Safety Cited for Putting Inmate in Isolation After Story Is Printed

An inmate at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary who writes regularly for the San Francisco Chronicle was released Thursday from an isolation unit where he spent two days after publication of an article in which he claimed that tensions were rising at the maximum-security prison.

Dannie Martin, 48, a bank robber turned inmate journalist, claimed that he was punished because he wrote an article in Sunday’s Chronicle depicting potential riot conditions at the prison and criticizing Warden Richard Rison. But Rison said Martin was confined for his own safety.

“I think it’s pretty strange getting thrown in solitary and being told it’s for my own safety,” Martin said in a telephone interview he was permitted with a reporter before his release from isolation. “In a place like this there are a lot of things that can threaten your safety more than writing a newspaper article.”

Rison, however, claimed that other inmates might have objected to Martin’s article.

“We felt there was the potential for danger and we didn’t want to take any chances,” Rison said. “We’d rather err on the side of cautiousness.”

Rison said he wanted Martin removed from the prison population until an investigation could be completed. By Thursday, Lompoc officials found that “the inmates could care less about Dannie Martin,” Rison said, and Martin was released into the prison population.

Martin is one of 1,500 inmates at the maximum-security prison, which is next to the minimum-security Lompoc Federal Prison Camp.

Martin, 48, has written 20 articles of opinion and commentary about prison life for the Chronicle. After he was placed in the isolation unit, another prisoner called Peter Sussman, editor of the Chronicle’s Sunday Punch section, where Martin’s work appears. Sussman then complained to the warden. Sussman called Martin’s confinement “a serious violation of his First Amendment rights.”

In the article, Martin complained that since Rison took over as warden a year ago, prison conditions have worsened. Martin described Lompoc as a “caldron of fear, hatred and violence.” Rison’s policies were creating riot conditions, Martin wrote, adding, “If the lid stays on until our next ‘landlord’ arrives it will be a small miracle.”

Martin wrote that Rison has reduced the morning hours of the prison recreation yard; taken away the prisoners’ personal chairs in the television room and replaced them with uniform metal chairs; hired a woman psychiatrist to handle the entire prison caseload and then ordered that her door stay open while she was conferring with prisoners, meaning that the inmates are unable to speak freely.

“They’re taking away things from us, walking on our privacy,” Martin said in an interview. “It’s definitely a more uptight place now. Because of all this there are more assaults, fights and murders.”

Rison said he never was given a chance to respond to Martin’s charges.

“If the Chronicle is going to run an article charging all those things, they should at least give me a chance to respond,” Rison said. “But they never once contacted me to get my side of the story.”

Rison reduced morning hours on the recreation yard, he said, because the majority of prisoners work during the morning and do not use the yard. The prison staff used that time “to refurbish” the yard, Rison said.

“What that article didn’t mention was that I increased afternoon hours on the yard,” he said. “And before, only some prisoners--the strong prisoners--had chairs in the television room. I took their chairs away, but then I gave chairs to all the prisoners, so everyone had one. The article also didn’t mention that, in addition to the one psychiatrist, we have five full-time psychologists for the prison population.”