Prison system unveils new solitary rules
After Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation to limit the extensive use of solitary confinement in California’s prisons, his administration announced lesser changes Thursday that would place fewer inmates in isolation cells and allow them more time outdoors.
Unlike the bill that Newsom rejected last year, and a similar measure approved by lawmakers this year, the regulations proposed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would not place strict time limits on solitary confinement, though they would reduce the types of prison offenses that would require such confinement.
Although the department waited more than a year to issue the regulations, it said it would accept public comment only through next week and would put the changes into effect next month.
The prisoners are kept in windowless concrete cells for more than 22 hours a day, are fed through slots, are excluded from job training and other prison programs and cannot earn time-served credits for parole eligibility. Lawyers for the inmates said recently that the state was holding about 2,000 of them in solitary confinement, down from nearly 10,000 in 2012, when they filed suit.
Under the regulations proposed Thursday by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which runs the prisons, the number of prison offenses that would send an inmate to solitary confinement would be reduced from 34 to 19, and those would be limited to actions involving violence, a threat of violence or possession of weapons behind bars.
The department said it would also allow inmates in solitary confinement to spend at least 20 hours a week outside their cells and would increase their access to education and other rehabilitation programs. And it said it would reduce current fixed-term solitary confinement sentences in half and would end the practice of sentencing inmates to consecutive solitary terms for multiple offenses.
“We are proud to announce a significant step forward in our commitment to reduce the use of restricted housing by proposing common sense changes that maintain public and institution safety, while also continuing to create an environment that focuses and pushes personal support and rehabilitation,” the prison agency’s director, Jeff Macomber, said in a statement.
Supporters of the vetoed legislation, an organization called the California Mandela Campaign, said the regulations were far too weak.
Under the corrections department’s proposal, “people can still be locked alone in cells or cages upwards of 21 to 24 hours a day without access to meaningful human contact or programming, while also being denied contact visits or regular communication with their loved ones,” the group said. “The regulations would permit people to be locked in these solitary units for months, years and even indefinitely — lengths that amount to torture under the United Nations standards.”
The state had accepted similar restrictions in a 2015 settlement of a lawsuit by inmates who had held a hunger strike. The settlement, overseen by a federal judge, allowed solitary confinement only for those who had committed dangerous crimes in prison, like assaults, weapons possession and drug dealing.
But a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that the corrections department was no longer bound by the settlement.
The department’s current rules place no time limits on solitary confinement, and some inmates have spent years in the isolation cells. AB2632 by Assembly Member Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, approved by the Legislature last year, would have limited solitary confinement to 15 consecutive days, and 45 days in a 180-day period, but Newsom vetoed the bill, saying it could have endangered other inmates and prison staff.
A similar bill by Holden, AB280, was approved by both legislative houses this year, but with another veto likely, the author delayed further action and said he would seek negotiations with Newsom.
In last year’s veto, the governor said his prison agency would adopt regulations to address any excesses in solitary confinement. But no such rules were announced until Thursday, when the corrections department announced new “emergency” rules on the issue, allowing public comment only through Oct. 14, instead of the usual 45-day period.
The department said the rules would take effect Nov. 1, and that it would propose longer-lasting regulations at a later date, with a public hearing and a full comment period. It did not specify the “emergency” it was addressing.
The department said it was making one change in the program’s vocabulary: Solitary cells will no longer be defined as “segregated,” under the new rules, but will be referred to as “restricted.”
“The connotation associated with the word ‘segregation’ or any variation thereof is harmful and does not accurately describe the reasons for restricted confinement,” the department said in its rulemaking proposal.
“People can still be locked alone in cells or cages upwards of 21 to 24 hours a day without access to meaning ful human contact.” California Mandela Campaign