2013 California Prison Hunger Strikes Analysis

On November 11th 2015, Duke University’s Prison Network Series brought Lisa Gunther to discuss the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strikes. The event titled ‘A Critical Phenomenology of Solidarity & Resistance in the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strikes’ focused on the theory and structure of solitary confinement, how it affected the inmates confined and the hunger strikes that resulted. This essay will include a brief description of Lisa Gunther’s talk and a particular focus on the areas that I found most stimulating and relevant to my AAAS course. Gunther commenced her talk with the background of solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay State Prison. She described solitary confinement and analyzed how the structure was likened to ‘weaponized architecture’ i.e. a place designed to implement violence. Gunther then discussed how mainly people who were deemed too dangerous for regular

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the 30,000 prisoners isolated were African Americans and Latino men. However, what particularly struck me were the characteristics that led to some of these individuals being imprisoned. For example, Gunther noted that California’s gang validation procedures ensured that gang members were to be placed in solidary confinement. Thus, one can conclude that there are some black and Latino men who were confined due to their titles and statuses as opposed to actually committing crimes. Due to the point system of the Gang Validation Policy, a man with an M-13’ tattoo or a Swahili Dictionary was more likely to be confined to solidarity than a white man who is equally as dangerous. Therefore, racial disparities within solidary confinement in Pelican Bay arose from the gang culture that existed within African American and Hispanic communities and the stereotypes attached to these ethnicities in relation to this gang