Corcoran SHU is a maximum security facility where the officer comes to the prisoner's cell door, places him in handcuffs through a food port and motions to the control booth officer to electronically open the prisoner's cell to perform the daily escorts (i.e. showers, exercise yard, law library, visits, etc.)
On numerous occasions the control booth officers have accidentally and repeatedly opened the wrong door leaving the escorting officers open for attack by prisoners who have not been handcuffed. As a solution to this problem Corcoran SHU has reinstated its deadly and infamous gladiator policy of electronically opening the cells without the officers being in the section.
If the prisoner is going to the shower he is only allowed to wear his shower shoes on this risky journey to and from the showers, thus reducing the prisoner's ability to protect himself from an attack.
If the prisoner is being escorted outside of the section he is to go to the section door where officers on the other side place him in handcuffs through the food port and proceed with the escort. Upon return from the escort the prisoner is placed back in his section where the handcuffs are removed through the food port and his cell door is then electronically opened by the control booth officer for him to return to his cell.
This procedure is only in theory. The age old problem lies in the prisoner's return to his cell from escort and/or showers because just like the control booth officers have repeatedly opened the wrong cell doors leaving officers open for attack, it is just a matter of time before these same control booth officers accidentally and/or strategically open the wrong cell doors leaving the prisoner open for attack from other prisoners. This is but another chapter of Corcoran's same scheme revisited all over again.
-- a California prisoner at Corcoran SHU, June 2003