The hunger strike in the California state prison system is in its 24th day. At its zenith there were 12,000 inmates who said “no” to a meal, now the fasters are down to 561 with 385 going the distance since July 8. Someone is going to die of starvation soon and this will rocket the story globally.
The strike is a protest of the state’s isolation policies which many view as cruel and inhumane punishment. When you are confined to a small area with little or no human contact and a few hours of daylight each 24 hours for months and years on end, your psyche, which is already a mess since you are in prison, gets worse. I once talked to a man who did 8 years in the SHU (security housing unit) which is solitary confinement. He was almost a zombie, overly sensitive to noise and light.
There is a tremendous amount of politics behind this strike. In fact, there is politics behind every inmate, particularly those who are in gangs. Ostensibly, the state has been putting violent gang members in the SHU to protect the overall prison population. And now celebrities like Jay Leno and the Rev. Jesse Jackson want California to end its isolation program, likening it to Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Folks, this isn’t the war on terrorism, although that, in itself, was misguided in Iraq—the weapons of what?
Should we feel sorry for murderers and drug dealers who have their sentence compounded by harsh living conditions? That answer is a personal one that falls between those who believe in “an eye for an eye” and those who believe in redemption. The real question is, should there be a SHU in the California prison system? I’ll answer this in three parts:
(1) On a tour of Folsom prison—the maximum security section—I talked briefly to a highly articulate, polite man who had some ideas for improving prison conditions. I was impressed by what he had to say and for a time forgot that a prison guard was standing by me. After I left the unit, the guard added that the man I had been talking two was a former LAPD detective who had been convicted of murdering two people for hire. He’s in for life. He had some good ideas, but did his “background” cloud his credibility? And was that SHU graduate I met nearly a zombie, or was it an act to get me to go against the SHU? Rest assured, inmates live and breathe prison politics 24/7.
(2) I’ve lived in voluntary isolation as a healing process. I can go about three days without human contact—eight years! Figure, if you’re bad when you went in, you’re only going to be worse when you get out, maybe in a different way, but certainly not in manner that improves socialization skills.
(3) If the state “negotiates” on the SHU protest, the gangs will have a victory and regardless of how small, there will be more games ahead.
The SHU is bad, but so is prison. This is all scary stuff with no clear solutions. Guess what? This is an issue without a winning outcome.
67Steffen.com 
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