By Robert Salonga
The Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. — More than 100 inmates are staging a two-week hunger strike to protest an array of conditions at the Santa Clara County jails, including what they contend is the arbitrary use of solitary confinement and inadequate provisions like clothing.
The hunger strike, which began Monday and is scheduled to last until Oct. 30, occurs within the larger backdrop of a national civil disobedience movement by inmates in several states aimed at, among other things, bringing an end to the practice of solitary confinement as a form of punishment. The local strike is organized by the Prisoners’ Human Rights Movement, which posted a letter online that outlines their demands and setting the protest guidelines for inmates.
The letter is intended to leverage the public scrutiny on the county jail system in light of the 2015 beating death of mentally ill inmate Michael Tyree, which led to murder charges against three correctional officers and spurred a host of reform efforts over the past year to remedy an array of jail abuses.
“These facilities along with Sheriff Laurie Smith are currently under heavy legal pressure and community scrutiny,” the letter reads. “Therefore we must recognize this opportunity to truly seize the moment.”
Sheriff’s officials on Tuesday refuted the inmates’ characterization of conditions in the jail, asserting that they have already responded to the demand for more clothing, particularly underwear. They also say the county jail system does not employ solitary confinement and has increased the amount of “out time” for its maximum-security inmates to between six and eight hours a week, which is at least double state minimums.
“We’re doing a lot more out time than we’ve done in the past,” Smith said. “We’re doing everything we can to make sure we have a great facility.”
But inmate advocates, such as the social-justice group Silicon Valley De-Bug, argue that even if the jail system doesn’t use solitary confinement by its technical definition, it is employing it in practice.
Jose Valle, a De-Bug organizer, said maximum-security inmates’ “out time” is in virtual isolation since they are rarely out of their cells with other inmates, so their human contact is minimal.
“They have yard time, but it’s not an actual yard, it’s a small room with walls sky high,” he said. “When you’re out there, you don’t see anybody.”
Valle said the jail conditions inmates are protesting lag behind even the state prison system, which last year agreed to restrictions on how solitary confinement is used, which inmate advocates believe was influenced by a two-month hunger strike by secure-housing inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison three years ago.
Smith said allowing maximum-security inmates more contact with each other poses a safety risk for inmates, but that her agency is increasing overlapping “out time” despite what she says is the higher likelihood for assaults between them.
“We cannot discount that the inmates in our maximum housing facilities are accused of some of the most violent crimes imaginable,” Smith said, adding that more than half of the affected inmates are being held on charges of murder or attempted murder.
It is not clear exactly how many inmates are participating in the Santa Clara County strike, though a Sheriff’s estimate Tuesday tallied about 125 in varying states of fasting, from not eating entirely to refusing primary meals. The strike organizers themselves noted in their letter that many inmates probably won’t be able to forego eating for a full two weeks, but encouraged inmates to “do your best,” and that inmates would have to refuse three days’ worth of meals for the hunger strike to be formally recognized.
They urged inmate solidarity in the form of not accepting extra food or buying food at the commissary, which is at the heart of one their demands for change: unreasonably high prices for basic food items available for private purchase. The other demands were for more responsible spending of Inmate Welfare Funds for inmate education and rehabilitation, and for reform of jail-housing classifications so that inmates are placed based on individual behavior rather than broad affiliations, gang or otherwise.
The hunger strike’s demands broadly dovetail with a class-action lawsuit filed against the county last year by the Oakland-based Prison Law Office on behalf of two inmates alleging they were being kept in a near-constant state of isolation that caused withdrawal and mental distress. Valle reiterated a pillar of the lawsuit he believes applies today: that inmates are already being punished before being found to have committed the crimes for which they are jailed.
“In Santa Clara County, these are largely pre-trial detainees,” he said. “They’re innocent until proven guilty.”