California’s most secure lockup has links to South Valley, San
Benito
The guards constantly watch the prisoners.
The prisoners watch the guards.
The prisoners watch each other.
The tension is immediately palpable to a visitor at Pelican Bay
State Prison.
California’s most secure lockup has links to South Valley, San Benito
The guards constantly watch the prisoners.
The prisoners watch the guards.
The prisoners watch each other.
The tension is immediately palpable to a visitor at Pelican Bay State Prison.
All the inmates in the level IV of Pelican Bay have at some time “demonstrated that they are a threat to other inmates and the staff,” said Steve Perez, Lieutenant and Public Information Officer charge of Public Relations at the Super Maximum Security Facility near Crescent City.
Dealing with problem inmates is Pelican Bay’s specialty.
Since 1989 Pelican Bay has been dealing with the most difficult inmates in the California prison system, housing the dangerous convicts in the specially designed Security Housing Unit.
When gang members from Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Hollister commit violent felonies, they’re likely to end up in state prison. The most violent of those will end up in Pelican Bay.
In this environment the prisoners are no longer allowed to mingle with the general prison population.
“It serves as a prison within a prison,” Perez said.
He sees the SHU as a reflection of society’s need for self-protection. “We need to segregate them further to protect the [other] prisoners.”
The segregation comes in the form of personal cells in rows of four that look out onto a blank wall. The front of the cells have steel perforated doors and perforated Lexan, a measure to protect guards from getting human waste thrown at them.
Each cell pod is made of two stories of cell rows and opens out onto a 10-by-20 room for exercise by inmates one at a time. There are six cell pods to a unit and each unit can be accessed by one of four hallways arranged in an X-shaped pattern. There are 96 units, 12 along each side of hallway.
It helps to imagine an X-shaped snowflake.
This arrangement allows for many different points of control that are centrally located. If an alarm is sounded the guards come pouring out of their pods to assess and assist in another section of the prison.
“It would be like disturbing an ant hill,” said Perez.
Life in a pod means one hour a day in the exercise pen, a three times a week shower and the occasional trip to the doctor, dentist, and maybe a visit by the chaplain. If inmates refuse exercise they could spend 23-24 hours in the 9-by-10 cell.
Some prisoners pass the time talking about where they come from with other inmates, watching one of the prison-approved TV channels or passing notes in an activity called “fishing.” The rare virtuous inmate in the SHU enjoys scholarly pursuits such as psychology, religious teachings or other subjects that the prison library may have books on. Others draw detailed images of wildlife, hip-hop culture and mythological and Native-American art using skittles, M&M’s and the weather page of USA Today to make color dyes.
“You can have inmates that commit violent offenses who program [join rehabilitation programs] really successfully,” Perez said. “And then you have inmates who come into prison who continue violent or aggressive criminal behavior, whether it be trafficking drugs, instigating racial violence, extortion, or aggressively pursuing criminal behavior in the prison and community.”
For example, a detailed drawing of mythological beasts could be a message directing criminal activity. Gang members learn dead and ancient languages to send messages, trying to stay ahead of investigators in the same way the Navajo language was used by U.S. military forces in Word War II.
Typical inmates at Pelican Bay are associated with one of the major five prison gangs: the Mexican Mafia (Sureños), Nuestra Familia (Norteños), the Nazi Low Riders, Aryan Brotherhood or Black Guerilla Family. These notorious gangs all have the distinction of being initiated and organized within the California penal system, though they have grown beyond and into communities like Hollister, Gilroy and Morgan Hill.
The location of Pelican Bay, near Crescent City in northwesternmost California, was an attempt to isolate the prison’s high concentration of gang-affiliated inmates from any major metropolitan area. Large metropolitan and small rural areas are all feeling the effects of prison gangs. Take the methamphetamine drug trade for example. Prison gangs can be found in cities like Los Angeles and smaller municipalities like Salinas. Some extend across national and international borders linking to other organized crime such as South American drug cartels.
After spending 25 years working around prison gangs, Perez has some advice to offer communities like Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Hollister: Work more proactively with local law enforcement.
“There is a risk, but people have to be willing to take their community back by working with law enforcement. And law enforcement has to be responsible in how they use their authority in these communities.”
“Many people are afraid of police and the gangs,” Perez continued. “It is imperative that law enforcement builds bridges back into these communities so that when people call they will have confidence that the police are going to respond to their calls and use their authority in a proper manner. And that they will honor and recognize people and communities that work with law enforcement agencies to combat prison gangs, street gangs and terrorists. Sometimes the most effective way is a simple ‘thank you,’ a private recognition from a sergeant or detective that reaches out in a private phone call and says ‘I just want to thank you for what you did.’ Sometimes it is not about making it political or public.”
Though a closer partnership between law enforcement and the public will help, Perez admits that there is no single solution.
Perez quoted Police Chief William Bratton of Los Angeles saying, “‘We will not arrest our way out of this problem.'”
Bratton should know, as L.A. County has the highest percentage of inmates in the CDC, 33, with the next closest county, San Diego, weighing in at only 8 percent.
Pelican Bay by the numbers:
275 acres
Opened December 1989
$115 million dollar budget
Over 1400 employees
296 level 1 inmates, 140 level 2 inmates, 1,573 level 4 inmates, 1,292 level 4 SHU inmates
Approximately 3,300 total inmates represent approximately 2 percent of 158,000 inmates in state prison system.
