The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: t. William wallin

  • What It’s Like Inside Pelican Bay Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

    What It’s Like Inside Pelican Bay Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

    A conversation with a College of the Redwoods student at Pelican Bay State Prison

    We now have more than 1.5 million people worldwide infected with COVID-19 and over 90,000 deaths. The United States has surpassed every other country in cases with just over 450,000. People are being told to socially distance themselves with six feet of space between others and isolate inside. But what about the millions who are incarcerated that don’t have that option? 

    Kunlyna Tauch is housed at Pelican Bay State Prison and is a student in the College of the Redwoods Pelican Bay Scholars Program at Pelican Bay State Prison. He is slated to graduate with his associate degree for transfer this summer. Tauch is also a student and contributor in Paul Critz’s audio journalism class, which produces Pelican Bay’s podcast “Pelican Bay: UNLOCKED.” Tauch has been a spokesperson of sorts for the recent programming at Pelican Bay and an advocate of the changes being made inside the supermax prison.

    Cases of the coronavirus have risen just over 1,300 throughout 100 federal prisons, thousands of jails and 1,700 state-run facilities nationwide. The Federal Bureau of Prisons says 138 inmates and 59 employees have tested positive and at least seven inmates have died, bringing the total to at least 32 COVID-19-related deaths inside the nation’s prisons and jails. 

    On March 31, California state prison officials announced they would be releasing 3,500 incarcerated individuals early to help free space in cramped prisons due to a possible coronavirus outbreak. Governor Gavin Newsom announced a halt in the transfer and intake of incarcerated individuals and youths into California’s 35 state prisons.

    According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation website, there are, as of April 9, 12 incarcerated persons at California Prison, Los Angeles County, 19 incarcerated persons at California Institution for Men in Chino, one incarcerated person at North Kern State Prison in Delano and one incarcerated person at Substance Abuse Training Facility in Corcoran who have tested positive for COVID-19. Seventy-one CDCR or California Correctional Health Care Services employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in 21 incarcerated facilities, and hundreds have called in sick for work.

    In the past five years there have been more programs in Pelican Bay than ever before and the culture inside is changing. After a lawsuit was awarded to the incarcerated individuals participating in the 2011 and 2013 hunger strikes and their advocates, one of the two solitary housing units was shut down and terms of isolation were limited to five years. This caused the prison to mitigate the effects of solitary confinement with programs like education and therapy. I spoke with Tauch on what it’s like in Pelican Bay State Prison as a college student amid the changes COVID-19 has brought to the infamous prison.

    Kunlyna Tauch looking upward in June of 2019. Tauch is slated to earn his associate degree for transfer through College of the Redwoods’ Pelican Bay Scholars program this semester. | Photo by T. William Wallin

    Tony Wallin: What’s it like in Pelican Bay State Prison right now and what are your concerns?

    Kunlya Tauch: First of all, CDCR stopped all visitation and there are no programs. So we’re doing like old prison time, right. Which is us in prison going to yard and trying to occupy ourselves with whatever we have, which is not that much. My concern is that people on the streets are so socially distant from each other they become callous of each other and become more segregated and more disconnected. But from what I am seeing on TV is a lot of good, which is making me happy. The little acts of kindness and videos of people on the street coming out, I love it. There’s actually a little silver lining out of this.

    TW: Yeah. There’s a lot of opportunity for positivity through all of this.

    KT: It’s hard to pass on those opportunities because it’s so in-your-face. 

    TW: What’s it like in there with programs shut down? What are you doing to keep busy?

    KT: College of the Redwoods has been the only program that is really working on shifting their whole business model to make it work for us. They are still running classes through correspondence and we’re getting hella work like every Friday. Our teachers are saying, ‘This is what we expect. Your next essay is due this date, send it in the mail,’ but because I have five classes I have enough work to sustain me, plus I have hella books I’ve got to get through. I am pretty occupied but it’s pretty restless in here, you know? People are constantly checking on their family, making sure they are well. They aren’t reading, they aren’t programming, they aren’t going anywhere, so their day consists of the phone and the yard. The yard schedule in itself [has changed], we aren’t seeing the regular people we used to see. They’re making it real limited, they’re not giving the day room. They literally made some new rule where only five cells in the day room at a time, which prohibits ourselves from doing what we want to do. It’s kinda stressful. It feels like we are taking a lot of steps back as far as prison goes. 

