EMERGENCY PROTEST Against 30 Minute Checks/Sleep Deprivation

Print these out and spread them on social media. Hope to see many people standing up for folks in solitary experiencing MONTHS of sleep deprivation.

Below is a letter that has been circulating, getting signed all over CA, and being sent to government. Monday in Sacramento, we will be LIVE-- PEOPLE POWER and PRESSURE at CDCr.


To the CA Senate Public Safety Committee, Assembly Public Safety Committee, and Governor Brown:

Please take immediate action to stop the dangerous practice in California prisons of guards doing so-called “security/welfare” checks every 30 minutes, 48 times a day. These checks are only being done in the isolation units, causing ongoing sleep deprivation for those prisoners. The checks are particularly distressing for prisoners in Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit (PB SHU) and women's death row. The purported intent of the checks is to improve mental health care and prevent suicides. Instead, these checks are causing serious psychological and physical harm. Sleep deprivation and relentless exposure to loud noise are known methods of torture that can quickly cause mental and physical impairment. Every 20-30 minutes, prisoners are subjected to the reverberating noise of the steel doors to units opening and slamming closed, the stomping of guards through the pods and up and down the stairs, the jingling of keys, the beeping of the Guard One System metal pipes on metal buttons, and the banging of metal pipes on the cells. Making matters worse, guards sometimes shine their flashlights into the prisoners' eyes. The people who are suffering these so-called security/welfare checks spend 23-24 hours a day in solitary cells, so the noise and intrusion is unavoidable, endless torture. Please end it. In PB SHU, the men have been sleep deprived since 10pm, Aug. 2, 2015.

Prisoners report the ill effects of these disruptive checks: severe stress and irritation, weight loss, dizziness, headaches/migraines, eye issues, stomach and bowel problems, faintness, depression, nausea, and inability to focus. Sleep deprivation puts people at high risk of stroke and diabetes, can cause brain deterioration and permanent cognitive issues, increases the risk of certain cancers and of developing or dying from heart disease, can contibute to bone weakness and osteoporosis, and rapidly shorten one's life-span.

The undersigned demand that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) immediately stop the so-called security/welfare checks. The so-called security/welfare checks are causing sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is torture.

"Research over the past 20 years has finally begun to provide at least a partial explanation for why we must sleep.  The clearest finding is that sleep does not serve just a single purpose.  Instead it appears to be needed for the optimal functioning of a multitude of biological processes----from the inner workings of the immune system to proper hormonal balance, to emotional and psychiatric health, to learning and memory, to the clearance of toxins to the brain. ….[A]nyone who lives for months without sleep will die." Robert Stickgold: Sleep On It!, neuroscience article in the October 2015 issue of Scientific American.

cc: CDCR Undersecretary, Atty. Jules Lobel, Atty. Michael Bien, Prison Law Office

Nov 30th EMERGENCY PROTEST Against 30 minute checks- Sleep Deprivation

https://www.facebook.com/events/1184525938228920/