitted by San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. The office sued, along with the ACLU and other legal aid nonprofits, to force ICE to release vulnerable detainees from Mesa Verde during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson was told that if he lost his criminal trial, he faced up to 12 years of incarceration, but if he took the plea deal, he would be let out in four months, court records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because of the racial demographics of the county, and pervasive racial bias among the likely juror pool, his attorney advised that his chances of winning at trial were slim,” according to the request for Edmond’s release from ICE detention filed by Genna Beier, a San Francisco deputy public defender.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 26, as Edmondson was released from the Nevada County Jail, ICE officials arrested him and detained him at Mesa Verde.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson said he didn’t understand at the time that pleading guilty to the felony would lead to deportation proceedings and losing his green card, which has allowed him to lawfully work and live in the U.S. for nearly 20 years. But ICE disputes that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He signed an agreement acknowledging that he understood the nature of the crimes and allegations and the consequences of his plea,” said agency officials opposing his release, adding that Edmondson had two prior misdemeanor offenses related to marijuana possession and a DUI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But on Sept. 23, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ordered ICE to release Edmondson, who has asthma, along with more than 140 other detainees at Mesa Verde, where COVID-19 has infected nearly 60 detainees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chhabria’s release orders weigh each person’s health risk in detention against the likelihood that he or she will endanger the community or will fail to show up for immigration court proceedings if released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson is quarantining at a hotel in Bakersfield until Oct. 7, following the judge’s orders. He then plans to go home to Georgia, where two of his three sons live. The youngest is just 6, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel great, I feel freedom,” he said. “I want to see my kids. Missed them a lot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson said he hopes that talking about his experience of isolation at Mesa Verde will make ICE detention more humane for others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s not right the way they treated me,” he said. “I think it’s very important for people to hear my story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Northern California Jails Use Kinder Approach to Solitary Confinement",
"title": "Northern California Jails Use Kinder Approach to Solitary Confinement",
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"content": "\u003cp>An inmate in solitary confinement at a California jail was refusing to leave his cell. The jailers' usual response: Send an “extraction team” of corrections officers to burst into the cell and drag him out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not in Contra Costa County, one of three in the state using a kinder, gentler approach in response to inmate lawsuits, a policy change that experts say could be a national model for reducing the use of isolation cells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the inmate was asked: \"What if we gave you a couple extra cookies and another sandwich? Would you move?” recalled Don Specter, the nonprofit Prison Law Office director who negotiated the new policies. “He said yes. ... They were like, ‘Wow.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a quarter of U.S. states and numerous smaller jurisdictions are looking for ways to reduce the use of solitary confinement, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, which encourages alternatives to a practice behavioral experts say is dehumanizing and can worsen mental illness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new policies in California came after Specter’s firm sued seven of California’s 58 counties, alleging that conditions had grown inhumane as jails absorbed inmates who previously would have served their sentences in state prisons. The state in 2011 began sending less serious offenders to local jails for years at a time to ease crowding in state penitentiaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some jurisdictions nationwide are banning isolation for young offenders, pregnant women or those with mental health diagnoses. The California counties’ approach of generally limiting it to those who engage in continued violent behavior has dramatically reduced the number of inmates in isolation and the length of time they stay there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contra Costa started 2019 with about 100 people in solitary, most jailsfor more than a year. It had just three in isolation cells by December, after officials began using the new approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Rick Raemisch, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections\"]'Think of yourself being in a cell the size of a parking space for 23 hours a day. At a minimum you’re going to get angry, and when you get angry you’re going to fight back.'[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sacramento County also is following the policy pioneered by Santa Clara County, while Fresno County is considering it. Among other things, it encourages the use of low-cost incentives to reward good behavior, like the opportunity to listen to the radio, watch a movie or get an extra snack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sacramento County has cut its isolated population roughly in half, to about 60 inmates, said Lt. Alex McCamy: “It’s a limited time frame and a limited group, but the initial impression is positive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rick Raemisch, who restricted the use of solitary confinement when he headed Colorado’s prison system, said the violent, tense, dirty conditions in Santa Clara County's jail improved markedly with the new policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Think of yourself being in a cell the size of a parking space for 23 hours a day,” said Raemisch, who consulted with county officials. “At a minimum you’re going to get angry, and when you get angry you’re going to fight back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inmates nationwide are most often segregated for nonviolent “nuisance infractions” like smoking, cursing, disobeying orders or having unauthorized items from the commissary, said the Vera Institute’s Sara Sullivan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Santa Clara County once locked a woman in solitary confinement for 2 1/2 years for talking back to correctional officers or yelling and banging on her cell door with other detainees, according to Specter's lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California counties’ new policy of restricting its use to continued violent behavior could be seen as a national pilot program, Sullivan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside tag=\"solitary-confinement\" label=\"Related coverage\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Jersey's Middlesex County Adult Correction Center has lowered the number of isolated inmates and the time they spend there, she said, but with a different approach that lets inmates out of their cells more frequently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Hampden County Correctional Center in Massachusetts increased its use of alternative sanctions and positive reinforcement. And Cook County, Illinois, no longer keeps troublesome inmates in isolation, allowing them to regularly spend time with about a half-dozen other inmates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been a decades-long effort to reform solitary, especially in prisons. But what we haven’t seen is a paired reform effort for jails,” said Amy Fettig, director of the American Civil Liberty Union’s Stop Solitary campaign. “In Santa Clara what we’re seeing is an attempt to reform the whole process.