Standing in the warden's office at Pelican Bay, the notorious maximum security prison in Crescent City, California, I don my dark green stab-proof vest and accompany public information officer Lieutenant Christopher Acosta and Associate Warden Rawland Swift (who has since retired) to the Security Housing Unit, or SHU. Acosta is curt and bulldoggish, with a smooth, bald head. Swift is affable and mustachioed, wearing a casual short-sleeved shirt and jeans. "It's been a long week," Swift admits with good humor. He and Acosta are close to retirement and have endured multiple hunger strikes, intense media scrutiny, and the numerous day-to-day troubles you would expect from a place that houses what the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation calls "the worst of the worst"—the most feared prison-gang leaders in a state corrections system rife with violence.
From overhead, the Pelican Bay SHU looks like a star with a series of arms—each one a corridor opening into six pods that contain eight individual cells apiece. Swift says the SHU is akin to a "prison inside a prison."
Pointing into an empty cell, Swift smiles at me. "See?" he says brightly. "This is not a hole in the ground."
[For more of this story, written by Jessica Pishko, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...solitary-confinement]
Comments (0)