CDCr issues SHU sentences illegally

by Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa

I left Pelican Bay State Prison on July 11, 2014, and arrived that evening at DVI in Tracy. I laid over for a week, arriving at CCI-Tehachapi July 17.

The Ad Seg unit at DVI has to be one of the worst in CDCr. It’s filthy and fundamentally used as a warehouse for prisoners. The Step Down Program (SDP) committee is a complete sham at DVI and has been conducting unauthorized SDP committee hearings on prisoners from March 2013 to the present – 17 months of illegally validating men to indeterminate SHU sentences.

The-Prison-Beast-CDCR-CCPOA-octopus-prisoner-art-300x232, CDCr issues SHU sentences illegally, Abolition Now!
“The Prison Beast” – Art: Unknown prisoner (Dear reader, is this your work?)

George Giurbino and Suzan Hubbard, who lead the DRB (Departmental Review Board) case by case reviews, along with their supervisor, Michael Stainer, director of the Division of Adult Institutions (DAI), informed me and the other three main representatives of the Prisoner Human Rights Movement that they went to several CDCr prisons and saw that the wardens, chief deputy wardens, captains, ISU, IGI and other staff members were conducting illegal ICC (Institutional Classification Committee) hearings with alleged gang members or associates. At the same time, ranking CDCr officials across the state have been using the old standard of review, in effect prior to October 2012.

Now, Hubbard and Giurbino realized that it is very difficult for their subordinates to utilize the new STG-SDP without the new training. All the CDCr officials – Hubbard, Stainer, Giurbino and Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard, knew that all prison officials needed to be re-trained according to the STG-SDP rules and policies.

These state officials realize that these alleged STG-SDP committees were not properly carrying out their duties. Therefore, they instructed and ordered all institutional staff to cease the STG-SDP committees, unless the prison officials have been re-trained by a certified training official.

To the present date, CDCr has knowingly been placing prisoners in SHU based upon gang validation rules that NO LONGER apply to thousands of prisoners held, sitting with gang validations and indeterminate SHU terms in Ad Seg and SHUs, in stand-alone cages across the state. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 prisoners are affected by the mismanagement, cover-up and sham practices of CDCr’s SDP committees!

The Step Down Program (SDP) committee is a complete sham at DVI and has been conducting unauthorized SDP committee hearings on prisoners from March 2013 to the present – 17 months of illegally validating men to indeterminate SHU sentences.

To my fellow prisoners within CDCr who have stood before an alleged STG-SDP committee since October 2012, there is the chance that your U.S. constitutional rights under the First, the Eighth and the 14th Amendments have been violated by those prison officials comprising the ICC, who served you with a gang SHU term or served you with an indeterminate SHU term.

Yes, you men at DVI, prison officials have been giving you gang SHU terms illegally! These types of gang SHU terms are happening all across CDCr prisons, and officials from CDCr head office in Sacramento are completely aware of the criminal acts committed by their subordinates.

Fellow prisoner, file your state writs at your local Superior Court, and once you meet the standards, showing that your rights have been violated, the Superior Court shall provide you with a lawyer at no cost to you. Seek your own justice because CDCr’s ranking officials’ jobs are to punish you, to violate your state and federal constitutional rights!

Yes, you men at DVI, prison officials have been giving you gang SHU terms illegally!

“Stand up for your rights!” CDCr shall not censor my thoughts, and I have love for my Brutha Bob Marley for that quote from him.

It is truly hard, next to impossible, to change the racist and culturally discriminatory practices of the 38 years of their bias toward inmates, which has been directed at prisoners of color and poor whites by CDCr on various levels.

Power to the prisoners who don’t fear justice!

In struggle! Revolutionary love and respect!

Send our brother some love and light: Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, s/n R.N. Dewberry, C-35671, CCI SHU 4B-7C-209, P.O. Box 1906, Tehachapi CA 93581.