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long-term isolation can be so debilitating, Fettig said, that she’s had clients cut themselves “just to feel something because they’ve become numb.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Santa Clara County once had 400 inmates in solitary confinement. Specter’s client in Santa Clara County had been in solitary confinement for nearly five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By last fall there were about 40 inmates confined to isolation cells for an average of about two months, and just 26 by December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said she and many deputies were initially skeptical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It has surprised me, and I think it’s very, very good for our inmates,” she said. “I think what we’re doing is correct, and I think it’s working.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said she remains concerned that assaults on staff are up. She said the increase is logical, however, since inmates locked in their cells virtually around the clock have little opportunity to assault anyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sgt. Todd Kendrick, president of the county's correctional officers association, attributed the increase to other less restrictive jail policies as well as the easing of solitary confinement. He and Smith both called for increased staffing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said the county fell into a pattern of protectively isolating inmates to separate purported gang members and those charged with murder and to safeguard jailhouse informants or sex offenders for fear they would be harmed. Officials sought to improve after several major incidents, including deaths in custody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like most jails, three-quarters or more of inmates had not been convicted of a crime and yet spent months and sometimes years awaiting trial in isolation. Under the new policy, “it’s really our philosophy to use that when it’s absolutely necessary, when there’s extraordinary risk,” Smith said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jail employees work to get inmates out of segregation as quickly as possible, often using a system in which inmates agree, in writing, not to assault each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One inmate refused for 1 1/2 years to leave solitary because he had testified against other gang members, recalled Capt. Thomas Duran, who coordinates the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he saw other longtime inmates leaving segregation and eventually agreed to try it. Rather than put him immediately in with other inmates, deputies paired him with a single inmate — then two other inmates, then four and so on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He spent more and more time out of his solitary cell until he was fully back into the general jail population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re trying to set the inmates up not to fail,” Duran said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>An inmate in solitary confinement at a California jail was refusing to leave his cell. The jailers' usual response: Send an “extraction team” of corrections officers to burst into the cell and drag him out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not in Contra Costa County, one of three in the state using a kinder, gentler approach in response to inmate lawsuits, a policy change that experts say could be a national model for reducing the use of isolation cells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the inmate was asked: \"What if we gave you a couple extra cookies and another sandwich? Would you move?” recalled Don Specter, the nonprofit Prison Law Office director who negotiated the new policies. “He said yes. ... They were like, ‘Wow.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a quarter of U.S. states and numerous smaller jurisdictions are looking for ways to reduce the use of solitary confinement, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, which encourages alternatives to a practice behavioral experts say is dehumanizing and can worsen mental illness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new policies in California came after Specter’s firm sued seven of California’s 58 counties, alleging that conditions had grown inhumane as jails absorbed inmates who previously would have served their sentences in state prisons. The state in 2011 began sending less serious offenders to local jails for years at a time to ease crowding in state penitentiaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some jurisdictions nationwide are banning isolation for young offenders, pregnant women or those with mental health diagnoses. The California counties’ approach of generally limiting it to those who engage in continued violent behavior has dramatically reduced the number of inmates in isolation and the length of time they stay there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contra Costa started 2019 with about 100 people in solitary, most jailsfor more than a year. It had just three in isolation cells by December, after officials began using the new approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sacramento County also is following the policy pioneered by Santa Clara County, while Fresno County is considering it. Among other things, it encourages the use of low-cost incentives to reward good behavior, like the opportunity to listen to the radio, watch a movie or get an extra snack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sacramento County has cut its isolated population roughly in half, to about 60 inmates, said Lt. Alex McCamy: “It’s a limited time frame and a limited group, but the initial impression is positive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rick Raemisch, who restricted the use of solitary confinement when he headed Colorado’s prison system, said the violent, tense, dirty conditions in Santa Clara County's jail improved markedly with the new policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Think of yourself being in a cell the size of a parking space for 23 hours a day,” said Raemisch, who consulted with county officials. “At a minimum you’re going to get angry, and when you get angry you’re going to fight back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inmates nationwide are most often segregated for nonviolent “nuisance infractions” like smoking, cursing, disobeying orders or having unauthorized items from the commissary, said the Vera Institute’s Sara Sullivan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Santa Clara County once locked a woman in solitary confinement for 2 1/2 years for talking back to correctional officers or yelling and banging on her cell door with other detainees, according to Specter's lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California counties’ new policy of restricting its use to continued violent behavior could be seen as a national pilot program, Sullivan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Jersey's Middlesex County Adult Correction Center has lowered the number of isolated inmates and the time they spend there, she said, but with a different approach that lets inmates out of their cells more frequently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Hampden County Correctional Center in Massachusetts increased its use of alternative sanctions and positive reinforcement. And Cook County, Illinois, no longer keeps troublesome inmates in isolation, allowing them to regularly spend time with about a half-dozen other inmates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been a decades-long effort to reform solitary, especially in prisons. But what we haven’t seen is a paired reform effort for jails,” said Amy Fettig, director of the American Civil Liberty Union’s Stop Solitary campaign. “In Santa Clara what we’re seeing is an attempt to reform the whole process.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long-term isolation can be so debilitating, Fettig said, that she’s had clients cut themselves “just to feel something because they’ve become numb.