Pelican Bay State Prison


Pelican Bay State Prison has the only supermax facility in the state of California. The 275-acre prison is located in Del Norte County, California. The prison takes its name from a shallow bay on the Pacific coast, about 2 miles to the west. The prison lies in a detached section of Crescent City, several miles north of the main urban area and just south of the Oregon border. PBSP's primary purpose is to house violent male prisoners from the California state prison system; 40% of Pelican State's inmates are serving life sentences and nearly all have histories of violence at other California prisons which resulted in their transfer to Pelican Bay. The sole exception are the institution's minimum security inmates, who work as part of the prison's outside maintenance and firefighter programs.
Facilities A and B are designated as Level IV, General Population facilities with two-man cells. Facility-C, Restricted Housing, consist of the only remaining, dedicated long-term Security Housing Units, C-7 through C-12, in the state. In addition to the supermax population, RH also consist of Administrative Segregation housing units, C-1 through C-6 and Short Term Restrictive Housing Facility-D is designated as a Level II Facility. There is also a collocated 400-bed Level I, Minimum Security unit which provides inmate orderlies for general service tasks at and around the main prison.

Facilities

Pelican Bay opened in 1989. Pelican Bay's grounds and operations are physically divided. Half of the prison holds Level IV inmates in a General Population environment with outside exercise courts and yards. The other half of the prison contains the prisons best-known feature: an X-shaped cluster of white buildings and barren ground known as the Security Housing Unit, or SHU. An electric fence surrounds the entire perimeter.
The cells of the SHU are made of smooth, poured concrete with perforated cell fronts and doors. There are no windows located within the cells. Instead, there are fluorescent lights, which the inmates can control. SHU inmates are confined to their assigned cells for up to twenty-three hours a day, looking out through a perforated steel door at a solid concrete wall. Food is delivered by correctional officers twice a day, through a slot in the cell door.
Each of the twelve housing units located in Facility-C, RH have an armed correctional officer in a control booth. Control booths are located in the center of each housing unit. The control officer can view into all six pods in the housing unit, from his or her central vantage point. The control officer controls the doors throughout the housing unit, which contains six pods. Each pod contains eight cells. The officer can supervise the release of inmates assigned to the housing unit. The control officer can allow one, or two inmates, if they are cell mates, out of their assigned cell to shower or exercise. Inmates are allowed to exercise for up to ten hours of court-mandated outdoor exercise per week. Exercise takes place in a concrete yard, which extends the length of three cells, and has a roof partially open to the sky.
As of April 30, 2020, Pelican Bay was incarcerating people at 109.6% of its design capacity, with 2,608 occupants.

Psychological effect

Inmates, their lawyers, and prisoner advocate groups have argued that confinement in the SHU is cruel and unusual punishment, due to severe conditions. Contrary to popular belief, the SHU is not composed of solitary confinement cells. Inmates housed in the same pod can talk with each other and even see each other when released from their assigned cells. RH, SHU and Ad/Seg consists of twelve housing units, with six pods per housing unit and eight cells per pod. Some psychiatrists and psychologists who support inmates housed in the SHU have described a "SHU syndrome",a condition which, they say, affects inmates who spend more than a few months in isolation. The symptoms reportedly resemble those of post-traumatic stress disorder, including hallucinations, depression, anxiety, anger, and suicide. The cause of most of these symptoms is isolation; most SHU inmates experience isolation for 23 hours a day with limited human contact other than receiving meals through a slot in the cell door.

Hunger strikes

PBSP, SHU prisoners have organized hunger strikes in protest of conditions there, chiefly the punishment of solitary confinement. In 2002, a reported 60 SHU inmates began a hunger strike.
Another hunger strike was reported to have begun on July 1, 2011. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported that "less than two dozen" were refusing food. The CDCR subsequently stated that 6,600 inmates had refused food in the first days of the strike, and that after five days, more than 2,000 remained on strike. Most inmates reportedly consumed food purchased from the canteen; however, others were refusing all food with the stated intention to strike indefinitely.
On July 8, 2013, inmates resumed the July 2011 hunger strike, alleging a failure to uphold promises on the part of the CDCR, with upwards of 29,000 prisoners across California joining in the hunger strike. Strikers demanded reform to "cruel" policies used to identify and subsequently isolate or punish alleged gang members, including lengthy solitary confinement, as well as quality of living improvements.

Lawsuit and termination of unlimited isolation policy

In May 2012, California's prison system faced a lawsuit from the Center for Constitutional Rights, Legal Services for inmates with Children, and other California attorneys on behalf of ten men incarcerated in the SHU. The plaintiffs were all housed in the SHU for 11 to 22 years, some having been transferred directly from other SHUs. The suit claims that the inmates "have been incarcerated California’s Pelican Bay State Prison's Security Housing Unit for an unconscionably long period of time without meaningful review of their placement", that "California's uniquely harsh regime of prolonged solitary confinement at Pelican Bay is inhumane and debilitating", and that "he solitary confinement regime at Pelican Bay violates the United States Constitution's requirement of due process and prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment".
In August, 2015, as a result of the aforementioned class-action lawsuit, California agreed to end its unlimited isolation policy. Inmates are no longer isolated as a preventive measure; only those who commit new crimes while incarcerated are eligible for up to five years of isolation. Since the lawsuit's settlement, hundreds of inmates who had served years in Pelican Bay's SHU have been transferred to other prisons and are now doing their time in general population settings. The result has been the virtual depopulation of the entire SHU program, and it is anticipated by some experts the SHU program may soon be disbanded entirely.

Notable inmates

Television and film

In the fictional series Life, Detective Charlie Crews spends twelve years in Pelican Bay for a triple homicide he did not commit, part of it spent in the SHU, as the background of the series' plot. In the TV series The Shield, the main character Vic Mackey regularly threatens recalcitrant suspects with only the name of the prison.
Alonzo Harris threatens gang members with a sentence in Pelican Bay and the SHU program in the movie Training Day.