Pelican Bay State Prison

Pelican Bay State Prison

Pelican Bay, dubbed "the prison of the future" by the governor of California, opened in 1989 at a cost of $290 million. It is a 275-acre site nestled in a dense forest, a day's drive from San Francisco and a two days' drive from Los Angeles. Most arrivals at Pelican Bay are inmates who have previous prison misbehaviour, such as inmate or guard assaults, weapon possession, or rioting, or gang members who refuse to "debrief," or disclose to authorities all information about their gang's activities, operations, or membership. After 6 weeks of confinement in the SHU for failure to debrief, these inmates are classified as "inactive" and placed into the general population. 50% of Pelican Bay inmates are serving life sentences (Ottawa Citizen, 28 April 2002).

Structurally, the prison complex consists of interconnected, 2 storey buildings, surrounded by three fences. A lethal electrified middle barrier separates the two halves of the prison; one half houses the general population, and is a standard maximum-security prison, while the other, Security Housing Unit (SHU), houses the most dangerous of the dangerous inmates, and is supermaximum security (see insideprison's article on supermax prisons).

At the SHU, prisoners are confined to their cells just under 23 hours a day, with the remaining hour and a half used strictly for exercising and showering. Each day at a specified time, the guard flips a switch that buzzes open the unit's orange cell doors. Each corridor contains eight cells, with a shower and "recreation" yard at one end and an elevated command post at the other. Cells lack windows, with the only light coming down from the courtyard roof and a second-storey skylight above the main corridor. Cells are mixed single and double-bunks, and are approximately three and a half metres long by two and a half metres wide.

Inside, conditions appear clean, modern, and sterile, with fluorescent lights, stainless steel fixtures, and plenty of unimaginative concrete. Video cameras constantly monitor prisoner activities, furnishings are bolted down, and most doors only open by remote control. Prisoners are allowed one parcel from their family a year, are prohibited phone calls, and can see visitors only on weekends, with the standard no-contact stipulations. In times of good behaviour, or "Good Times," they own televisions or other personal items.

Criticism has surrounded Pelican Bay nearly from the start of its operation. The current Warden, Joe McGrath stated that Pelican Bay is uniquely difficult to manage because of its constant atmosphere of violence, saying that staff "can't do a positive program" when inmates aren't "out long enough without stabbing each other." A 2001 riot left one inmate dead by gunshot and 100 inmates stabbed. In 1996, Pelican Bay had the most inmate homicides of any other institution in the state, with 6. By comparison, the entire state of Texas, which housed about 136,000 inmates at the time, only had five inmate homicides that same year (Associated Press Newswires, 21 February 1998).

see photos of Pelican Bay

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