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Santa Clara County once had 400 inmates in solitary confinement. Specter’s client in Santa Clara County had been in solitary confinement for nearly five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By last fall there were about 40 inmates confined to isolation cells for an average of about two months, and just 26 by December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said she and many deputies were initially skeptical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It has surprised me, and I think it’s very, very good for our inmates,” she said. “I think what we’re doing is correct, and I think it’s working.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said she remains concerned that assaults on staff are up. She said the increase is logical, however, since inmates locked in their cells virtually around the clock have little opportunity to assault anyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sgt. Todd Kendrick, president of the county's correctional officers association, attributed the increase to other less restrictive jail policies as well as the easing of solitary confinement. He and Smith both called for increased staffing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said the county fell into a pattern of protectively isolating inmates to separate purported gang members and those charged with murder and to safeguard jailhouse informants or sex offenders for fear they would be harmed. Officials sought to improve after several major incidents, including deaths in custody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like most jails, three-quarters or more of inmates had not been convicted of a crime and yet spent months and sometimes years awaiting trial in isolation. Under the new policy, “it’s really our philosophy to use that when it’s absolutely necessary, when there’s extraordinary risk,” Smith said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jail employees work to get inmates out of segregation as quickly as possible, often using a system in which inmates agree, in writing, not to assault each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One inmate refused for 1 1/2 years to leave solitary because he had testified against other gang members, recalled Capt. Thomas Duran, who coordinates the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he saw other longtime inmates leaving segregation and eventually agreed to try it. Rather than put him immediately in with other inmates, deputies paired him with a single inmate — then two other inmates, then four and so on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He spent more and more time out of his solitary cell until he was fully back into the general jail population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office Says Inmate Hunger Strike is Over",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office is \"encouraged\" that an inmate hunger strike, demanding an end to solitary confinement practices, appears to be over, said spokesman Sgt. Rich Glennon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strike, which put the jails under scrutiny in recent days, came just months after county supervisors unanimously \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/04/12/santa-clara-county-supervisors-unanimously-approve-jail-reforms/\">approved recommendations\u003c/a> on how to improve the jails, which included the prospect of appointing an inspector general to provide independent oversight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mercury News \u003ca href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/21/internal-affairs-deputy-union-sides-with-inmates-over-jail-hunger-strike/\">reported\u003c/a> on Friday that the strike apparently ended after a meeting between the inmates and jail officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper reports that it is unclear whether any concessions were made between the two parties over the inmates' \u003ca href=\"https://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/5-demands-santa-clara-county-jails.pdf\">five demands\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glennon said they look forward to \"maintaining open lines of communication as we move ahead with reforms in the future.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hunger strike, which reached its fifth day on Friday, was set to last two weeks and was part of a nationwide \u003ca href=\"https://itsgoingdown.org/santa-clara-ca-update-jail-hunger-strike/\">call for sweeping changes\u003c/a> in jail operations and conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Roger Winslow, vice president of the\u003ca href=\"http://www.dsascc.org/\"> Deputy Sheriffs' Association of Santa Clara County\u003c/a>, said in a statement on Thursday that the union agreed with inmates on missteps in leadership by Sheriff Laurie Smith. Here's more from Winslow's statement:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>We are now on day four of the hunger strike by Santa Clara County jail inmates and Sheriff Laurie Smith has yet to take any action to address this protest. The issues raised by these inmates are not new concerns, nor are they concerns unique to the inmates. We find ourselves in agreement with the striking inmates. They point to leadership failures on the part of the sheriff that have also been articulated by the Prison Law Office in Berkeley, the Blue Ribbon Commission, and the National Institute of Corrections. Despite these calls for reform from a range of voices, the sheriff refuses to implement common-sense policies that would help officers better serve and protect our community. Her lackluster response to the serious hunger strike at hand is yet another example of her incompetence.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>On Friday the sheriff's office released a statement saying it has implemented reforms \"specifically addressing\" the inmates' concerns, including an increase in out-of-cell time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>County supervisors began a review of recommendations for improving the jails after the August 2015\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/03/29/two-mentally-ill-inmates-died-one-month-in-santa-clara/\"> beating death of Michael Tyree\u003c/a>, a mentally ill inmate who died while in custody at the Main Jail. Smith was scrutinized for her leadership after three Santa Clara County jail guards were accused of beating Tyree to death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"THQiMike5AC6KKJVs4j4La6sqI9MVLc4\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jose Valle, a community organizer for\u003ca href=\"http://www.siliconvalleydebug.org/\"> Silicon Valley De-Bug \u003c/a>and a former county jail inmate who advocates for inmates and their families, says inmates both in and out of solitary confinement were participating in the strike against what he calls \"cruel and unusual punishment.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, the sheriff's office said it could not discount the fact that the inmates in maximum-security facilities have been accused of \"some of the most violent crimes imaginable,\" though it has medical protocols in place to monitor the inmates' health. They also said in the statement that they would continue to prepare food for the inmates at the Main Jail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strikers had five demands: an end to \"meaningless classification reviews and biased appeal process,\" solitary confinement, practices of denying clothing to inmates, \"jail profiteering,\" recidivism and \"misappropriation\" of Inmate Welfare Funds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's unclear exactly how many inmates were participating in the strike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Beth Willon of KQED contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office is \"encouraged\" that an inmate hunger strike, demanding an end to solitary confinement practices, appears to be over, said spokesman Sgt. Rich Glennon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strike, which put the jails under scrutiny in recent days, came just months after county supervisors unanimously \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/04/12/santa-clara-county-supervisors-unanimously-approve-jail-reforms/\">approved recommendations\u003c/a> on how to improve the jails, which included the prospect of appointing an inspector general to provide independent oversight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mercury News \u003ca href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/21/internal-affairs-deputy-union-sides-with-inmates-over-jail-hunger-strike/\">reported\u003c/a> on Friday that the strike apparently ended after a meeting between the inmates and jail officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper reports that it is unclear whether any concessions were made between the two parties over the inmates' \u003ca href=\"https://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/5-demands-santa-clara-county-jails.pdf\">five demands\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glennon said they look forward to \"maintaining open lines of communication as we move ahead with reforms in the future.