A visit to the toughest cell block in California at Pelican Bay State Prison

Pelican Bay State Prison near the Oregon border houses some of California’s toughest, most dangerous inmates. About a thousand of those inmates are labeled prison gang leaders or associates.


They’re kept in indefinite isolation in the Security Housing Unit, or the “SHU” — a prison within the prison. Last month, hundreds of inmates in the SHU staged a hunger strike to protest the conditions there. They also protested the strict conditions for getting out. KPCC toured the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay this week.

A cement path from the prison staff entrance crawls up grey-graveled yards. An electrified barbed-wire fence encircles the perimeter.

Lieutenant Chris Acosta has worked at Pelican Bay for 21 years. "We call this like the 'no man’s land' out here, where there will be no inmates out here at all," Acosta says. "The only persons you’re going to see are the corrections officers, or maintenance staff cleaning up doing landscaping or security checks."

By “landscaping,” he means pulling weeds. There are no shrubs, plants or trees outside.

Inside, the SHU looks like any other prison: long corridors, tiers of cells with grated metal doors, dim fluorescent lights. But there is one big difference: Lt. Acosta asks the reporters what we hear.

"Guards," says one.

"Air conditioning," says another.

"There’s 600 inmates housed over here," Lt. Acosta says. "It’s pretty quiet over here in the SHU."

There are reminders that the Pelican Bay SHU is more dangerous than other prisons: red signs that read “Protective Vest Required,” and riot gear on a gurney outside the corridor.

And there are other warnings. Lt. Dave Barneburg monitors prison gangs. He reminded us reporters to think about what we say on the tour.

"Any inmate worth his salt down here already knows there’s a tour coming through the SHU and there’s a bunch of people coming through SHU." Barneburg says. "You’re talking to each other, you’re talking to us, but you’re also talking to the inmates."

Inmates in the SHU spend nearly every hour of the day inside individual 8-by-10 foot cells.

There’s just enough room for a metal sink and toilet, a built-in bunk bed, some shelves, a wastebasket and a desk. They’re allowed to have 10 books in their cell, magazines, newspapers, and for those with families that can afford to spend $200 to purchase it, a television with a cable hookup, that offers access to ESPN. The TV’s made of see-through plastic that shows all its components.

"The correctional officers and the staff love them because they’re easy to search," Lt. Acosta says. That's important, he explains, because throughout the years, "a lot of guys would take their TVs apart and hide weapons in them."

SHU inmates leave their cells each day for a 15 minute shower. Inmates also get 90 minutes to exercise in a concrete yard. The 15-foot-high walls block direct sunlight. Prison officials don’t allow exercise equipment in the yard.

Pelican Bay Warden Greg Lewis says that would be too risky. "Anything attached to the wall they would use to scale the wall," Lewis explains. "The other concerns we have is them cutting metal. These guys are good at cutting metal. That's metal they'd use to make weapons."

SHU inmates are allowed no phone calls. They see visitors only through a glass wall.

Inmates call the Pelican Bay SHU “the end of the line.”

Warden Lewis says 95 percent of the inmates in the Pelican Bay SHU ran criminal enterprises inside and outside prison. He says Pelican Bay is a life they’ve earned.

"I haven’t seen any validated gang member or associate yet that had not committed and been prosecuted for a crime, or they wouldn’t be in prison," Lewis says.

The Department of Corrections offers all inmates in the SHU a way out: renounce prison gang life – and tell Corrections officers everything you know about the gang. Do that, and you’re out of the toughest prison block in California.

Corrections officials didn’t allow media to talk to any of the inmates who participated in the hunger strike on the tour.

Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program

MARION - The Ohio State University - Marion sociology lecturer Brenda Chaney plans to lead a group of college students through an exchange program with the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville.

According to a news release, Chaney plans to have a group of students participate in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which invites college students and inmates to come together and learn in the same classroom. The program is national, headquartered at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa., and includes 12 colleges and universities with about 7,500 students involved to date.

Chaney is hopeful that the students and inmates will write papers, read books, discuss social issues, do presentations and take part in a graduation ceremony together.

"Students will learn that there is a fine line between who goes to prison and who goes to college," she said in a statement. "Students will learn that a slight change in circumstance could put them in the other place."

Chaney will go through specialized training provided by the Inside-Out program. She said the program, which is being offered as an Ohio State Marion course, could benefit any student but particularly those focusing on criminology, sociology and psychology.

Chaney can be reached at 740-725-6282 or by email at chaney.2@osu.edu.

Facebook stalker turned email hacker sentenced to four years in prison; sent nude photos of victims.

George Bronk, 24, was sentenced to four years in prison.

