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Blow by Blow: Pelican Bay State Prison

Added: July 14, 2007

Introduction
During my brief stint as a criminology major in college (ha ha) I took a tour of the Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California. We actually went inside the wire, toured the Special Housing Unit and the regular Level IV prison and got a two hour dose of exactly what kind of punishment a modern state can dish out to people who it is displeased with. It was insane beyond words - truly.

Back then the regular Joe could look at P. Bay and the handful of other supermax facilities around the country and feel pretty safe about never ending up there by accident. You had to really prove that you wanted to go there, then prove it again, and then prove it again. Each supermax bed cost a titanic amount of money, and even the punishment-crazed California voters couldn't stomach funding more than 7500 beds in the entire state (Of course, 7,500 supermax beds is far more than the entire rest of the world combined). P. Bay and the like used to be reserved for only a select few.

Gitmo, illegal combatants, extraordinary rendition, the Patriot Act and all the Constitution trampling that has surrounded the "war on terror" changed all that. We are still several huge steps away from anything resembling a police state, but we are openly kidnapping people, torturing people, murdering people and illegally imprisoning people all the time now. There is still slight comfort in that most of the folks getting murdered and tortured are foreign nationals who talk and look funny, but recent events have been a drastic step in the wrong direction.

Since we are moving towards "Pelican Bay for Everybody", I thought it appropriate to dredge up my old notes from the tour and get them out to the world.

Just so you know what you are dealing with.

The Tour

"Oh yeah folks, one more thing, if there is a riot or an uprising or something while we are in here, California considers you dead the moment it starts."

This succeeds in getting the attention of most everyone in the group, and we all stop what we are doing for a moment and look at Mr. James.

"We just need you to sign these forms saying that you understand that"

Up to this point, things really hadn't been all that weird. Pelican Bay is hard to miss, that is for sure. Since it was built to house the top enemies of the state of California, it was purposely built in a remote location as far away from Los Angeles as possible. Other than the prison, Crescent City is just a quiet little town on the northern Cal coast, with a modest tourist industry, a modest fishing industry and a modest pretty much everything else.

I had somewhat sketchy directions, and I was worried that I might not be able to find it. Let me tell you this - it is not hard to find. There is no chance at all that you will drive by Pelican Bay and not notice that you are passing something extremely heavy.

The prison has two parts, the "regular" level IV prison and the "Special Housing Unit". The level IV section of the prison functions like any other maximum security prison in California - 3 squares a day, a huge exercise yard, a library, common eating areas, a big weight room, televisions everywhere, a vocational school and several cute little condos off to the side for conjugal visits (yes, its true, if you are married and on the good behavior list, you get three overnight visits per year to do whatever you want with your spouse for the weekend in a very clean on site 3 room condo).

The Special Housing Unit (called the "SHU" by folks in the prison biz) on the other hand, is a whooooole different story. The SHU at Pelican Bay is what we now call a "supermax" prison. Inmates are confined to their cells for 23-1/2 hours per day, never see direct sunlight, and have almost no direct human contact. In our society there is nothing we can do with a guy who won't follow the rules beyond sending him to a place like this - it is the end of the line (see picture above, the SHU is the weird fractal shaped concrete block thing in the lower half of the photo).

The entire thing is surrounded by 200 feet of bare white gravel and sniper towers - lit up 24/7 in a very unnatural way by gigantic flood lights. Our tour was at 8am in the middle of winter, so it was still twilight when I got there at 7:30 am. The glow of the floodlights was visible for miles away, kind of like the glow of a high school football stadium, except these floodlights are there so the snipers can clearly see the people they are going to shoot in the back as they flee across the gravel.

On a hot summer afternoon in July its 200 feet of brightly lit bare gravel with nothing to hide behind and every inch covered by 3 snipers in every direction. On a mild early spring day with just a hint remaining of winter, its 200 feet of brightly lit bare gravel with nothing to hide behind and every inch covered by 3 snipers in every direction. At 2am on a cold Christmas Day its 200 feet of brightly lit bare gravel with nothing to hide behind and every inch covered by 3 snipers in every direction.

You get the idea.

The message conveyed by the gravel, the floodlights and the snipers could not possibly be clearer - "Hey buddy, just so you know, if we ever get you in here, you are fucked"

So now, here I am signing the piece of paper saying that I agree to agree with California in classifying me as dead the moment the first guard gets hit on the head with a broomstick. Perfect.

Everybody else seems to be signing, so I'm not going to let the fact that this is the weirdest piece of paper I have ever seen stop me either. "Yes, state of California" I say with my signature "Please classify me as dead whenever you think things have gotten out of hand sufficiently - I think that is a good idea".

