Prisoners
across the U.S. have been holding hunger and labor strikes since last
year, with tens of thousands of inmates protesting abuse and poor
conditions. But news reports on the strikes have been few and far
between, leaving prisoners’ requests for humane treatment in the
dark.
On Oct. 30,
2016, Robert Earl Council was found sprawled unconscious on the floor
of his cell in Alabama’s Limestone Correctional Facility after
being on hunger strike for 10 days. Medical staff at the prison
force-fed him intravenously, as his blood sugar levels had reached
dangerous levels.
But Dara
Folden, a member of the Free Alabama Movement, a prison reform
advocacy group, believes the force-feeding was done with the
additional motive of ending Council’s hunger strike and preventing
him from garnering media attention.
But
Council’s strikes – and the punitive action taken against him in
return – did not end. In November that same year, Council was
denied water by officials at the Kilby Correctional Facility after
initiating a work strike. The Free Alabama Movement told Democracy
Now that officials were trying to kill him.
Strikes by
other inmates have occurred even more recently. On April 11, inmates
at the Mississippi Department of Corrections ended a hunger strike
which, according to family members, was initiated due to prison
conditions that included inmates being barred from exercising
outdoors. On April 13, at least 30 inmates at the Robert Presley
Detention Center, located in California, launched a hunger strike.
Their
demands echoed those made by other inmates around the nation, asking
prison officials to prohibit the use of long-term or indefinite
solitary confinement, provide inmates access to more clothing,
decrease commissary prices, allow mental health prisoners to be moved
out of general population and allow inmates to gain access to
educational, religious and self-help programs.
On last
year’s September anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising, work
stoppages and hunger strikes took place in 24 states, involving some
24,000 inmates who were protesting what have been described as
“slave-like conditions.” At one prison in South Carolina,
prisoners requested to be compensated for their labor, as well as
requested that mentally ill inmates be kept in treatment programs.
The prisoners also asked for an end to excessive vendor visitation
and canteen prices and the reinstitution of classes for those who
want to obtain their GED.
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report:
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