Equal Oppression

by James Hall

Garrison Johnson, an African-American inmate, filed a suit against the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation citing that
segregation violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. The CDCR kept Johnson in more restricted custody, longer than necessary, because there were allegedly no African-American beds open. In February of 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that segregating cells by race was unconstitutional.

The CDCR has decided to interpret the law the way they see fit: force
the inmate population to integrate, violating everyone’s Fourteenth
Amendment rights. Housing assignments are not supposed to be
determined solely by an individual’s race, yet requiring all inmates to
integrate their cell would be discriminatory.

The CDCR will be putting correctional officers and inmates at risk
unnecessarily if they force the entire inmate population to integrate their cells. Prison officials know that special care must be used when making housing decisions in California, as penitentiaries are dangerous places. The U.S. Supreme Court decision does not mandate that the inmate population be totally desegregated. In fact, Suzan L. Hubbard, Director of Adult Institutions, claims the CDCR will not force all of its inmate population to integrate their cells. Hubbard wrote this consoling letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, in response to letters from citizens worried about the impending desegregation of the state’s institutions.

Despite the politically correct answer Hubbard gave the S.F. Chronicle,
the CDCR seems intent on forcing integration upon the incarcerated
masses. The threatening memorandum was posted in North Block; said memo describes how people will be punished if they do not comply. The CDCR wants to house noncompliant inmates in Behavior Management Units for failing to participate in the Integrated Housing Program. The CDCR has made rule changes to punish inmates who refuse a housing assignment. The ramifications for an inmate refusing an assignment range from loss of privileges, to being housed in administrative or segregated housing units. This is forced segregation.

In the first week of December, I was summoned to see my correctional counselor regarding my upcoming annual review. I told her I wished to continue my present program; and, when asked about integration, I told her that, as a Caucasian lifer, I could not comply with integration without being prone to violent reprisals from other white inmates. Said hearing was going to be held in absentia, per my request. I received notification, via institutional mail, that I was to maintain my current program; however, the unit classification committee decided to code me as racially eligible*, despite my wishes. I wrote an inmate appeal (CDCR Form 602) to get the
false information out of my C-File, as this type of information would
make me persona non grata among my (white) inmate peers. During the sixteen plus years of my life sentence, I have managed to avoid conflict because my offense is not deemed unacceptable to other inmates and I have not drawn the unwanted attention of the people who make decisions among the incarcerated population. I intend to continue to look out for myself, as the CDCR is not trustworthy.

All of a sudden, the CDCR is trying to compel groups of inmates
into cells, even though inmates have waged bloody race wars over the
years. I have seen whole yards erupt into race riots on four different
occasions—at New Folsom, at Lancaster, at New Corcoran, at Soledad.
Peace is precarious in California between the diverse cultures housed
within the state’s prisons; therefore, it’s unsafe to compel all of the state’s inmates into integration.

Being an inmate with a life sentence, I must comply with the unwritten
code of rules for inmates. With the passing of Proposition 9, which allows the Board of Parole Hearings the discretion to mete out multi-year parole denials (from three to fifteen years), I must assume that my incarceration could be permanent. That said, I will not be able to comply with forced integration. Alternatively, I cannot see how the CDCR could get away with punishing people who do not participate in the integration program. Forcing integration is not mandated in the Johnson ruling; as such, the CDCR is breaking the law by implementing a forced integration policy. The CDCR has gone from one extreme to another: forced segregation to forced integration.

*Editors’ note: Racially eligible refers to an inmate who can be housed with inmates not of the same race.