Women in Riverside County jail stage 16-day hunger strike over their treatment

Claiming they’re mistreated and their complaints have been ignored, a small group of women in Riverside County’s largest jail spent 16 days on a hunger strike.

They called it off Monday night when jail staff agreed to try to work with the inmates on some of the issues they were protesting, said Chantel Cox, who initiated the strike among four women in a high-security area of the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside.

Among the issues raised by Cox and fellow inmate Yolanda Velasco: They claim they’ve been sexually harassed by deputies, don’t believe their reports have been investigated and think they’ve been retaliated against for complaining about that and other problems.

They say most of the women in their housing area are still only getting 30 minutes a day outside  their cells, but thought the men in a similar high-security area have been getting 90 minutes a day following their own hunger strike in January.

“They’re violating our First Amendment right to equal protection,” Velasco said in a phone interview. “They made changes for the men, but have made none for us.”

They also say they don’t have enough privacy when they need to talk to medical or mental health staff — an issue the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department has been trying to fix under federal court order. And they were distressed about the level of care given to mentally ill women housed in the same area, describing one inmate who they say has been ignored while self-mutilating — a sergeant merely gave her cleaning supplies to wipe up the blood, they claimed — and ended up trying to hang herself Monday night.

Deputy Mike Vasquez, a sheriff’s spokesman, said he couldn’t address any health care issues related to a specific inmate because of privacy laws, and couldn’t confirm whether there was a suicide attempt at the jail Monday.

He said that if someone reported sexual harassment or abuse, the department would begin to investigate immediately.

He also denied there’s any difference in how much time male and female inmates get out of their cells for what the department calls dayroom time.

The high-security area where both hunger strikes this year took place is called administrative segregation, or “ad-seg.” Inmates are sent there if they’ve been deemed a threat to others. Dayroom time is the only chance those inmates have to do things like take a shower, make phone calls or see anything outside of their cells.

The law requires inmates get at least 30 minutes a day out of their cells, Vasquez said. One reason for the men’s hunger strike was they said even that small amount of time was often cut short. A June report from Riverside County’s civil grand jury, which serves as a watchdog over public agencies, criticized that practice and urged the Sheriff’s Department to set fairer policies.

Vasquez said the department had already begun in mid-2018 to evaluate its policies on ad-seg dayroom time. A new policy that took effect March 1 says all inmates should get out for at least an hour a day. A schedule is set to make sure inmates who might not get along with each other aren’t out at the same time.

Asked why the women might be claiming they were still only getting 30 minutes, he said, “Individuals having difficulties being around others, that may affect when they’re let out, but as a practice, since March 1, 2019, both men and women are allowed no less than 60 minutes a day.”

That’s still not enough, said Sara Norman, an attorney with the Prison Law Office, which won a federal class-action lawsuit in 2015 over the quality of health care in Riverside County’s jails, and is monitoring the jails until they meet all the terms of the settlement.

“Thirty or even 90 minutes a day is not acceptable from our perspective. We don’t think it complies with basic human needs,” she said, adding: “We welcome any moves by the Sheriff’s Department to expand out-of-cell time.”

As for the female inmates’ complaints that medical and mental health staff have to stand outside their cells where everyone else can hear them talk, Norman agreed that’s an area where the jails are still out of compliance with the court order. The physical space of the jails just isn’t conducive to privacy, she said, and the staff also still needs more training.

“We have continued to express concerns to the county over the confidentiality of health care,” she said. “The county has been responsive, we’ve had productive conversations, but there are still significant concerns.”

Velasco, 30, and Cox, 34 — who are both facing charges of theft and identity theft in unrelated cases and who both have past convictions for violent, nonviolent and drug crimes — said they and two other women in ad-seg began refusing meals June 30.

Cox said that a few days later, she was transferred to the county jail near Banning, which she believed was to try to break up the hunger strike. She eventually was sent back to Riverside.

Cox said all four inmates lost between seven and 20 pounds, and one of the women fell and cracked her head a few days into the hunger strike; Velasco said she thought it was a stress-induced seizure.

Vasquez said all inmates were checked regularly by medical staff, and no inmates suffered health issues that were deemed to be directly related to their refusal to accept food.

[This article was originally published by the Press Enterprise.]