Newsom defends torture with veto

On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation to impose strict limits on the use of solitary confinement in California’s prisons.

Assembly Bill 2632, introduced by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-pasadena, was the most serious legislative attempt in the nation to curtail the use of a practice that can accurately be described as an act of torture when used for long periods of time.

“California has a dark history on the issue of solitary confinement, and this bill was our chance to get it right on this issue,” said Holden in a statement. “The scientific consensus and the international standards are clear, solitary confinement is torture and there must be limitations and oversight on the practice.”

Holden is right about that. The bill called for limiting the use of what it calls “segregated confinement,” banning it for people under the age of 25 or older than 60, as well as for people with serious mental disorders.

A decade ago, in my early days as a journalist, I covered California’s extensive use of the practice. At the time, there were over 500 people in Pelican Bay State Prison who had been in solitary for at least 10 years. Nearly 80 prisoners had been in solitary for 20 years or more.

I wrote about California prisoners Armando Cruz and Alex Machado, who were thrown into solitary confinement, psychologically deteriorated and committed suicide.

This is consistent with wellestablished research from around the world. “The severe and often irreparable psychological and physical consequences of solitary confinement and social exclusion are well documented and can range from progressively severe forms of anxiety, stress, and depression to cognitive impairment and suicidal tendencies,” noted Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on torture, in 2020.

Starting in 2011, prisoner hunger strikes against the state’s use of solitary confinement broke out across the California prison system. This culminated in a legal settlement in 2015 between prisoners represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to curtail the use of solitary.

But earlier this year, the Center for Constitutional Rights noted that a federal judge found CDCR is continuing to violate the rights of prisoners, “relying on inaccurate and even fabricated confidential information to place individuals in solitary confinement, using dubious gang affiliations to deny them a fair opportunity for parole, and holding them in a restricted unit in the general population without adequate procedural safeguards.”

This is the system Gov. Newsom has chosen to uphold.

Newsom’s veto message indicates he viewed the law as overly broad and instead said he would take action himself. “I am directing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to develop regulations that would restrict the use of segregated confinement except in limited situations, such as where the individual has been found to have engaged in violence in the prison,” he wrote.

It remains to be seen what that actually looks like, if CDCR will draw up meaningful regulations, how long putting those regulations will take, how many loopholes will be written into those regulations, whether CDCR will abide by those regulations and whether CDCR will be held accountable for not following those regulations.

Needless to say, I am doubtful that CDCR, a bloated bureaucracy with a history of presiding over the rampant use of solitary confinement, will actually reduce the use of solitary confinement absent a court order or legislation.