California prison hunger strike appears headed for stalemate SACRAMENTO - The hunger strike in California prisons has dragged into its sixth week, apparently headed for stalemate. Although Gov. Jerry Brown has made no public comment on the protest, his corrections chief says it is controlled by violent prison gangs bent on increasing their power. Advocates for the inmates say spending 23 hours a day in a windowless cell for decades is a form of torture that must end. Without visible progress on the issues that separate the two sides, the protest - launched July 8 when 30,000 inmates refused breakfast - has become largely a battle over public perception. "Being rational seems to have left this debate," said Jeanne Woodford, who ran California's vast prison system under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and now teaches at UC Berkeley School of Law. It's people who have dug their heels in on both sides. The official tally of hunger strikers Tuesday was 287, including 133 who have refused prison meals for 36 days. Prison administrators said 93 inmates, suffering dehydration and abdominal pain, have required medical attention in the last seven days, including six sent to outside hospitals. Most of the 93 resumed eating. The state count does not include protesters who accept some form of nutrition, such as supplement drinks offered by prison nurses. Medical officials say they will not force-feed strikers. More than 30 inmates have lost at least 10% of body weight. At the start of the protest, many hunger strikers said they were in it for the long haul. In reality, "our people are willing to compromise," said attorney Anne Weills, who is representing Pelican Bay prisoners in a federal lawsuit over the prolonged use of solitary confinement. The organizers of the hunger strike are also chief plaintiffs in the lawsuit; settling one would probably end the other. Prison officials have held discussions with the core strike leaders, a group of murderers and alleged gang members serving life sentences in isolation. The director of adult prisons has spoken multiple times with half a dozen of the inmates' outside advocates. None of the discussions held so far have signaled a change in California's use of solitary confinement, said participants on both sides. Talks largely consist of each side repeating its stance, they said. Advocates said representatives of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation appear unwilling to bargain. "The department is not negotiating," said Laura Magnani, San Francisco-based director for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, who is coordinating the talks. Corrections officials have said as much from the start. "We are not going to make policy decisions under threats and intimidation," spokeswoman Terry Thornton said Tuesday. The next scheduled opportunity to negotiate is Friday, at a settlement conference ordered this week by a federal magistrate in the Pelican Bay litigation. Meanwhile, inmate advocates struggle to hold public attention, staging rallies and touting petitions signed by 1960s radicals and Hollywood stars. Inmate leaders ended smaller, shorter hunger strikes in 2011 in exchange for improved living conditions in California's four solitary confinement units and changes in the way inmates are assigned to and released from them. The inmates say the state has not kept those promises, and they are demanding an end to indefinite stays in solitary. They also want officials to stop encouraging inmates to become informants in order to get out. About 4,500 prisoners are in solitary confinement. In a memo to wardens last week, corrections officials said that since October, the state has reviewed files of 399 of those inmates and found that 64% no longer belong in isolation. Those prisoners are being returned to regular cells with restored privileges. Early in the current hunger strike, the corrections department told the leaders it would expand those reviews to include gang members along with associates and put inmates who have been in solitary the longest at the front of the line. A corrections spokeswoman said the statement was not part of any negotiation but rather a "clarification" of what the state was already considering.