Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) is a supermax prison facility in Crescent City, California. The prison takes its name from a shallow bay on the Pacific coast, about to the west.
Facilities
The prison is located in a detached section of Crescent City, several miles north of the main urban area and just south of the Oregon border.
Pelican Bay State Prison opened in 1989. It covers , and grounds and operations are physically divided.
An X-shaped cluster of buildings comprise a quarter of the prison's facilities, and are known as the Security Housing Unit, or SHU. This facility contains 1,056 solitary confinement cells, organized into 132 eight-cell pods. Each cell is and contains concrete ledge with a foam pad to be used as a bed, a steel combination sink and toilet, and two concrete cubes that serve as a desk and chair. Armed guards monitor six pods of 48 cells at once from central control booths, through perforated steel doors that make it easy for guards to see in but difficult for prisoners to see out. Cell doors are controlled remotely, and prisoners can be allowed out to shower or to exercise in each pod's solitary exercise yard.
Half of the prison holds Level IV (maximum security) inmates in a general population environment with two-man cells. The remaining prison houses Level II inmates in an open-cell, dormitory-style facility for 500 individuals, and Level I (minimum security) prisoners in a facility for 400 individuals located outside of the main perimeter of the prison.
, 1,852 people were incarcerated at Pelican Bay State Prison. 1,112 (60%) of those inmates were Level IV (maximum security) prisoners, 290 of whom were located in the Security Housing Unit.
History
Early brutality
After Pelican Bay State Prison opened in 1989, guards eager to assert their dominance over the inmates established a culture of violence. Inmates in the Security Housing Unit were beaten, tied and left naked, or subjected to staged "gladiator fights" by guards who would intentionally release two prisoners from enemy gangs and then shoot at the prisoners after they began fighting. Vaughn Dortch, who was serving a ten-year sentence for grand theft and whose mental illness had worsened since being moved to the SHU, was taken in April 1992 to be bathed by guards after smearing himself with feces. Five or six guards subjected Dortch to a bath in scalding water while he was handcuffed, leaving him with second- and third-degree burns. Prisoners were also regularly housed two to a cell in the SHU due to overcrowding, with 364 prisoners double-bunked in 1990 and approximately 1,000 double-bunked by 1995, leading to serious injuries from cell fights.
Media attention, including a September 1993 60 Minutes report about the brutality against Dortch, and lawsuits ultimately led to changes at Pelican Bay State Prison. Federal District Court Judge Thelton Henderson ruled in the 1995 Madrid v. Gomez decision that the facility was not being ruled in a constitutional way, and ordered oversight by prisoner's rights lawyers and other experts. Henderson's ruling specifically demanded changes to the use of excessive force by guards, inadequate medical and mental healthcare, and the practice of housing mentally ill prisoners in the SHU.
Hunger strikes
Prisoners at PBSP, particularly those in isolation for several years, have organized or joined in hunger strikes in protest of conditions at the prison and the practice of subjecting prisoners to long periods of isolation.
In 2002, a reported 60 SHU inmates began a hunger strike.The prisoners called attention to the effects of isolation in the secure housing unit.
On July 1, 2011, several thousand prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison joined a total of more than 6,000 prisoners elsewhere in California prisons to stage a hunger strike in protest against overly restrictive conditions and extended periods of isolation. They demanded warm clothes and a handball for use during their one hour a day in the outdoor exercise yard, the ability to make one phone call per week, adequate food, and the possibility of reconsideration of their long periods of isolation after several years. The original strike lasted for over two weeks, and was repeated again in October of the same year.