    TW: CDCR said they were going to send out more cleaning supplies to all prisons and make sure every prison has what they need. Are you seeing that?

    KT: That’s never been a problem. The cleanliness of the place isn’t a problem. Right now I have a personal friend who had some symptoms, they didn’t even test him and they just took him to quarantine and is on two weeks lockdown with no mail, no phone, no nothing. Just to see if he has it or not.

    TW: Where do they have the quarantine right now? What do they have blocked off?

    KT: They have one on A yard and one on B yard and it’s one section of one building and they’re basically in the SHU [secure housing unit]. They’re like kicking off drugs by themselves. That’s their treatment and I guess the nurses are going over, but I don’t know. I assume nurses are checking on them professionally. There’s too much of a shortage of testing, but one thing about medical is they are a separate entity than CDCR, so CDCR can’t dictate what they do.

    TW: Interesting. They operate differently? The warden doesn’t have a say on the medical side of things? 

    KT: No, medical community operates the medical community. All records are sealed and confidential. The prison has to accommodate that or else there’s a big lawsuit. I think CDCR concedes medical and there’s an agreement [between them]. According to the American government this is it and [CDCR] is only the California government, same with religion and same thing with tech. For some reason the tech, IT, here is their own entity and they suck. It takes like a month to transfer music onto our laptop [for the podcast]. It’s been stagnant. I’ve been feeling lethargic. I feel like they caged me back up and I’m really back in prison again. Pelican Bay was really doing good with their programs and everything running everyday and now it feels like this modified program where it feels like we’re just on lockdown. I feel like a lot of our minds aren’t being stimulated because a lot of us aren’t in those programs we are forced into or choose to be in.

    TW: Right. It feels like pre-2014?

    KT: Yes. Real shit. It feels like before and it feels like out of mind will cause more trouble. I am waiting for the ball to drop. I am waiting for something to happen. I’m almost mad that personally we’re on lockdown, but the whole fucking world is on lockdown and I can’t make more moves happen.

    TW: Yeah, the irony in all of this is everything is locked down globally. How is your morale and the overall morale in the prison? Are there still positive interactions?

    KT: I feel like we’re losing that. I feel like the tank is draining every single day. Guys that were motivated are losing that motivation. I see my college peers going like, ‘I don’t even feel like doing the work.’ But you don’t have that motivation no more because you’re not in front of the teacher anymore, you’re not engaging. You have questions but you can’t get an answer. I have a bleeding heart for my community in here, but it’s hard for me to help them because I have five courses and I have to study. We’re getting hella shit to read and it’s like, ‘I don’t have the time to worry about you guys because I have to get this out of the way first.’ Before all of this coronavirus I was approved to transfer to Lancaster [California State Prison, Los Angeles County]. That’s a level three. That was a big decision I had to make because that means I have to detach myself from this place I grew roots in. The process of this whole coronavirus—I’m back worrying about college and I can’t really be the catalyst to get my guys rallied up to do their work because I have to just worry about my work. So, I’ve been feeling like the morale is ‘Let’s see what happens while we are in this state of limbo,’ which is worse than staying stagnant because we’re losing the momentum, you know? We work on momentum on the programs that are on a level four yard. Without that momentum it’s like, ‘I’ll just watch Jerry Springer all day.”

    TW: It’s gotta be rough going from so many programs for the first time at Pelican Bay and then, in an instant, they’re gone. For those of you that are students at College of the Redwoods, can you study together?

    KT: Everything in person is shut down but we can do our own personal study groups, but we are divided. So, we only see our own dudes in our own yard and maybe another building and they’re across the fence so we can’t even have a study group out there. Also the COs [correctional officers] are really cracking down on what stuff we can bring out and they’re asking us, ‘Why were you bringing books and stuff out to the yard since programs are shut down?’ So we can’t even have that. So technically no, we can’t have a study group. We can have an impromptu one if there’s a cool CO that says it’s cool, we can sit out there.