A California man who searched women's Facebook pages for clues that allowed him to break into their email accounts was sentenced to four years in prison on Friday.

Prosecutors said George Bronk would take over the email accounts, then search their email folders for nude pics they sent – and then forward it to their entire contact list – including their families, friends and coworkers.

Brown pleaded guilty in January to charges that included false impersonation, possession of child pornography and computer intrusion.

"This case serves as a stark example of what occurs in so-called cyberspace. It has very real consequences," Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Brown said.

Prosecutors expressed concern that Bronk, 24, demonstrated a "high degree of callousness" though an evaluation by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation showed that Bronk demonstrated remorse and said he was an alcoholic.

According to prosecutors, the 24-year-old began his email attacks while taking care of his ailing parents in December of 2009 and continued them until he was busted last September.

After he took over victims' accounts, he taunted them and would even threaten some into sending more explicit photos.

Perhaps even more frightening, according to prosecutors, he proved that social networking can provide easy information to make many people's emails hackable.

"The victims we went to said 'I had very robust passwords.' But it didn't matter how robust the password was if the recovery question is easy," Robert Morgester said. "Lost your password? What's your favorite color or what high school did you go to? Or what's your dog's name? And he was able to glean that information from social media."

Prosecutors told the AP there were victims in at least 17 states.

The California creep isn't the only person sentenced even this month for wreaking havoc on someone's life by hacking into their email. In Minnesota, Barry Ardolf was sentenced to 18 years in prison after he hacked into his next door neighbor's Wi-Fi network and among other things, used his email account to send sexual emails to the victims' coworkers as well as threaten to kill Vice President Joe Biden.

Education liberated me from a life of crime

Bob Cummines, OBE, FRSA and chief executive of Unlock, the national association of ex-offenders, was formerly a notorious bank robber.


"Education liberated me from a life of crime," says Bobby Cummines, now a life fellow of the RSA, soon to receive an honorary master's from the Open University, and, last month, awarded the OBE by the Queen at Buckingham Palace for his services to reformed offenders. It's not bad for a former armed robber who spent a total of 13 years in high security prisons before deciding he needed to change for the better.

As founder member and chief executive of Unlock, the national association of reformed offenders, Cummines has spent the last 12 years campaigning against the social exclusion and discrimination that stymies the efforts of many reformed offenders to "go straight."

He leads a team of four staff operating from a tiny office above a dentist in Snodland, Kent. Unlock receives no government funding and relies on charity donations for its existence. But the organisation thinks big and boasts some significant successes in its fight for the right of offenders who have served their sentences and have a desire to live crime-free, productive lives to be treated by fairly by the rest of society.

A notable success was persuading sections of the insurance and banking industries of the merits of welcoming prisoners and ex-prisoners as customers. Unlock has established a specialist insurance broker service and now has a list of 17 insurers on its Insurance and Convictions Consumer Guidance leaflet. Working with Halifax and Barclays, Cummines has developed a guide to enable prison staff to assist people in prison or on the verge of release to open bank accounts. "The emphasis of our work is to reduce the likelihood of re-offending by people who have served their sentences," he says. "Without bank accounts people cannot access the financial services the rest of us take for granted."

It is hard to imagine that Cummines was ever part of a criminal culture. But like many who end up in prison, he started young. "I was a bright kid, but I never played by the rules. I was from a big Irish family of eight children. We lived in King's Cross in London when it was at its worst with drugs, gangs, prostitutes, you name it. To get out of the slums you became a bricklayer, joined the army or became a villain. Thieving was quite acceptable, so long as you didn't rob your own people."

He left school at 15 with no qualifications, but got a job in a shipping office. He puts the wrong turn his life took down to his first encounter with the police. "I was in a park with my mates when somebody let off a starting pistol. The police were called and began bullying us. I stood up to them." He says the police returned later and produced a cut-throat razor they said was his. "It was a fit-up," he says. "My dad said the police don't tell lies, plead guilty, you'll get a fine and it'll be forgotten about in a few years."

He got the fine, but his bosses at the shipping office saw his guilty plea and sacked him. "I was gutted," he says. "I thought, if you want me to be bad I'll show you how bad I can be." Within a year he was sentenced to six months in a detention centre for the possession of a sawn off shotgun. "It was supposed to be a short sharp shock, but it was just violence practised against vulnerable kids. I came out of there tougher and angrier than ever."

Over the next two decades Cummines established himself as a hard-core professional criminal. "If I had carried on, I would either have been shot dead by the police or innocent members of the public could have been shot."

The change came while he was serving a 12-year sentence and he credits a prison education officer, a prison probation officer and a former south London gang boss. "I started studying social science and psychology with the Open University. I began reading about deviant behaviour and thought, 'I'm reading about me!' The more I read, the more I realised I didn't have to be the way I was. The high I used to get from crime was replaced by a bigger high from learning."