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hunger strike, which reached its fifth day on Friday, was set to last two weeks and was part of a nationwide \u003ca href=\"https://itsgoingdown.org/santa-clara-ca-update-jail-hunger-strike/\">call for sweeping changes\u003c/a> in jail operations and conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Roger Winslow, vice president of the\u003ca href=\"http://www.dsascc.org/\"> Deputy Sheriffs' Association of Santa Clara County\u003c/a>, said in a statement on Thursday that the union agreed with inmates on missteps in leadership by Sheriff Laurie Smith. Here's more from Winslow's statement:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>We are now on day four of the hunger strike by Santa Clara County jail inmates and Sheriff Laurie Smith has yet to take any action to address this protest. The issues raised by these inmates are not new concerns, nor are they concerns unique to the inmates. We find ourselves in agreement with the striking inmates. They point to leadership failures on the part of the sheriff that have also been articulated by the Prison Law Office in Berkeley, the Blue Ribbon Commission, and the National Institute of Corrections. Despite these calls for reform from a range of voices, the sheriff refuses to implement common-sense policies that would help officers better serve and protect our community. Her lackluster response to the serious hunger strike at hand is yet another example of her incompetence.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>On Friday the sheriff's office released a statement saying it has implemented reforms \"specifically addressing\" the inmates' concerns, including an increase in out-of-cell time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>County supervisors began a review of recommendations for improving the jails after the August 2015\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/03/29/two-mentally-ill-inmates-died-one-month-in-santa-clara/\"> beating death of Michael Tyree\u003c/a>, a mentally ill inmate who died while in custody at the Main Jail. Smith was scrutinized for her leadership after three Santa Clara County jail guards were accused of beating Tyree to death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jose Valle, a community organizer for\u003ca href=\"http://www.siliconvalleydebug.org/\"> Silicon Valley De-Bug \u003c/a>and a former county jail inmate who advocates for inmates and their families, says inmates both in and out of solitary confinement were participating in the strike against what he calls \"cruel and unusual punishment.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, the sheriff's office said it could not discount the fact that the inmates in maximum-security facilities have been accused of \"some of the most violent crimes imaginable,\" though it has medical protocols in place to monitor the inmates' health. They also said in the statement that they would continue to prepare food for the inmates at the Main Jail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strikers had five demands: an end to \"meaningless classification reviews and biased appeal process,\" solitary confinement, practices of denying clothing to inmates, \"jail profiteering,\" recidivism and \"misappropriation\" of Inmate Welfare Funds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's unclear exactly how many inmates were participating in the strike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Beth Willon of KQED contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Young Inmates Help Turn Solitary Confinement Cells Into Art Spaces",
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"content": "\u003cp>Green paint covered tattoos on the girls' hands as they worked on the mural.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Camp Joseph Scott, a juvenile detention center in Santa Clarita, five girls worked on the wall -- some standing, some crouching -- their arms occasionally crisscrossing as they painted the nature scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I find it like a meditating type of therapy,\" said Anaceli, 17, who was five months into a seven-month sentence. (We're not using last names to protect the identities of the minors).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It actually distracts your mind from being where we actually are for a couple of hours,\" she said. \"So that's why I like coming here.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[soundcloud url=\"https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/276811087\" params=\"color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" iframe=\"true\" /]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This building used to be a very undesirable destination. Just around the corner from the mural is a long hallway with 12 cells, each about the size of a parking spot, with just a bed and a small window. In the past, girls could be sent out of the dorms and into isolation, for a few hours or up to 30 days -- only rarely allowed out into this common area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Los Angeles County, home to the nation's largest juvenile justice system, is phasing out the use of that kind of solitary confinement for minors. And so the probation department has been tasked with reimagining the special housing units, or SHUs, that were used to keep young offenders in isolation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mural project at Camp Scott is one of several arts projects that have been enlisted to help enact that transformation. The change is part of an effort across the county to make juvenile detention centers less punitive and more therapeutic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Our question was to like, let’s reimagine something that’s more positive for what they see in here,\" said Joe Galarza, an artist with the Armory Center for the Arts, who worked with the girls on the mural.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11040631\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11040631\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"All 25 women at Camp Scott were required to participate in the mural project.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-400x267.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-960x641.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A young inmate at Camp Scott works on the mural project. \u003ccite>(Dan Tuffs/KPCC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All of the girls at Camp Scott, about 25, are required to participate in this mural project. In recent months, staff at the facility painted the gray cinderblock walls pink and blue and added pink chairs and a television. This spring the mural project got underway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The artists taught the girls drawing and painting basics and worked with them to plan the design of the mural. It has a road and a tree with round blossoms that will carry the words \"hope\" and \"perseverance.