CRUCIAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CASTILLO CASE
Update of the Fall NCX Castillo/SHU report
by Graham Noyes, Attorney at Law
We have secured our first substantial victory in the Castillo case. Pelican Bay State Prison has begun to release an undisclosed number of inmates from the notorious Security Housing Unit based on the regulations that we forced them to pass. In the coming weeks and months, we will have additional opportunities to establish due process standards and to improve conditions in the SHU.
On June 11, 1999, Judge Ronald Tochterman of the Sacramento Superior Court ordered the Department of Corrections to cease its debriefing policy until it promulgated its regulations in compliance with the Administrative Procedures Act. On August 19, 1999, the Department gave notice of Change to Director's Rules. The Department has now promulgated its regulations pertaining to validation and debriefing of alleged prison gang affiliates.
While these new regulations allow the release of inmates without debriefing after six years of clean time, they still allow indeterminate terms for inmates who have not engaged in any misconduct (e.g. for speaking to a gang member), and they do not provide any due process for inmates accused of gang affiliation. For this reason we are continuing to pursue our federal civil rights action, Castillo v. Marshall et al., C-94-2847 MJJ, now pending before the Honorable Martin Jenkins in the Northern District Court.
We are now attempting to negotiate with the Department of Corrections to resolve the case. We believe that the Department's legitimate authority will be augmented rather than undercut by establishing a workable and coherent definition of "gang activity" and by implementing minimal due process standards for gang validation procedures:
1. Establish a definition for "gang activity" based on statutory and case law that provides clear notice to inmates of the specific conduct prohibited.
2. Provide timely notice whenever confidential information is placed in an inmate's prison file and establish a fair evidentiary standard regarding the use of confidential information.
3. Provide prisoners suspected of gang affiliation and gang activity an opportunity to present views and a defense before an indeterminate term is imposed.
4. Provide guidelines for prisoners to establish that they were incorrectly validated as gang affiliates or to establish that they are no longer active gang affiliates, thereby demonstrating their eligibility for release from the SHU back into general prison population or other alternative housing.
5. Establish alternative parameters for the release of prisoners from the SHU rather than mandatory debriefing, since debriefing exposes inmates to retaliation and is impossible for incorrectly validated inmates to complete.
6. Establish a Management Control Unit (MCU) to house inactive gang affiliates during a transitional period.
In addition, defendants must agree not to engage in any harassment, retaliation, or reprisals against plaintiff for his court litigation, legal assistance to prisoners, and assembly in peace efforts with prisoners.
Regarding plaintiff's Eighth Amendment claims, our demands are based on recommendations from the international human rights group Human Rights Watch designed to alleviate the psychological damage inflicted by the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit as well as the danger posed to the general public from inmates released directly from the SHU to the streets:
· Expand the range of mental health services available to inmates at the SHU, and grant prompt access to these services.
· Provide sufficient staff to meet prisoners' mental health needs. Increase the resources and training available to staff to assist them in dealing with SHU inmates and provide pay increases to staff who participate in trainings or obtain degrees in relevant fields.
· Provide incentives for SHU prisoners to disassociate themselves from gangs and to follow prison rules by allowing SHU prisoners the opportunity for increased exercise, vocational training, social interaction, improved food, access to library, phone access, and contact visits based on good behavior.
· Eliminate the requirement that inmates must agree to be medicated before being placed in the Psychiatric Management Unit.
· Renovate the SHU to create genuine outdoor recreation areas where inmates are exposed to sunlight and can see outside of the facility.
· Encourage increased contact between inmates and their families. End the routine shackling of all inmates during visits and allow selected inmates to have contact visits with their families. Allow selected inmates limited phone access.
· Discontinue the practice of releasing inmates into society directly from segregated confinement. Prior to release from the SHU, provide effective transitional programming to facilitate social readjustment.
· Reduce racial tensions and stereotyping by actively recruiting minority staff, providing increased racial sensitivity training to staff, and emphasizing to staff through the use of internal disciplinary mechanisms that racial harassment and discrimination will not be tolerated.
Finally, to resolve plaintiff's Eighth Amendment claims, we propose the following provisions to alleviate the suffering of inmates who remain in the SHU:
· Maintain proper air ventilation in cells and establish a system of monitoring air quality in the cells.
· Maintain clean holding cells.
· Improve food handling, rations, quality, and variety by providing one daily hot meal, requiring staff to use plastic gloves while serving food, serving some fresh foods, eliminating the serving of spoilt foods, and altering the daily menu.
· Provide inmates with non-caustic cleansers to clean toilets and sinks in their cells.
· Allow inmates to purchase tooth brushes from inmate canteen.
· Provide sufficient warm clothing for inmates, including thermal underwear for indigent prisoners, watch caps to all SHU/Ad-Seg prisoners, as well as state jacket and plastic ponchos for each prisoner, and allow prisoners to purchase two personal sweat- suits.
· Provide some pull-up and dip bars and some recreational equipment on the yards and allow purchases of hobby materials, e.g., art paper, color pen fillers and pencils, etc. for SHU inmates with good behavior credits.
The issues raised by this litigation mirror the concerns of hundreds of SHU inmates. Resolving these issues in a comprehensive, fair, and reasoned manner would not only extend the rule of law and justice into the Pelican Bay SHU but would also serve the interests of the citizens of California.
The text of our proposed regulations (not the Department's) will be available on my website on <http://www.368Hayes.com>. We welcome your support by lobbying your state legislators and the Department of Corrections; spreading this information as widely as possible; organizing with other groups; or volunteering for California Prison Focus, 2940 16th St., #100, San Francisco, CA 94103, (415) 252-9211.--Graham Noyes <gnoyes@igc.org>, 368 Hayes Street, San Francisco, CA 94102, Tel: (415) 575-3223, Fax: (415)575-3230.