Cummines left prison for the last time almost 25 years ago. He struggled to get work and fit into the "straight" world, but eventually succeeded, getting a degree at Greenwich University and going on to hold senior positions with various employers. "Getting work was hard because I had to make up my employment history," he says. "To live an honest life, I had to be dishonest about my past. That was one of my motivations for joining Unlock and one of the things we are campaigning to resolve," he says. As chief executive he has been a member of the home affairs select committee inquiry into the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, an expert witness on to the home affairs select committee on prisoner education and a specialist adviser in the 2004 public inquiry into murder of Zahid Mubarek in Feltham Young Offenders Institution.

"Prison doesn't work, education works," Cummines concludes. His one big dream is for a series of super academies, which he has christened the Diamond Project. The aim would be to provide training, education, advice and guidance for low tariff offenders and those at risk of breaking the law. Cummines and his colleagues have spent years working on the proposals. They held talks with the last Labour government and have met the coalition government. During his last meeting with Lord McNally, minister of state for justice, the peer promised to arrange meetings between Unlock and other senior officials.

The recent government review of prisoner education pledged to put education and training at the heart of Ken Clarke's promised "rehabilitation revolution" in our jails. Cummines, who has already secured the promise of several hundred million pounds' worth of private finance for the project, is hopeful. "I told Lord McNally, 'People usually come here to ask you for money, but I want to give you money,'" he says, smiling.

With an average cost of £37,000 a year to keep someone in prison and the cost of re-offending estimated by the home office at between £9bn and £13bn a year perhaps he has a point.

"They would be investing in good behaviour. You can educate people out of crime. Or you can educate people into crime, by giving them no education and banging them up with experienced criminals."

Prisoners reintroduction to society

In the Federal & State, prisoners face many problems upon release. Most releases have limited financial resources or none at all.

Many do not have employment, and some do not have homes or families to whom they may return. Most of them receive indifferent or hostile reactions or treatment from the community. Those who have been in prison for long periods of time have the additional problems of catching up on how our contemporary society does things.

All encounter emotional problems in reacting to the new environment and many feel depressed, estranged, lonely and rejected.

One official said, “Some organizations such as their local community Church help prepare prisoners for release, but the availability of pre-release programs is limited.”

I am of the view that Federal & State Prisons should offer training programs to assist prisoners in preparing them for release or a gradual re-entry into society. Prisons should make some attempts to deal with the two most immediate problems; money and jobs.

I believe that there are a variety of ways to assist prisoners in making this transition. One is to develop better pre-release programs. These programs are to be held within the prison environment. The purpose is to train the prisoner or offender in ways of daily living such as how to get a job, how to keep a job, how to relate to family members and others, and how to live in a world that may have changed significantly since the offender began his or her period of incarceration.

I also believe that pre-release programs should include educational and vocational programs, treatment programs or life enrichment programs, in which offenders are taught how to control their emotions, plan for the future and establish goals.

The second problem for ex-prisoner or ex-offender is employment. I was informed by a top prison official in an interview that there are programs at Federal & State Facility's that help prisoners for employment, such as survival skills (carpentry, painting, farming etc), goal setting, stress management, and reintegration into society.

During the said interview, the official said that the prisoners are taught how to manage money and they participate in recreational and other leisure activities. I suggested to the official that there should be decision making and problems solving classes as well.

However, from a recent study I have conducted where I interviewed a number of ex-prisoners, I have concluded that the employment picture is very bleak for ex-offenders and that many of them have not had adequate training before or during incarceration. So, the prison becomes a revolving door for most of them.

They come out and go right back in. As a community, we need to try and alleviate this problem. One way to start is by implementing the mentioned programs for the prisoners before they are release from the Correctional Institution.

SureShot Books helps Prison Inmates

SureShot Books makes it possible for family and friends of prison inmates to send books to prisoners as well as sending magazines to inmates and we also have newspapers available from all states.

SureShot Books is part of the SureShot 2k family of companies that was founded in 1990 to help the families of prison inmates to make it possible for their loved ones to improve their lives through education enabled by providing them the ability to send books to inmates to help them learn useful life skills, which also has an influence how efficiently an inmate will respond upon release.

Here at SureShot Books, we fervently believe that the fact that you have made a mistake does and should not mean that your life is ruined forever. We believe that everyone deserves a second chance.

Based on studies made by the US Department of Corrections, an inmate that takes the opportunity to improve their education while incarcerated has a much better chance of reintegrating into society and becoming a productive contributing member of society. Providing books for prisoners is an effective method of helping them to improve their lives.