\" On one branch, a bird is perched, ready to take flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reimagining the SHU\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted in May to effectively end the practice of placing incarcerated youth in solitary confinement, citing the many studies about the psychological and physical damage of isolation. Under the new guidelines, isolation is to be used only in extreme cases and kids should be monitored and have access to a mental health worker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The hope is it’s a learning experience, as opposed to just strictly resolving the issue by locking the kid up behind a locked door and not having to deal with them,\" said interim probation chief Cal Remington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11040633\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11040633\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Around the corner from the mural is a row of 12 solitary confinement cells like this one.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-400x267.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-960x641.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Around the corner from the mural is a row of 12 solitary confinement cells like this one. \u003ccite>(Dan Tuffs/KPCC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The new rules took effect at Camp Scott and two other facilities on May 30, and will go into effect at the rest of the facilities by the end of September. The current SHUs are to be converted into \"cooling down\" areas. Probation is actually hoping to rebrand them as “hope centers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as this shift was getting underway, a cooperative of arts organizations was launching an initiative to provide programming to juvenile offenders year-round. And now, the Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network is working with probation and the young offenders to reimagine the SHU.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I appreciate the arts community and what they’ve done,\" Remington said. \"And the timing was good in relation to coming up with these cool down areas.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">Under the new guidelines, isolation is to be used only in extreme cases, and kids should have access to a mental health worker.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Murals are going up in the four facilities with SHUs. At one site, artists are planning to coat the walls with chalkboard paint so kids can draw, write and reflect there. In another facility, kids are reflecting on the experience of solitary in creative writing classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Probation staff are undergoing training in how to diffuse situations and to be sensitive to the trauma kids in the system have faced. As solitary confinement is phased out, some officers worry about safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Of course I think it’s a good idea to change the rules around it, but I don’t think they should eliminate it,\" said Natonya Cantlope, who works at Camp Scott.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said she worries about the elimination of a SHU because there are times when inmates get violent and need to be separated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It’s not normal, but it goes down,\" said Cantlope. \"Them taking [solitary confinement] away from us completely? No, because it’s a lot of people that could get hurt.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11040636\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11040636\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"As L.A. County moves away from solitary confinement, probation officer Natonya Cantlope worries about safety when violence breaks out.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-400x267.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-960x641.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As L.A. County moves away from solitary confinement, probation officer Natonya Cantlope worries about safety when violence breaks out. \u003ccite>(Dan Tuffs/KPCC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jessica Feierman, associate director of the Juvenile Law Center, said concerns like this are a normal part of the change process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We operate in the universe of what we know, so when you haven’t seen a facility working effectively without solitary confinement, it becomes really hard to imagine it,\" said Feierman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have ended solitary confinement for minors in recent years. Feierman says that positive intervention techniques are key to ensuring that the transition away from the practice goes smoothly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So [that means] good programming, thoughtful responses when youth are having trouble, full schedules with things that young people want to do,\" Feierman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>More Than Murals\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThere are three juvenile halls, where young offenders are held before sentencing, and 12 camps currently open in L.A. County. Artists with the Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network are working in 10 of those sites -- aiming to keep schedules full by providing visual art, drumming, theater, poetry, creative writing classes and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The network is made up of the Armory Center for the Arts, Actors' Gang, Coalition for Engaged Education, InsideOut Writers, Rhythm Arts Alliance, Street Poets Inc., Unusual Suspects Theatre Company, WriteGirl/Bold Ink Writers and Jail Guitar Doors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We’re so eager to integrate arts both as a diversion and also as part of a successful re-entry strategy for the kids coming out,\" said Kaile Shilling, executive director of the network. \"Putting arts front and center, before, during and after helps.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11040638\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11040638\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-800x529.jpg\" alt=\"Joe Galarza, a teaching artist with the Armory Center for the Arts, worked with the girls at Camp Scott juvenile detention center for 12 weeks.\" width=\"800\" height=\"529\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-800x529.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-400x264.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-1180x780.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-960x635.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joe Galarza, a teaching artist with the Armory Center for the Arts, worked with the girls at Camp Scott juvenile detention center for 12 weeks. \u003ccite>(Dan Tuffs/KPCC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The programming is taking place in the afternoon or evening hours in 11-week cycles over the coming year. The county is field testing the programs at these sites, with an eye toward a new juvenile facility that will open in the spring. Campus Kilpatrick will have a \"trauma-informed\" approach, focusing less on discipline and more on rehabilitation. It will not have a SHU at all. And the L.A. County Arts Commission is working with probation to embed arts at the core of the curriculum as part of the rehabilitation process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I’ve seen over the years the ebb and flow of different theories of how to handle kids who are detained,\" said Sherry Gold, justice deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who co-authored \u003ca href=\"http://supervisorkuehl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/5.3.16-Solitary-Confinement-Motion-REVISED.pdf\">the motion restricting the use of solitary\u003c/a>. \"It’s my opinion that it’s about time that we’re recognizing that arts are a very important part of a program.