Print 
PDFFrom Colorlines:
California prisoner advocate groups have raised alarm about a string of suicides in California state prisons committed by inmates who participated in hunger strikes this year to demand an end to inhumane conditions.
In recent months Alex Machado and Johnny Owens Vick, who were both housed in Pelican Bay’s notorious solitary confinement Security Housing Unit, and Hozel Alanzo Blanchard, who was incarcerated at Calipatria State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit, all committed suicide. Prisoner advocates say all three participated in a statewide hunger strike this summer to protest, among other things, prison discipline policies intended to identify prison gang members which punish innocent, unaffiliated inmates with decades of confinement to segregated units.
“It is a testament to the dire conditions under which prisoners live in solitary confinement that three people would commit suicide in the last month,” Laura Magnani, the regional director of the American Friends Service Committee said in a statement. “It also points to the severe toll that the hunger strike has taken on these men, despite some apparent victories.”
Details about inmates’ deaths are hard to come by, and what little is known is in dispute because prison officials refuse to be forthcoming about the circumstances of the suicides, prisoner advocates say.
(16)