There it is - signed and handed in. I am now an officially authorized visitor.

We head out through the security door with our guide and start our walk across the gravel. There is kind of a trail from the foot traffic, but nothing at all official, or traditional, such as a "sidewalk". I am briefly taken aback that there isn't some kind of secret access tunnel for the staff. Someone else asks about it and gets the answer "There is only one way in or out, and that is across the gravel - everybody takes the gravel." Ultimately it makes sense, what good are 200 feet of snipers, gravel and floodlights if all the rioters have to do is steal a key and sneak out through the nice safe tunnel?

We get to a door in the middle of a completely blank concrete wall that is about 30 feet high and 200 feet long. As we approach, it snaps open as we approach with some kind of remotely controlled electronic latch. Our guide holds the door as we all walk into the main staging area for the guards.

Once we all get inside, he says: "You are now in the SHU".

We are in a dark windowless room packed with video monitors and surveillance equipment. There is a single door on the far side of the room with a clear bulletproof panel showing me a short section of featureless hallway beyond. A lone guard stands behind a huge bank of security monitors gives us an overview of how the SHU works.

The Special Housing Unit is divided into two levels, the prisoner level and the guard level. The guards who interact directly with the prisoners on the lower level do not have any weapons or any keys. The guards on the upper level control all the doors and are heavily armed with every possible thing ever designed for causing pain and killing people. The ceiling of the lower level is just a steel grating, like a sewer grating, that is completely human-proof but easy to see through, shoot through, spray fire hoses through, or blast tear gas through. Nice! The grating covers the entire lower level, and allows the guards to walk around and view every corner of the lower level from above. All the guards up there have nightsticks and mace and tasers and evil looking little HK-94's with 9mm blitz rounds in the high-capacity magazines. There are also tear gas and fire hose stations regularly placed just for good measure. The only way to get from the lower level to the upper level is by going outside and completely around the building, traversing a good 300 feet of that well-lit, wide open gravel covered by the same snipers that we already got a good look at on the way in.

The guard finishes explaining the basic layout of the place while I crane my neck trying to get a glimpse of a prisoner in one of the video monitors. All I can see are vague shapes and bits of hallway.

"Let's go out and walk around a bit in the cell block" our professor says.

"Sure" says the guide.

We pass through the room to the door on the far side and it snaps open as we approach it just like the outer door did. We go through the door and enter one of the actual cell blocks. There are numbered doors down both sides of the hallway. We look up through the sewer-grate ceiling and see the heavily armed guards walking around on top of us. A guard walks right over us, and I watch the steel grating sink into the squishy sole of his combat boot. There are yellow lines on the floor, and the guard explains that it is very important to stay inside them as we walk down the hall. The yellow lines zig-zag around the wide corridor in a seemingly random fashion, causing us to create a weird "follow the leader" line in single file as we wind up the corridor.

When someone asks about it, the guide says that the prisoners have figured out how to make blowguns out of toilet paper, spit and underwear elastic that have a range of 20 feet. They can shoot them out of the tiny air-holes in each cell door (they are required by law to have an air hole) and usually aim for the eyeballs of passers by. Zig-zagging along with the yellow line puts you outside the firing-arc of each air-hole and reduces your chances of getting nailed in the eye with a sharpened spit-wad.

Think about this for a minute before reading on. Fuck-an-A.

One things I really notice while walking through this section of the prison is how quiet everything is. We are walking past numbered cell doors, and being very careful to stay inside the yellow lines, but there isn't one human sound coming from anybody but us. Someone finally asks "Are these cells occupied"? "Oh yes, we are at maximum capacity, every cell here is occupied" I have no idea what the quiet really means, other than being extremely creepy, and it becomes just another weird detail in among several thousand other extremely weird details.

We wind around through the silent hallways, following the yellow lines and waiting for some sign that there is anybody actually in there.

"The security precautions are designed to make any type of riot or prison takeover impossible. There are no weapons or keys to steal from the staff, and if there is any trouble on the lower level, the guards on the upper level can respond very quickly."

"Yep" I think as I watch a guard walk right over our heads traversing the walls of all the cells below "that is very true"

We return back to the main control room without incident. We have yet to see or hear any sign of any of the prisoners. Our guide explains that we are going to go outside and then up to the guard level. This seems like a good idea, I'm about done having these guys walking over my head all the time. We head back out the door, traverse the 300ft. of gravel, say hello to the snipers again, enter another doorway, and then go up a stairway to the second level. Now we are on the guard level ourselves, walking on the steel grating of the floor and looking down on the halls and rooms of the lower level. We go to the end of the hallway and enter one of the "pods" as they are called, which is a sub-group of 16 cells with a common guard area with another huge bank of video cameras.

