California Judge Ends Inmate Abuse Suit After 21 Years

From [HERE] SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – A legal case that has lasted more than two decades and brought systemic changes to California’s prison system ended Monday after a federal judge determined the state corrections department had made sufficient reforms to protect inmates from being abused by guards.

The lawsuit led to policies limiting guards’ use of force and added protection for mentally ill inmates. It also prompted the state to create an independent inspector general in the corrections department and an office to oversee investigations of alleged employee wrongdoing.

The reforms were the result of a lawsuit filed in 1990 alleging that inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison in Del Norte County were being abused.

U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco ruled in the inmates’ favor in 1995, finding that prison officials had “permitted and condoned a pattern of using excessive force.” In 2004, he extended the court’s oversight to include abuse investigations and employee discipline throughout the adult prison system.

Also in that year, he approved the department’s reform plans, which included new policies on the use of force and reviewing allegations against employees.

Henderson ended the case with a final three-page written order after the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation pledged to keep the reforms even without court supervision. His order was made public Monday.

“The Court is proud of the work done during the life of this case. Pelican Bay was once a place where prison officials used force ‘for the very purpose of inflicting punishment and pain,”‘ Henderson wrote, quoting from previous findings in the case.

The judge said he is concerned the department could revert to its previous unconstitutional practices but said he is satisfied that attorneys representing inmates will sue again if the department regresses.

Before the lawsuit, mentally ill inmates regarded as troublesome at Pelican Bay were held in isolation, where the solitude could aggravate their conditions. They now are sent to psychiatric wards at Pelican Bay or California State Prison-Sacramento.

John Hagar, appointed as an overseer by the judge, held hearings in 2006 to investigate whether the administration of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was blocking reforms to appease the powerful prison guards union. Hagar reported in October 2008 that the department’s reforms were operating well.

The nonprofit Prison Law Office in Berkeley, which filed the original lawsuit, agreed in January that the department had made enough progress that the suit should be terminated.

“It ends a sordid chapter in the history of the Department of Corrections which we hope will be followed by a continuation of humane and constitutional practices,” said law office director Don Specter.

The department promised, among other things, to continue training new prison guards not to adhere to an informal “code of silence” that protected abusive guards.

Department spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said officials have worked hard to correct the problems and make sure they don’t happen again. The reforms in place, he said, “will be proved to stand the test of time.”

Related developments over the years included a perjury investigation by Hagar and Henderson against a former Department of Corrections director, and federal prison terms in 2003 for two Pelican Bay guards for soliciting inmates to attack child molesters, sex offenders and other inmates they disliked at the maximum-security facility in Crescent City between 1992 and 1996.

Portions of the original lawsuit dealing with the medical and mental health treatment of inmates were transferred in 2008 to two different lawsuits, which are ongoing. The U.S. Supreme Court was expected to rule soon on whether the state must reduce its prison population by about 40,000 inmates as the only way to improve medical and mental health care.