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Camp Scott, the mural project is starting to change the atmosphere on the campus. One girl said that the painting is relaxing and helps her blow off steam. Another said that having the mural in the SHU makes the space feel more peaceful and less like a prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since participation was required at the facility, artists Galarza and Nery Gabriel Lemus said that not all of the girls were thrilled to be there. Some started to look forward to it over time, and picked up skills to improve their painting and drawing technique. But even for those who never got into it, there were valuable lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Everything is interconnected,\" said Lemus. \"Sometimes it’s not just about art per se. Sometimes it’s just about being able to focus on something and get your mind off of the negativity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anaceli is set to go home in June and she says while she’s painting, she dreams of turning her life around once she’s out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Engaging yourself in it makes you think a lot of positive things like, do I want to continue my life like the way I was living? Or do I want to become clean and live my life like a normal person?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The girls completed the mural in early June and theater workshops are set to start there later this summer.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Green paint covered tattoos on the girls' hands as they worked on the mural.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Camp Joseph Scott, a juvenile detention center in Santa Clarita, five girls worked on the wall -- some standing, some crouching -- their arms occasionally crisscrossing as they painted the nature scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I find it like a meditating type of therapy,\" said Anaceli, 17, who was five months into a seven-month sentence. (We're not using last names to protect the identities of the minors).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It actually distracts your mind from being where we actually are for a couple of hours,\" she said. \"So that's why I like coming here.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cdiv class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__shortcodes__shortcodeWrapper'>\n \u003ciframe width='100%' height='166'\n scrolling='no' frameborder='no'\n src='https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/276811087&visual=true&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false'\n title='https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/276811087'>\n \u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/div>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This building used to be a very undesirable destination. Just around the corner from the mural is a long hallway with 12 cells, each about the size of a parking spot, with just a bed and a small window. In the past, girls could be sent out of the dorms and into isolation, for a few hours or up to 30 days -- only rarely allowed out into this common area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Los Angeles County, home to the nation's largest juvenile justice system, is phasing out the use of that kind of solitary confinement for minors. And so the probation department has been tasked with reimagining the special housing units, or SHUs, that were used to keep young offenders in isolation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mural project at Camp Scott is one of several arts projects that have been enlisted to help enact that transformation. The change is part of an effort across the county to make juvenile detention centers less punitive and more therapeutic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Our question was to like, let’s reimagine something that’s more positive for what they see in here,\" said Joe Galarza, an artist with the Armory Center for the Arts, who worked with the girls on the mural.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11040631\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11040631\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"All 25 women at Camp Scott were required to participate in the mural project.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-400x267.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/MuralWork1-1-960x641.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A young inmate at Camp Scott works on the mural project. \u003ccite>(Dan Tuffs/KPCC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All of the girls at Camp Scott, about 25, are required to participate in this mural project. In recent months, staff at the facility painted the gray cinderblock walls pink and blue and added pink chairs and a television. This spring the mural project got underway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The artists taught the girls drawing and painting basics and worked with them to plan the design of the mural. It has a road and a tree with round blossoms that will carry the words \"hope\" and \"perseverance.\" On one branch, a bird is perched, ready to take flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reimagining the SHU\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted in May to effectively end the practice of placing incarcerated youth in solitary confinement, citing the many studies about the psychological and physical damage of isolation. Under the new guidelines, isolation is to be used only in extreme cases and kids should be monitored and have access to a mental health worker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The hope is it’s a learning experience, as opposed to just strictly resolving the issue by locking the kid up behind a locked door and not having to deal with them,\" said interim probation chief Cal Remington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11040633\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11040633\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Around the corner from the mural is a row of 12 solitary confinement cells like this one.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-400x267.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/SolitaryCell-960x641.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Around the corner from the mural is a row of 12 solitary confinement cells like this one. \u003ccite>(Dan Tuffs/KPCC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The new rules took effect at Camp Scott and two other facilities on May 30, and will go into effect at the rest of the facilities by the end of September. The current SHUs are to be converted into \"cooling down\" areas. Probation is actually hoping to rebrand them as “hope centers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as this shift was getting underway, a cooperative of arts organizations was launching an initiative to provide programming to juvenile offenders year-round. And now, the Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network is working with probation and the young offenders to reimagine the SHU.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I appreciate the arts community and what they’ve done,\" Remington said. \"And the timing was good in relation to coming up with these cool down areas.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">Under the new guidelines, isolation is to be used only in extreme cases, and kids should have access to a mental health worker.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Murals are going up in the four facilities with SHUs. At one site, artists are planning to coat the walls with chalkboard paint so kids can draw, write and reflect there. In another facility, kids are reflecting on the experience of solitary in creative writing classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Probation staff are undergoing training in how to diffuse situations and to be sensitive to the trauma kids in the system have faced. As solitary confinement is phased out, some officers worry about safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Of course I think it’s a good idea to change the rules around it, but I don’t think they should eliminate it,\" said Natonya Cantlope, who works at Camp Scott.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said she worries about the elimination of a SHU because there are times when inmates get violent and need to be separated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It’s not normal, but it goes down,\" said Cantlope. \"Them taking [solitary confinement] away from us completely? No, because it’s a lot of people that could get hurt.