I am a prisoner in California at High Desert State Prison (aka High Drama). I am currently residing in administration segregation (ad-seg) in a building called Z unit. We have no sunlight in your cells, showers only given 3 times a week for barely enough time to wash up, and at this current time the entire institution is on lock down going on for 3 months and is rumored to be another month, and that is what they told us 2 months prior. I myself have run out of hygiene and rationing my one bar of soap I get issued a week to bath, clean clothes/sheets, and keep my cell clean. That little bar of soap goes quick. They keep the cells here are cold. They give you 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of boxers and 2 pars of the state issued t-shirts. They don't warm you up. I could go on forever about the COs' conduct, their attitude and disrespect to everyone. Transfers are hard to come by at High Drama. There are people who have been waiting for a transfer for a year and a half.
- a CA prisoner, April 2005
The public should be made aware of the racism, favoritism and the prejudice going on behind the walls. The Black inmates at High Desert State Prison D-facility have been on lockdown since August of 2004. They have cell-searched us numerous times and are doing it again.
In December the staff confiscated all of my and my cellmate's property and paperwork (i.e., legal work, letters, address books, phone numbers, photo albums, loose pictures, novels). Approximately a week later they confiscated some other inmate's property, also in my building. These inmates got their property back within 2 weeks. We did not get ours back for two months. And when we got it back, not all of it was there. They kept approximately 96 photos of family members and close friends, all of my address books and phone numbers, so I can not contact my family and associates that I do not know from memory.
Whenever we write inmate 602 appeals and complaints against staff, they never get turned in to the appeals coordinator's box to be processed, but instead mysteriously vanish. They are violating our rights in all areas.
-- a prisoner at HDSP, March 2005