"California Department of Corrections officials
and staff are repeatedly violating their own regulations, as well as the
directives from the Director's office, regarding: the validation of gang
members, the official prisoner appeals process and the management of prisoner's
Central File information."
These words come from Lara Johnson, a South
African human rights activist, currently into the third week of her hungerstrike.
Ms. Johnson alleges that according to the
findings of the Office of Inspector General, the case of Demian Johnson
(C-68641), the California Department of Corrections repeatedly did not
follow appropriate procedures and regulations concerning: (a) gang identification,
(b) appeals (CDC 602's) alleging CDC noncompliance with CDC regulations,
and (c) management of prisoners Central Files.
The Office of the Inspector General found
that "Johnson's validation as a gang member and his placement in security
housing unit (SHU)..may have adversely affected his classification score."
Mr. Johnson was originally validated as
a gang member in 1987 by a "confidential informant." and has spent the
past 13 years filing appeals against that designation as false. Numerous
Director's Level Decisions corroborated Mr. Johnson's claim that his classification
was "questionable" "uncorroborated," and "unvalidated." Nevertheless, despite
higher Official directives that the "erroneous" gang label be "deleted"
from his records, local prison officials persistently refused to honor
them.
As a result of CDC noncompliance on these
issues, Mr. Johnson was placed in an Indeterminate Administrative Segregation
program, i.e. locked in his cell for over 23 hours a day, for almost six
years. This, in turn, resulted in: (a) Exclusion from educational, vocational
and therapeutic programs, (b) Prevention of a reduction of his classification
score. © Denial of parole by the Board of Prison Terms based on a
lack of programming (a), high classification score (b), and gang status,
thereby effectively extending his sentence indefinitely.
"The question arises," says Ms. Johnson,
"if it took my husband -- who can read, write and file appeals -- 13 years
to get the CDC to just admit their errors, what about the thousands of
other prisoners, who are suffering from the same kind of CDC mismanagement,
and who do not have my husband's perseverance for justice?"
Ms. Johnson is therefore requesting the
Office of the Inspector General to initiate and conduct an official investigatory
audit--as regulated in Section 6126 (a) of the Penal Code--of the California
Department of Corrections (CDC) for their
noncompliance of departmental policies and procedures, and to recommend
corrective actions, relating to the following issues:
A. The identification, verification, maintenance
and deletion of gang-labels from prisoners held in CDC custody, as regulated
in Title 15 CCR - 3378 © (1) to (5).
B. The noncompliance of the CDC to follow
the regulations of the Title 15 CDC 602 Appeal process.
C. The noncompliance of CDC to maintain
prisoners Central File records, with accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and
completeness, as regulated in Civil Code 1798 - (18) and (20) Ms. Johnson,
originally started her hungerstrick on November 18.
"The persistent refusal of local prison
authorities to comply with the order to expunge the label reveals a dangerous
rejection of higher authority and a department out of control," says retired
Professor Richard Korn, a former prison official who has taught at UC Berkeley
and John Jay College of Criminal Justice