Last Friday, October 14, marked one year since reforms began under the historic settlement agreement in CCR’s case Ashker v. Brown, which effectively ended long-term solitary confinement throughout California state prisons. We are thrilled to report that new data shows that the settlement succeeded in moving virtually all prisoners out of indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement.
The speed with which the settlement brought an end to California’s use of long-term solitary is even more meaningful when we think about what, exactly, it ended. For decades, California isolated more people, for longer periods, than any other state. In the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison and in other California SHUs, prisoners were isolated in near-total solitude for 23 to 24 hours a day, denied telephone calls, contact visits, and vocational, recreational, or educational programs. When CCR filed Ashker, more than 500 prisoners had been isolated in the Pelican Bay SHU for over 10 years. Seventy-eight had been there for more than 20 years. And six had been there for more than 30.
In the words of Ashker plaintiff Gabriel Reyes, “Unless you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself, between four cold walls, with little concept of time, no one to confide in, and only a pillow for comfort — for years on end. It is a living tomb.”
What’s more, these men were held indefinitely, without any certain date when they would be returned to general population, and predominantly on the basis of alleged “gang affiliation” — like reading about Black history, creating or possessing cultural artwork, or writing in Swahili — not any infractions of prison rules. The system was barbaric.
Now, after just one year, decades of this treatment are over. The number of prisoners in solitary confinement has dropped dramatically, bringing an end to the kind of torture Reyes described. Among other important provisions that limit California’s future use of…