The road to Pelican Bay State Prison led through majestic redwoods a stone’s throw from the stirring beauty of Pacific Ocean coastal waters. The concrete blocks of the prison rose up before us, concertina wire curled above electrified fences that surround the general population buildings with their tiny windows. The gathered windowless mass of the SHU (Security Housing Unit), where we would be meeting with prisoners in solitary confinement, seemed a different, even more ominous world. As we approached the sprawling fortress, I could feel my heart sinking. I wondered how we would be received by the men inside.

The worst of the worst, that’s what they say about Pelican Bay State Prison, the “supermax” that lies at the northern border of California. Home to those who commit some of the most violent crimes, it has the state’s biggest Security Housing Unit, designed to keep prisoners in long-term solitary confinement.

Men in solitary at Pelican Bay spend over 22 hours each and every day in their windowless 8 X 10 foot cells, and 90 minutes alone in a cement yard, called a “dog run” by some, with a chin-up bar, two small handballs and a partial view of the sky.

Whatever crime got a man into prison, it is alleged prison gang membership that usually puts him in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay, either because of gang-related activity while in prison, or because someone points a finger at him in an effort to achieve his own exit. Some of the men in the SHU have been in prison since they were teenagers; that’s where they’ve grown up.

A number of the men locked away in Pelican Bay’s SHU are among the roughly 6,500 individuals incarcerated in California prisons for crimes they committed while under the age of eighteen. Though juveniles, these minors were tried as adults and sentenced to life or long sentences.

The Supreme Court, citing previous cases (Roper v. Simmons, 2005, and Graham v. Florida, 2010,) recognized in 2012’s Miller vs. Alabama that children lack maturity, have an underdeveloped sense of responsibility, and greater vulnerability to outside pressure and negative influences, and must therefore be seen as “constitutionally different from adults” for sentencing purposes.

In September 2013, the California legislature passed, and Governor Jerry Brown signed, Senate Bill 260 which allowed youth offenders a new type of parole hearing. The law, which took effect in January 2014, is intended to provide a meaningful opportunity (a significant chance) to obtain release through a Youth Offender Parole Hearing, in which great weight is given to youth factors in the review of suitability for parole. Depending on the sentence, the first youth offender parole hearing occurs at the 15th, 20th or 25th year of incarceration.

In March, I traveled to Pelican Bay with a group of lawyers, advocates, and law students to introduce 250 inmates eligible for SB 260 Youth Offender Parole Hearings to the basics of the law itself, and to the parole process and what it could potentially mean for them and require of them. Our group of 11 was led by Elizabeth Calvin, a lawyer and senior advocate with Human Rights Watch, and included lawyers and students from the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law Post Conviction Clinic and Loyola Law School’s Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic. With us also were the founder of a re-entry program who serves on the Board of State and Community Corrections, a documentary film maker, a lawyer who was himself an ex-offender, a chaplain, a lobbyist and a Soros Fellow. Our message would be one of hope.

Read more in The Chronicle of Social Change.