Larry Wilson: A kid in a cell with no light in California
I was visiting with outgoing Assemblyman Chris Holden on the phone the other day.
He happened to mention that not only is he needing to leave the Legislature because of term limits — a California politician can stay 12 years in Sacramento — but this is his 36th consecutive year of being in elective office.
That’s because before his dozen in the state Capitol he was on the Pasadena City Council for 24 years, including a term as mayor, and I have been covering him as a reporter, an editorial page editor, the editor of the local paper and now a columnist and editorial writer all those decades.
Bit of a wow moment for the both of us.
Chris is a super-sweet guy, a great father and husband, a real mensch, with almost an absence of annoying ego — not something I would say of your average pol. He was born into the family biz, too, as his father, now in his 90s, is Nate Holden, the retired L.A. councilman and state senator.
And the reason we were talking is that I wanted to check in with him about the progress of what may be his final passion project in the Legislature, the California Mandela Act, AB 280, which aims to greatly cut down on the use of cruel solitary confinement in California prisons, especially for youth and women.
“I see my work on this as more of a vehicle for the activists who have educated me about it,” Chris says. “But we’ve been working on it since 2015, and twice passed it through the Legislature,” only to see it vetoed over objections from the CDCR — the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“But the system we have in our state, the UN defines it as torture, and I’d like to think California can rise above that.
“You hear stories of a pregnant woman in solitary screaming, and they don’t respond — or at least not until they hear a baby screaming, too.”
As he prepares to leave office, Chris is still meeting with prison officials in order to get a bill they and the governor can live with.
For instance, they say they need to have solitary as an option for youth because “the gangs would take that person and make them do things and not have to worry about going into solitary confinement.
“So I realize there are nuances.
“But a kid in a cell no larger than a king-size mattress with no light?
“Families have said they come out after that and have no desire for anything but suicide.”
Chris says he’s looking for a win-win everyone can feel comfortable with — “but we want to get a win for those who have been working on this for so long.”
And “I remain optimistic,” he says.
“We do have time,” before the end of the legislative session, he says, “but it’s going to be important to get conversations going leading into the summer. August is all we have.”
He again notes how the international community views solitary confinement — post-Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid hero kept in solitary for six agonizing years. Mandela called it “the most forbidding aspect of prison life.”
The United Nations adopted the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, or Mandela Rules, in 2015, which generally prohibit using solitary confinement at all in prisons around the world. Chris says that “Our prison guys won’t even call it solitary confinement; they call it segregated housing!”
But they have agreed that an hour a day outside the cell is OK.
“So that’s good.
“But moving us out of the Stone Age is what this is about.”
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lw.ilson@scng.com