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11040636\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11040636\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"As L.A. County moves away from solitary confinement, probation officer Natonya Cantlope worries about safety when violence breaks out.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-400x267.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/ProbationOfficer-960x641.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As L.A. County moves away from solitary confinement, probation officer Natonya Cantlope worries about safety when violence breaks out. \u003ccite>(Dan Tuffs/KPCC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jessica Feierman, associate director of the Juvenile Law Center, said concerns like this are a normal part of the change process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We operate in the universe of what we know, so when you haven’t seen a facility working effectively without solitary confinement, it becomes really hard to imagine it,\" said Feierman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have ended solitary confinement for minors in recent years. Feierman says that positive intervention techniques are key to ensuring that the transition away from the practice goes smoothly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So [that means] good programming, thoughtful responses when youth are having trouble, full schedules with things that young people want to do,\" Feierman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>More Than Murals\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThere are three juvenile halls, where young offenders are held before sentencing, and 12 camps currently open in L.A. County. Artists with the Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network are working in 10 of those sites -- aiming to keep schedules full by providing visual art, drumming, theater, poetry, creative writing classes and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The network is made up of the Armory Center for the Arts, Actors' Gang, Coalition for Engaged Education, InsideOut Writers, Rhythm Arts Alliance, Street Poets Inc., Unusual Suspects Theatre Company, WriteGirl/Bold Ink Writers and Jail Guitar Doors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We’re so eager to integrate arts both as a diversion and also as part of a successful re-entry strategy for the kids coming out,\" said Kaile Shilling, executive director of the network. \"Putting arts front and center, before, during and after helps.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11040638\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-11040638\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-800x529.jpg\" alt=\"Joe Galarza, a teaching artist with the Armory Center for the Arts, worked with the girls at Camp Scott juvenile detention center for 12 weeks.\" width=\"800\" height=\"529\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-800x529.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-400x264.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-1180x780.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/08/JoePainting-960x635.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joe Galarza, a teaching artist with the Armory Center for the Arts, worked with the girls at Camp Scott juvenile detention center for 12 weeks. \u003ccite>(Dan Tuffs/KPCC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The programming is taking place in the afternoon or evening hours in 11-week cycles over the coming year. The county is field testing the programs at these sites, with an eye toward a new juvenile facility that will open in the spring. Campus Kilpatrick will have a \"trauma-informed\" approach, focusing less on discipline and more on rehabilitation. It will not have a SHU at all. And the L.A. County Arts Commission is working with probation to embed arts at the core of the curriculum as part of the rehabilitation process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I’ve seen over the years the ebb and flow of different theories of how to handle kids who are detained,\" said Sherry Gold, justice deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who co-authored \u003ca href=\"http://supervisorkuehl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/5.3.16-Solitary-Confinement-Motion-REVISED.pdf\">the motion restricting the use of solitary\u003c/a>. \"It’s my opinion that it’s about time that we’re recognizing that arts are a very important part of a program.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Camp Scott, the mural project is starting to change the atmosphere on the campus. One girl said that the painting is relaxing and helps her blow off steam. Another said that having the mural in the SHU makes the space feel more peaceful and less like a prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since participation was required at the facility, artists Galarza and Nery Gabriel Lemus said that not all of the girls were thrilled to be there. Some started to look forward to it over time, and picked up skills to improve their painting and drawing technique. But even for those who never got into it, there were valuable lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Everything is interconnected,\" said Lemus. \"Sometimes it’s not just about art per se. Sometimes it’s just about being able to focus on something and get your mind off of the negativity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anaceli is set to go home in June and she says while she’s painting, she dreams of turning her life around once she’s out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Engaging yourself in it makes you think a lot of positive things like, do I want to continue my life like the way I was living? Or do I want to become clean and live my life like a normal person?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The girls completed the mural in early June and theater workshops are set to start there later this summer.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Three Iranian-Americans released by Iran in a prisoner swap over the weekend are receiving medical attention in Germany before returning to the United States. Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, a native of Marin County, former Marine Amir Hekmati and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini were imprisoned in Iran on unrelated charges. U.S. diplomats negotiated their release, along with the release of a fourth American who chose to stay in Iran, in exchange for the release of seven Iranian-Americans imprisoned in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. has participated in multiple prisoner exchanges in the last decade, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/31/317680946/captors-release-u-s-soldier-taken-hostage-in-2009?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140531\" target=\"_blank\">a 2014 exchange with the Taliban\u003c/a> in Afghanistan for prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl, but this is only the second time Iran has engaged in a prisoner swap since the suspension of U.S.-Iran diplomatic negotiations in 1979.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'For 410 days in solitary confinement, all I wanted was to be with other people,'\u003ccite>Sarah Shourd, former Iranian prisoner\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In 2009, the Iranian government arrested Americans Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who were hiking in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and mistakenly crossed the border into Iran. Shourd, who worked in Damascus at the time of the arrest, was held in solitary confinement in a prison in Tehran for the entirety of her incarceration. U.S. diplomats secured Shourd's release in September 2010 after Oman agreed to serve as a third-party negotiator with Taliban representatives. Bauer and Fattal were released in 2011.