Sheriff’s office confirms hunger strike in Santa Cruz jail as inmates say ‘we are treated abominably’

Five men in the Santa Cruz Main Jail have been on a hunger strike for nearly a month citing poor treatment by guards, the high costs of commissary goods and concerns that jail officials are reading their private communications with attorneys.

Activists say the strike highlights the need for community involvement in incarceration issues, and a concerted effort to rehabilitate prisoners and put them on a path to reenter society.

In a first-person piece published Sunday in Lookout’s Community Voices opinion section, Jason Cortez wrote that the strike, which started Nov. 8, aims to bring an improvement to inmates’ standards of living. 

Cortez is a pre-trial detainee, meaning he has been held in the jail for nearly five years while awaiting trial and has not yet been found guilty. He faces several charges, including first-degree murder in the 2019 death of German Carrillo, another jail inmate.  

Cortez wrote that officers have provoked and belittled inmates, and that prisoners are held in high-security, solitary administrative segregation, or “ad-seg,” units, under the pretense that they are “gang dropouts.” He also said that commissary prices for food and communication with family are too high, and prisoners have concerns about jail personnel reading private correspondence between prisoners and their attorneys.

“We want the public to take notice of our plight. We are trying to make changes in our lives and have faith,” Cortez wrote. “But it is increasingly impossible when we are continually oppressed and denied our humanity.”

Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Socorro Luna confirmed the hunger strike in a statement to Lookout on Monday, but said the processes that the detainees cited are necessary for safety reasons.

“These five incarcerated persons are in custody for serious charges and are concerned about certain processes that have been put in place for the safety and security of the facility, other incarcerated persons, correctional staff and civilian staff,” she said.

Cortez said that when detainees were housed in the open unit, they could be out of their cells for up to 135 hours a week. In ad-seg units, those hours are much more restricted. Luna said that detainees in the jail’s ad-seg units are allowed to recreate in groups for 35 hours a week — which she said is 25 hours more than what is required by law. 

The California Civil Code requires that ad-seg inmates in disciplinary isolation receive a minimum of one hour per day outside to eat, shower, exercise, make calls and congregate with others.

Luna said that inmates are not having their rights violated, and that they retain access to the jail’s services. She added that, although the hunger strikers are choosing to forgo their meals, “they are monitored daily to ensure their health is maintained.”

The sheriff’s office did not respond to a follow-up inquiry about why prices for goods have increased, if jail personnel can read private legal mail between attorneys and detainees, and what changes were made at the jail following a May 2019 hunger strike involving about 90 inmates. That protest also centered on the price of commissary items and poor living conditions, and led to price reductions for food items and other goods sold to inmates.

A civil grand jury report released in May raised issues such as the poor conditions in the jail, calling it “crowded, foreboding, and with little to distract the inmates from the boredom of incarceration.” 

The grand jury found that while the jail was intended for inmates being held for less than a year, most of the current inmates in the main jail are pre-trial who have been deemed a high security risk, and have been incarcerated for “many years.” 

The report goes on to say that inmates may be locked in their cells for 23 hours a day, with the possibility that their only exercise hour could be in the middle of the night. It also called the costs of commissary and phone calls “exorbitant.”

“Those who have never been incarcerated cannot imagine what life is like behind bars, especially the dungeon-like main jail,” the report states.

Local community activist and prison abolitionist Jasmeen Miah, who started the Instagram page Abolition Santa Cruz, called the detainees’ claims “disturbing” and points to the jail’s high recidivism rate — the rate at which people return to prison following release — as an aspect of the system that needs more attention, especially if detainees are held in high-security lodging due to previous gang affiliation. That rate for the main jail is about 60%, according to the civil grand jury report. 

Miah added that while she did not know about the strike before this weekend, she believes that these are common stories regardless of location. “There are a lot of people who are considered of high risk profile because of gang affiliation, but don’t seem to get services to be rehabilitated,” she said. “It feels like something’s not working.”

Miah added that her criticism is aimed at the system as a whole, given that, like Cortez, many detainees are still awaiting trial. As a therapist herself, she argues that placing detainees in high-security solitary confinement, with limited opportunity to leave their cells, is a net negative in the long run.

“People don’t learn to be social or prosocial without being in relation to others,” she said. “I think we’re doing them a disservice by locking them up and sequestering them.”

Further, Miah says she thinks the hunger strike and detainee concerns provide a strong argument against a new jail, and in favor of expanding much-needed services like behavioral health and substance-use-disorder treatment.

“A new jail would require a lot of money that could go towards services and things that can help prevent crime or harm in the first place,” she said. “We should be trying to find creative ways to bring solutions that aren’t just funding the jail system.”

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