Our hope is that by enabling families and friends to send books to inmates we can have a positive influence on the lives of both the inmate and his or her family. Families can help their loved ones by ordering books from the comfort of their homes.

To make education available to more inmates, SureShot Books has a complete library of books, newspapers, magazines and greeting cards available in Spanish so the fact that a prisoner may not speak English well does not prevent him or her from taking advantage of our books for prisoners due to a language problem. We also have books that can help them to improve their English comprehension or any other language.

Looking ahead, SureShot Books remains committed to ensuring that stable, secure and reasonably priced supplies of Books, newspapers, & magazines are available to inmates at all times.

To make the prisoners able to interact with their children even though they are away, we have added a NEW program where inmates can order Children's Books from our catalog or web-site and have them send directly to their children.

We firmly believe that even though a prisoner's body is locked up, their mind can always be free to travel the world and learn about anything they are interested through the magic or books.

visit us @ www.sureshotbooks.com

Did jail strip search go too far?

A federal appeals court ruled that a woman's intimate search of a male inmate – which was filmed and watched by dozens – was unreasonable. The Supreme Court declined to take the case.


Washington

The US Supreme Court declined on Monday to examine a federal appeals court ruling that the strip search of a male detainee by a female guard in an Arizona jail was an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The action lets stand a 6-to-5 ruling by the full Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco involving a search conducted by a female cadet at a jail run by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department.

The case comes at a time of heightened public awareness of intrusive searches as a condition of air travel, including intimate pat downs and technology capable of simulating a strip search. The case dismissed on Monday, however, took place in the context of a jail.

How much do you know about the US Constitution? A quiz.

At issue was a 2004 search of Charles Byrd, a pretrial detainee, at a minimum security jail in Phoenix.

Mr. Byrd was one of 90 detainees ordered to submit to a unit-wide search for contraband and weapons. Byrd was told to remove his clothing except his boxer shorts, which were described as pink and comprised of very thin, revealing material. The searches took place four to six at a time. Some were conducted by cadets from the detention officer training academy. Present during the searches were an estimated 25 cadets, a number of training supervisors, and 10 to 15 uniformed guards. The procedure was also videotaped.

Byrd said in his lawsuit that he should not be subject to such an intrusive search by a female guard. He also charged that the female guard – later identified as Cadet Kathleen O’Connell – squeezed his genitals and kneaded his buttocks during the search.

Unlike a standard strip search, which involves visual inspection of the naked body, Byrd’s search was a cross between a pat-down search and a strip search. Rather than a visual inspection, Byrd’s search relied on the sense of touch to identify concealed weapons or contraband.

The cadet ran her hands over parts of Byrd’s body, including the most private parts of his body. The cadet estimated the search took 10 to 20 seconds; Byrd says it was closer to 60 seconds.

No weapons or contraband were found. But the experience left Byrd feeling humiliated.

A federal judge threw out portions of his lawsuit but allowed a jury to decide whether the incident was an unreasonable and unconstitutional search. The jury ruled against Byrd.

A federal appeals court panel upheld the jury’s conclusion.

The full Ninth Circuit in San Francisco agreed to hear Byrd’s appeal. The court split 6 to 5, ruling that the cross-gender strip search performed on Byrd was unreasonable and violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

“The indignity of the non-emergency strip search conducted by an unidentified female cadet was compounded by the fact that there were onlookers, at least one of whom videotaped the humiliating event,” wrote Judge Johnnie Rawlinson for the court majority.

“Courts throughout the country have universally frowned upon cross-gender strip searches in the absence of an emergency or exigent circumstances,” Judge Rawlinson said.

Judge N. Randy Smith filed a dissent joined by four other judges. “Not lightly do I find reasonable a female officer’s probing search of a male detainee wearing only thin boxer shorts,” Judge Smith said. “Nevertheless, I believe the precedent and the facts compel this result, unsavory to our sensibilities though that result may be.”

Smith said he felt the case was more a pat-down search than strip search, since Byrd wore his boxers throughout the procedure.

The judge said court precedent allows female officers to conduct pat-down searches of the groin area of fully clothed male inmates. He said precedent also allows female officers to observe unclothed male inmates in their cells and in the showers.

Smith said judges should defer to decisions made by corrections officials regarding such searches. With 10,000 prisoners in the Maricopa jail system, there are not enough male guards to conduct all the searches necessary to run the jail, he said.

Restricting the ability of female guards to conduct certain kinds of searches might “perpetuate sexist notions that a female is only useful when a male is not available,” Smith said in his dissent.

The judge added: “Instead of converting Durango Jail into a target for equal opportunity litigation, I defer to the prison officials’ reasoned and sensible judgment on these matters.”

The case is Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department v. Byrd (10-1201).