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[soundcloud url=\"https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/242853605\" params=\"color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" iframe=\"true\" /]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shourd, who now lives in Oakland, told KQED's Mina Kim on Tuesday that this weekend's prisoner exchange is an \"incredible triumph of diplomacy,\" and that she had hoped the Americans' release would coincide with\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/16/463168647/u-n-nuclear-watchdog-confirms-iran-nuclear-deal-set-to-be-implemented\"> last week's lifting of economic sanctions on Iran\u003c/a>, as stipulated in the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You never know until the very last minute,\" Shourd told Kim, describing the uncertainty that friends and family of the imprisoned Americans experienced as they waited for confirmation that their loved ones had made it out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shourd said she can't predict exactly how Rezaian, Hekmati and Abedini will handle acclimation to life outside prison. \"For 410 days in solitary confinement, all I wanted was to be with other people,\" she remembers. But after her release, the stimulus of the world was completely overwhelming. Even making eye contact caused her physical pain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shourd paced constantly in her cell and suffered from insomnia. Getting her frenetic nervous system back to a \"new normal\" after her release took extreme effort. The struggle, however, also yielded some positive impact on her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a process of transforming that negativity into creativity,\" she said, explaining that her experience in prison led her to advocate against solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. Connecting with other survivors of solitary confinement, she said, helped her process her experience and avoid blaming herself for her imprisonment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though she is celebrating the release of the American prisoners, Shourd noted that the Iranians released by the U.S. government this weekend also deserve American attention. All seven of the Iranians released in the prisoner exchange were nonviolent offenders, held for violating economic sanctions against Iran.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"These restrictions have taken a very heavy toll on the Iranian people,\" Shourd told KQED. \"So, this really is a moment of joy on both sides.\"\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Three Iranian-Americans released by Iran in a prisoner swap over the weekend are receiving medical attention in Germany before returning to the United States. Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, a native of Marin County, former Marine Amir Hekmati and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini were imprisoned in Iran on unrelated charges. U.S. diplomats negotiated their release, along with the release of a fourth American who chose to stay in Iran, in exchange for the release of seven Iranian-Americans imprisoned in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. has participated in multiple prisoner exchanges in the last decade, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/31/317680946/captors-release-u-s-soldier-taken-hostage-in-2009?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140531\" target=\"_blank\">a 2014 exchange with the Taliban\u003c/a> in Afghanistan for prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl, but this is only the second time Iran has engaged in a prisoner swap since the suspension of U.S.-Iran diplomatic negotiations in 1979.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'For 410 days in solitary confinement, all I wanted was to be with other people,'\u003ccite>Sarah Shourd, former Iranian prisoner\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In 2009, the Iranian government arrested Americans Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who were hiking in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and mistakenly crossed the border into Iran. Shourd, who worked in Damascus at the time of the arrest, was held in solitary confinement in a prison in Tehran for the entirety of her incarceration. U.S. diplomats secured Shourd's release in September 2010 after Oman agreed to serve as a third-party negotiator with Taliban representatives. Bauer and Fattal were released in 2011.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cdiv class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__shortcodes__shortcodeWrapper'>\n \u003ciframe width='100%' height='166'\n scrolling='no' frameborder='no'\n src='https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/242853605&visual=true&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false'\n title='https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/242853605'>\n \u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/div>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shourd, who now lives in Oakland, told KQED's Mina Kim on Tuesday that this weekend's prisoner exchange is an \"incredible triumph of diplomacy,\" and that she had hoped the Americans' release would coincide with\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/16/463168647/u-n-nuclear-watchdog-confirms-iran-nuclear-deal-set-to-be-implemented\"> last week's lifting of economic sanctions on Iran\u003c/a>, as stipulated in the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You never know until the very last minute,\" Shourd told Kim, describing the uncertainty that friends and family of the imprisoned Americans experienced as they waited for confirmation that their loved ones had made it out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shourd said she can't predict exactly how Rezaian, Hekmati and Abedini will handle acclimation to life outside prison. \"For 410 days in solitary confinement, all I wanted was to be with other people,\" she remembers. But after her release, the stimulus of the world was completely overwhelming. Even making eye contact caused her physical pain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shourd paced constantly in her cell and suffered from insomnia. Getting her frenetic nervous system back to a \"new normal\" after her release took extreme effort. The struggle, however, also yielded some positive impact on her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a process of transforming that negativity into creativity,\" she said, explaining that her experience in prison led her to advocate against solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. Connecting with other survivors of solitary confinement, she said, helped her process her experience and avoid blaming herself for her imprisonment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though she is celebrating the release of the American prisoners, Shourd noted that the Iranians released by the U.S. government this weekend also deserve American attention. All seven of the Iranians released in the prisoner exchange were nonviolent offenders, held for violating economic sanctions against Iran.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"These restrictions have taken a very heavy toll on the Iranian people,\" Shourd told KQED. \"So, this really is a moment of joy on both sides.\"\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "American Suburb: The Podcast",
"tagline": "The flip side of gentrification, told through one town",
"info": "Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?",
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},
"baycurious": {
"id": "baycurious",
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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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},
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"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
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},
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},
"californiareport": {
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"order": 8
},
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}
},
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"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
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