Federal Judge Claudia Wilken this week approved the final agreement to end indefinite solitary confinement in California calling the settlement humane, innovative and fair.

Prisoners celebrated Tuesday’s settlement agreement, whose terms were agreed on last September, claiming it as a victory that bolstered their struggle for human rights.

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Oakland civil rights attorney Anne Weills, one of the attorneys representing the prisoners, said, “What was missing from the courtroom were all the prisoners who risked their lives in the hunger strikes of 2011 and 2013.”

Attorney Anne Weills speaks at a press conference in Oakland.

“Yes, our litigation team did the best we could to bring our clients out of indefinite solitary confinement and into the light of day – but there is no doubt that we could not have gotten where we have with this settlement without the leadership of the brilliant, courageous, fearless and enlightened men in the Short Corridor at Pelican Bay who in 2011 set this all in motion,” she said.

The Center for Constitutional Rights released data showing the agreement has already led to the transfer of hundreds of prisoners from segregated housing units back to the state’s general prison population.

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Between preliminary approval of the California settlement in October and Jan. 22, 686 out of a total of 1,813 prisoners entitled to reviews under the settlement have been reviewed for release into the general prisoner population; 546 of the prisoners reviewed, nearly 80 percent, have been cleared for release into general population; and 437 have actually been released from solitary confinement.

The vast majority of prisoners who have been reviewed but not cleared are awaiting a higher-level prison review; most are expected to be released into general population as well.

The settlement requires all first-level reviews to be complete within one year.

Jules Lobel, the attorney representing the Center for Constitutional Rights said “we look forward to the full implementation of all its terms.”

One of the longtime prisoner organizers, Mutope Duguma, cautions, “The power of the legal support and the family/community support is what literally humanized us prisoners to the rest of the world. The countless families and friends did a remarkable job in representing us from an emotional and human perspective and our legal support represented our civil and human rights, and together they re-humanized us as men and women.”

“This is what made it possible for us to be able to demand such a settlement. It is with this family, community, and legal support that we demand accountable implementation of the settlement. We know what works so let’s stay the course,” he said.

A recently released letter written by one of the main representatives of the prisoners asks that prisoners “Monitor and report on the functional implementation of prison conditions and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) employees, holding their feet to the ground and letting CDCR employees know that they are not above the Ashker v. Brown Settlement Agreement.”

The settlement transforms California’s use of solitary confinement from a status-based system, in which prisoners were isolated indefinitely based on vague and unsubstantiated allegations of gang affiliation, to a behavior-based system, in which solitary confinement is used only as punishment for serious rule infractions and only for determinate periods of time. It also limits the total amount of time a prisoner can spend in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison.

The settlement includes a two-year monitoring period, which may be extended if the CDCR is found to be violating prisoners’ constitutional rights or the settlement terms.

When the case was filed in 2012 on behalf of prisoners in Pelican Bay, more than 500 of them had been isolated in the SHU for over 10 years, and 78 had been there for more than 20 years. They spent 22-and-a-half to 24-hours every day in a cramped, concrete, windowless cell, and were denied telephone calls, physical contact with visitors, and vocational, recreational, and educational programming.

Hundreds of other prisoners throughout California have been held in similar SHU conditions, and the settlement applies to all of them.

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