With the hunger strike in its third week, California prison officials have finally agreed to meet with inmate advocates. State Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard, who hopes the protest will just burn itself out, is leaving this discussion to a different administrator. 

That’s ok – while they talk, maybe Beard can do something about all the secrecy. As KPCC, Southern California Public Radio, has found:

Prison officials won't allow reporters in to cover the strike. California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation denied KPCC’s request to tour any of the four Security Housing Units in the state, where inmates spend up to 22 hours a day in their cells…Prison officials have also denied KPCC’s request for updated statistics on how long they’ve held 4,500 inmates in security housing units.

During the last hunger strike at Pelican Bay there were similar restrictions, and after the strike ended journalists who wanted to tour the SHU were allowed to view… an adjacent unit. And still not allowed to speak to the hunger strike leaders. “’They just seem so paranoid to let any information out about what’s going on,’ said Jim Ewert with the California Newspaper Publishers Association.”

The state legislature did pass a bill last year (AB1270) to expand media access to prisons, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it. Now why would he go and do a thing like that? Doesn’t he want to show off California’s exemplary prisons?