Adapted from Youtube Video by Joshua Mason, Homie Hangout
As a lot of you heard, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) decided on June 12 to slam all level 3 and 4 yards in the state because of increased violence. I thought it was a ridiculous move: it’s not going to do anything to stop the violence. And the core of what we’re getting at here, is taking people’s visits and taking people’s access to communicate with their loved ones.
Let’s not forget that the chaos of the Sensitive Needs Yard (SNY) is entirely a creation of CDCR, who designed, built, and filled the SNY yards and made them incredibly dangerous. These are where most of CDCR’s violence is coming from, but the yards getting locked down are essentially all the GP yards in California. I can think of four or five people that have been killed just last year for being put on yards where they weren’t supposed to be. And they told the staff they couldn’t be there, and staff said it was out of their hands. That blood is on CDCR’s hands.
It’s particularly cruel to do this lockdown when Father’s Day is right around the corner. There are a lot of guys in prison who are fathers, and the only time they see their kids during the year is Father’s Day. CDCR says that having relationships with your family and soscial relationships is all part of the rehabilitation process: that’s the point of the tablets. So they say this but then kills visits and tablets before Father’s Day, when you have a lot of fathers incarcerated. So now you can’t even talk to your kid, email them, have a video chat. That causes so much harm to families. It’s not the kid’s fault that their dad’s in prison, it’s not the kid’s fault that there’s all this violence in prison. They just want to talk to their dad. CDCR is saying, “No.”
CDCR says the other part of the California model is “Hey, we’re not going to do these blanket moves, we’re not going to punish the many for the actions of the few.” What is this? This is exactly that, and in a particularly cruel way. It’s not the family’s fault, and for the most part it’s not the fault of more than the 90% of people that are on those yards who are locked down. There’s no rational reason for it, except that CDCR wants more violence and aggression.
As I and others that have done time in California prison have said, violence is the language of prison. And we can wish it was different, but it’s a fact. Thankfully, due to the Agreement to End Hostilities, there’s a lot less violence between groups and more communication. Salute to the guys in Salinas Valley who have decided to take the hunger strike route instead of the take-your-head-off route. That’s pretty responsible communication. But how is CDCR going to respond?
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