Power shut-offs, fires disrupt California prisons and jails

With an inmate population nearly one-third over its design capacity and amid ongoing efforts to overhaul the way solitary confinement is structured, California prisons have a new challenge: Coping with planned power shutoffs, with announcements sometimes coming at the last minute.

Salinas Valley State Prison, located in Monterey County about 7 miles north of Soledad, was given one day’s notice for a power shut- off that lasted from the evening of Oct. 26 until Oct. 28, when power was restored after prison staff members met with PG& E officials. The prison’s emergency generators provided limited power, but inmates were kept in their cells and fed cold meals for the duration of the outage, a spokesman at the prison said.

“We had trucks with extra generators just in case,” said Lt. Alan Meyer, a public information officer at Salinas. Meyer added that the prison’s minimum-security yard was not affected.

At San Quentin State Prison, the oldest prison in the state, the outage came at a relatively convenient time. Power was shut off Oct. 26 about 8:30 p.m. It was restored roughly six hours later, in the early- morning hours. Backup generators were activated during the shut- off, said Dana Simas, a press secretary with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Inmates at Salinas Valley’s high- security facility described abysmal conditions: Nonfunctioning toilets, which require electricity; cells without lighting; and staffers occasionally distributing water for inmates to drink or pour down their sinks, allowing the toilets to flush once. A Facebook post on the Salinas Valley Inmate Family Council describes guards setting up portable toilets and allowing inmates to periodically leave cells to use the restroom.

Meyer said none of that was accurate.

“The inmates had running water in their cells,” Meyer said, adding that they also have access to commissary items. “We did not utilize port-a-potties. We provided inmates with electrical cords that allowed inmates to use their toilets.”

The cells’ lighting was powered the entire time, and though no hot meals were given, three cold meals were passed out each day, Meyer said. He said inmates were confined to their cells for security reasons.

“We have a large food supply in case of emergency,” Meyer said.

Salinas Valley has a population of about 3,000, about 500 more than its designed capacity, according to public records. Statewide, there are about 118,000 inmates, for a prison system that was designed to hold roughly 90,000. Though nearly one-third past capacity, it is significantly better than conditions in 2011, when the U. S. Supreme Court ordered California to cut its inmate population by roughly 46,000, when there were about 156,000 people incarcerated in the state prison system.

As blackouts were going on, the Kincade fire was raging in Sonoma County. A little before 9 p. m. Oct. 26, the Sonoma County Sherif f ’ s Office announced that the fire forced the evacuation of the North County Detention Facility in Santa Rosa, which has a population of slightly less than 400.

Sonoma inmates were transferred to Alameda County, where the Sheriff’s Office was already short-staffed. Some Alameda County deputies had headed north to help with firefighting efforts.

The Santa Rosa jail’s evacuation was announced days before the start of a six- day hunger strike and inmate work refusal at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.

In Contra Costa County, a planned power outage did not affect the Martinez Detention Facility, county sheriff’s spokesman Jimmy Lee said.