The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — An attorney for hundreds of California inmates held in solitary confinement because of their gang ties on Tuesday petitioned the United Nations to intervene to stop the practice and investigate living conditions and prisoners’ health.
The petition, sent to the UN’s working group on arbitrary detention, comes after about 6,000 inmates at 13 prisons statewide went on a hunger strike last summer in the nation’s largest prison system. They have since staged smaller and more intermittent strikes to protest what they call inhumane and torturous conditions in the so-called segregation housing units, or SHUs.
The document was drawn up on behalf of more than 400 inmates who have been assigned to the isolation cells for years because of their gang ties, said Peter Schey, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. A half-dozen inmate family members joined Schey at a news conference and shared stories of brothers, husbands and sons who have spent decades in the segregated cells.
Full story: California inmates petition UN to monitor prisons