The guard in this control room explains that the lights are never dimmed, and the prisoners spend 23-1/2 hours a day in their cell, never seeing direct sunlight. Once again all is quiet.

The guard finishes his little explanation, and then our guide explains each of the weapons dangling from his combat webbing and what type of severe injury or pain it is supposed to cause.

Handcuffs, stun-gun, pepper spray, tear gas grenades, sidearm, submachine gun, taser...

Hmmmm...

Up to this point, the tour has been kind of a Pirates of the Caribbean type of thing - some weird tour of some other-worldly place that has nothing really to do with me, and certainly has nothing to do with reality. The most recent chapter, however, featuring the dead-eyed guard and his multiple implements of doom - has finally gotten through to me and triggered some kind of volcanic reaction deep in my psyche.

The mood of the tour changes. Dark thoughts begin percolating. This has transitioned out of being a zoo tour and is quickly becoming something I don't like at all. Not so much like a reassuring look at how these correctional professionals are dealing with the very difficult issue of prison violence, and much more of a direct threat, kind of more like "Hey kids, just remember, if you fuck up enough, you could be next.

I have quick impulse to lunge at the guard, execute him, take my classmates hostage and then begin making demands over a bullhorn. Moments later, I have an elaborate vision of blowing the entire facility sky-high utilizing a building sized propane-air mixture bomb generated from the kitchen. My emergency Swedish temperament moderation override cuts in and stops both urges in milliseconds - but the unexpected power of the visions leaves me deeply unnerved.

It's official - I'm thoroughly rattled. My big red "fight or flight" button has been pressed - firmly - and I've been catapulted backwards to a much simpler time. Much, much simpler. Just walking down the hallway without screaming and running is a white-knuckle ride that takes every ounce of my considerable self-control and my memory is a bit hazy from there on out. I remember walking back out across the gravel. I remember noticing a sign in the office with a happy looking bear putting a soda can in a recycling bin, with the caption "Remember, a clean prison is a happy prison!". I remember being very relieved at getting back to my car in the parking lot. I remember being even more relieved when Pelican Bay State Prison was a good 20-30 miles behind me.

The whole experience left me unsettled and with a profound urge to take some kind of action - but it remained extremely unclear exactly that action should be. I did have a powerful urge to clean my weapons, which I did, knowing that the futility of doing so was virtually unbounded. Aside from that, there seemed to be nothing else to do besides live with it and hope that complacency would eventually come to the rescue - which it did.

Whew!

That was Pelican Bay State Prison, February 1993.

Here and Now

At the time, my reaction seemed a bit strong, considering that the chances of getting caught up in the California prison system were virtually zero. The political madness since 9/11 has given that nebulous fear a bit more credence (hey, I'm clairvoyant!), but there is more at play here. The unfortunate truth is that even in a touchy-feely liberal democracy like ours, there are times, late at night (and for a very select audience) when our gentle, fatherly Uncle Sam gets out the jackboots and a cattle prod for a night of good old fashioned fun.

States just can't resist that kind of thing - its too deeply ingrained in their nature. After all, the western democracies only very recently swore off the overt criminal syndicate method of governance - where "the law" is just a codified method for passing wealth up the pyramid, the police are just muscle to terrorize the populace and jails are for anyone who can't get with the program. All their old drinking buddies - China, India, Russia, most countries in Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa are still hard at it - squeezing the populace for everything they can get out of them while providing minimal services in return. "Why don't you c'mon out with us tonight" they yell over the phone "We're going to get fucked up on wood alcohol and rape the middle class again - It'll be great!"

Luckily, things are working out extremely well right now for the folks at the top of our food chain - making it very easy for them to ignore the invitations from the drunken buffoons on the other end of the phone. Our guys have more cash, more cocaine and more prostitutes than they know what to do with, and they are not about to tamper with a system that provides for them so richly (As long as hedge fund managers are making 400 million dollars a year, our liberties will be safe and sound). It has been nearly 80 years since the last conflagration (The early depression being the last time that the state and the middle class were engaged in full-scale warfare in this country) and nobody wants to go back to the bad old days.

So, we have a nice cozy cease-fire. They agree to keep up the smiley-faced "liberty and justice for all" thing and maintain their fleet of crowd-control equipped front-end loaders well out of sight. The average Joe (me) keeps up the whole "happy go lucky college student with a bright future and nothing to fear from the government" thing, while keeping a fully tricked M-4 assault rifle and 10,000 rounds of ammo in the trunk of my car.

Simple and straightforward.

Let's all hope it stays that way.


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