In 2022, a broad coalition of organizers in California introduced an ambitious bill to limit the use of solitary confinement in the state’s prisons, jails, and detention centers—and outlaw it entirely for pregnant people, as well as a few other categories of vulnerable individuals. They called it the Mandela Act after the South African leader, who was held in solitary confinement for at least six of the 27 years he spent jailed. “Solitary confinement, if done a certain way, drift[s] into the area of torture—and these are correctional facilities, not torture camps,” California Assembly Member Chris Holden, the bill’s sponsor, said. But that year, after the Mandela Act was passed by the state legislature, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed it. In 2023, organizers negotiated with the governor’s office to try to come up with a compromise of the Mandela Act that he would consider signing into law. Then, this year, a different organization picked up the Mandela Act’s provision banning solitary for pregnant people and included it in a separate bill focused on improving nutritional standards for pregnant and postpartum women in custody. While the Mandela Act stayed stuck this year, this new, narrower bill was adopted by lawmakers in August and signed into law by Newsom in September. But by then, it had grown so unrecognizable to its original community sponsor that they withdrew their endorsement, Bolts reports.
The initial bill would have banned solitary confinement for anyone who is pregnant in a California jail, detention facility, or state prison. The version that became law no longer applies to local jails and detention centers. And instead of outright banning solitary confinement, it capped the number of days it can be used. But the result is that the new law expressly allows prison officials to put pregnant women in isolation for up to five days at a time in certain cases. Advocates are alarmed that, for the first time, the legislation has codified in California law that it is permissible to use solitary confinement against pregnant women. Solitary confinement has remained a cornerstone of prison officials’ strategy for managing incarcerated populations, as they insist that they need to be able to continue to separate people from the general population for safety reasons. And Newsom has repeatedly erred on the side of trusting California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s discretion and allowing the agency leeway to shape its own policy on this issue.
Comentários