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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan.25, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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California Gov. Pete Wilson's administration recently issued an edict forbidding reporters from interviewing prison inmates in person. The ban follows several news reports about prisoners being beaten or murdered by prison guards.
The ban will hold at least until the state's Youth and Adult Correctional Agency reviews its 20-year-old news-media guidelines, which are expected to be stiffened. The administration claims its new policy aims at stopping prisoners from becoming media celebrities or heroes.
J.P. Tremblay, assistant secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, says the "explosion in types of news media"--tabloid news, talk shows and newsletters--and the "growing number of requests for interviews with prisoners" made the guideline review necessary. California has 136,000 prisoners in 31 prisons.
Reporters may now interview prisoners only through the mail and by phone. They may interview prisoners at random during visits to a prison.
Tremblay noted that a similar restriction was placed on the media back in 1971, when the Supreme Court upheld the decision in Pell vs. Procunier that banned face-to-face interviews with prisoners. "In the late 1960s and early 1970s, inmates were doing interviews all the time," Tremblay stated.
He said the 1971 "blow-up at San Quentin Prison was a direct result of inmates utilizing the media to get their message out about non-conformance."
Workers World spoke with Luis Talamantez, one of the San Quentin Six, the group of prisoners charged with conspiracy to incite the Aug. 21, 1971 rebellion. He said the uprising was a "result of the conditions and brutality inherent in the system."
In the uprising, 26 prisoners took over the first floor of the Adjustment Center Building in which prisoners were held in isolation.
Talamantez now heads the Pelican Bay Information Project, an advocacy group for prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison, one of the most brutal in the country.
A "60 Minutes" show last year documented the conditions prisoners endure at Pelican Bay. One prisoner, Vaughn Dortch, received massive, widespread burns while held down in a scalding hot tub of water.
A group of Pelican Bay prisoners filed a class-action lawsuit against the excessive use of force and denial of medical and psychiatric care at the prison. A judge ruled last January that Pelican Bay's treatment of prisoners is unconstitutional.
More recently, the Fresno Bee and other media outlets reported on the murderous abuse of Corcorran State prisoners. Guards have shot and killed at least seven since the prison opened in 1988.
In a three-part CNN broadcast Nov. 29-Dec. 1, prison guards testified that it was common practice for guards to set up inmates to fight each other. They would put known enemies together in a yard, and then shoot them as they fought.
The witnesses said guards also routinely fire 37- millimeter guns, which have injured or killed many prisoners, including those being attacked by other prisoners.
One prison employee said two different lieutenants "tortured two different inmates who presented absolutely no threat" by shooting one of them seven times and the other nine times.
"It was an adrenaline rush for them to do this and there were some pictures that were passed around of the inmate's face," another employee said. The employees reported that the lieutenants and their supervisors falsified reports about the shootings. An FBI investigation of Corcorran has been under way for the past year.
Fresno Bee reporter Pamela Dodger said that after Wilson denied prisoners access to the media, "seven or eight guards at Corcorran State Prison were put on paid leave of absence." She said that if the media had access to the prisoners they "could find out why" the guards were put on leave.
Steve Sama, a staff attorney at the prison law office in San Rafael, said these guards were put on leave for beating prisoners.
"The government wants to slow down the scrutiny of the prisons," Talamantez stated. Otherwise "an avalanche of lawsuits will be brought and won against the prison system. They know they have cowboy guards in there killing prisoners and they don't want to be sued. They want the media out."
Sama said, "At least 20 lawsuits have been filed by prisoners in California."
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