  • Scholars within the walls of Pelican Bay

    Scholars within the walls of Pelican Bay

    College of the Redwoods biology professor helps students at Pelican Bay earn their Associate Degree for Transfer

    On a Thursday evening a California golden-hued sunset blankets the far north Pacific coast region where Christopher Callahan tells his students to tend to their plants. His students are checking Ph levels, adding fertilizer and formulating a hypothesis for a controlled experiment.

    Like any other science classroom, the walls are covered in posters with the periodic table of the elements, the genetic codon chart and a display of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell breakdown. The only difference with Callahan’s classroom is his students are wearing light blue loose-fitting jump suits with CDCR block lettering on the back, a handful are blasted head-to-toe with tattoos and a corrections officer paces down the hall every so often. Callahan teaches inside Pelican Bay State Prison and his students are inmates enrolled in the College of the Redwoods’ Pelican Bay Scholars Program.

    Christopher Callahan answers questions regarding the difference between seals and sea lions for students Marcus Benavidez and Jose Catalan. | Photo by T.William Wallin

    “Teaching in this environment is going back to the basics for me,” Callahan said of what it’s like to teach inside a prison. “The [students] come with a certain engagement I don’t see in regular college classes.”

    Callahan always refers to the individuals in his class as students, because that’s what they are. He said they may be in prison, but inside the classroom they are college students getting an education with a strong sense of enthusiasm.

    On this particular Thursday evening Callahan is teaching Bio 1, a transferable biology class with a lab on the B yard, which is a level 4 restrictive level housing unit. It’s locked down most of the day and there is no inmate control over the locking of doors.

    Having transferable biology courses on a level 4 yard is a big deal, not only for Pelican Bay but for any prison. Callahan said this is a huge accomplishment. An entire summer was spent designing the lab course and getting equipment together which had slight modifications, like replacing glass beakers with plastic ones. Everything Callahan wanted to do was approved by the warden with relative ease.

    Biology professor Christopher Callahan’s Bio 1 class is exactly the same model as it is at College the Redwoods. The class items are slightly modified but students are still able to use microscopes. | Photo by T.William Wallin

    “My reasoning is to start at level 4 because if you can implement it there then you can implement at level 2,” Callahan said. “Pelican Bay has a reputation as the worst of the worst and if we can do these programs there they can be done anywhere. Pelican Bay can be a model for prisons nation-wide.”

    Callahan is right. Pelican Bay is the nation’s only supermax state prison. Its purpose when built in 1989 was to house California’s most violent male prisoners. It was notorious for the lowest of the low, but that’s changing.

    After hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013, the Center for Constitutional Rights won a lawsuit against Pelican Bay that forced the state of California to end its unlimited isolation policy. Before the lawsuit inmates were spending decades in Solitary Housing Units, or SHU. Today half of the building that contained SHU was knocked down and re-purposed for a lower-custody level 2 housing unit where Callahan also teaches a marine mammal biology class.

    In 2015 College of the Redwoods implemented a program for inmates to earn their Associate Degree for Transfer while serving time. Callahan was quick to mention most people in prison will be released at some point, so programs like the Pelican Bay Scholars Program are important because they help reduce recidivism rates.

    “All of the courses we teach there are existing courses at the Eureka and Del Norte campus,” Callahan said. “Some modifications are made but we just implement whats already there. It’s as if we were teaching on a regular community college campus.”

    Biology professor Christopher Callahan brings in BBC documentaries narrated by David Attenborough for his biology class at Pelican Bay State Prison. | Photo by T.William Wallin

    David Nguyen, a student of Callahan’s, agrees with this and feels like he’s on a college campus when in class. Nguyen transferred to Pelican Bay from High Desert Prison in 2011 and every year requested to be sent to another prison. That was until 2015 when he joined the first pilot class of the Pelican Bay Scholars Program. Now he is one of the first students to graduate from the program and earn his Associate Degree for Transfer.

    “I didn’t want to be here at all but then I started college and I requested to stay for once,” Nguyen said. “This is a real class room experience and I had to take advantage of that.”

    Getting to graduate almost didn’t happen for Nguyen though. In the beginning of the semester he was supposed to be transferred to a lower level yard but instead he requested to stay at a higher secured level so he could finish school. Transferring yards would have meant his schedule would change and he couldn’t take the necessary courses to graduate.

    “There was a day when I was walking through campus and forgot I was in prison,” Nguyen said. “I looked around and said to myself, ‘I’m a student right now’.”

    In Nguyen’s experience the program is changing the culture of Pelican Bay. With around 300 students enrolled, different races and gangs are starting to interact with one another and even study together, something that just wasn’t possible before.

    “Some people are changing their lives around,” Nguyen said. “A lot of people have been rehabilitated here.

    Nguyen is one of those people. He chooses his words carefully and is meticulous in his speech. Nguyen carries with him a type of ivy league school confidence you wouldn’t expect in prison, and it shows in his writing. He recently created ‘The Pelican’ with other students, an informational newsletter that circulates within the prison’s walls.

    Pelican Bay Scholars Program students test experiments on their plants during their transferable Bio 1 class. Having a biology class with a lab on level 4 yard is an accomplishment for any prison. | Photo by T.William Wallin

    Nguyen glows when he talks about school. He said students grow plants, pollinate them with Q-tips, take measurements of different liquids like nitrogen and phosphate and learn about male and female reproductive systems. They even use microscopes to look at dividing cells in sperm, testes and ovaries.

    “We’re learning the scientific method, how to hypothesize and see if we reject it or accept it,” Nguyen said. “I’m a science dude, I love this stuff. When we do labs most students get woke real quick.”

    This is the type of feeling Callahan got when he was a student. Callahan is so invested he even scheduled this course at night because he wanted to allow his working students fit the class in their schedules.

    “Biology is hands-on and for them that’s totally different because all other college classes like history or business are not hands-on,” Callahan said. “To experience this is not like any other course. Its catching momentum on the yard.”

    Even though it doesn’t have a lab, his lower security level 2 D-yard marine mammal biology course is integrated with hands on activities. Callahan brings in porpoise skulls, dolphin bones, whale baleen, krill in a jar, sperm whale teeth and plenty of documentaries narrated by David Attenborough, which captivate the students and boost their engagement.

    One of the students is Marcus Benavidez, who is set to be paroled in a month. Benavidez is taking with him 30 transferable credits to Riverside City College in southern California.

    Like Nguyen, Benavidez has been in the program since the first semester. Benavidez has a slow drawl, faded tattoos on his forehead and a huge embracing smile. He is optimistic with the pace he set for himself and said he was “half way to the finish line.” Benavidez never imagined he would come to prison and get to earn a college degree.

    Pelican Bay Scholars Program students log in the results of their experiments on their plants for Bio 1 class. | Photo by T.William Wallin

    “I was in the SHU for a few years and when I was sent back I was told people in CR wanted to see if I was interested in classes they were offering,” Benavidez said. “I went to one class and was hooked. The next semester was more classes and it just kept rolling and now I’m at the half-way point.”

    Benavidez said he loses interest easily but Callahan keeps his classes fresh. Benavidez went into marine mammal biology skeptical but by the end of the course, it was one of his favorites. He said Callahan was a great instructor and admitted he is a little envious about leaving because won’t be able to graduate in the program.

    “I feel like a student, they treat us like students,” Benavidez said. “Once I get out of my building and come to class I am a student, it doesn’t matter that I’m in Pelican Bay.”

    Always up for a challenge, Callahan is currently designing more classes for the future. He said next year there will be another biology course taught, making Pelican Bay the only prison in the CDCR system to offer three. It will be a botany course, which Callahan said was inspired by the Pelican Bay Garden Club. With the addition of this class a science exploration degree will be possible.

    “The course will be Plants and People, and we will grow veggies and plants,” Callahan said. “When you go to college you take courses that are of interest to you. I always encourage my students to follow their passion.”