Prison strike

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A prison strike is an inmate strike or work stoppage that occurs inside a prison, generally to protest poor conditions or low wages for penal labor. Prison strikes may also include hunger strikes.

Contents

United States

In September 2016, large, coordinated prison strikes took place in 11 states, with inmates claiming they are subjected to poor sanitary conditions and jobs that amount to forced labor and modern day slavery. [1] [2] [3] [4] Organizers, which include the Industrial Workers of the World labor union, asserted that it was the largest prison strike in U.S. history. [1]

On August 21, 2018, another prison strike, sponsored by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, took place in 17 states from coast to coast to protest what inmates regard as unfair treatment by the criminal justice system. In particular, inmates objected to being excluded from the 13th amendment which forces them to work for pennies a day, a condition they assert is tantamount to "modern-day slavery". The strike was the result of a call to action after a deadly riot occurred at Lee Correctional Institution in April of that year, which was sparked by neglect and inhumane living conditions. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

According to a 2022 report by the ACLU, prison labor produces $11 billion worth of goods and services annually, with inmates often being forced to work dangerous jobs with no labor protections and little training, and are compensated with pennies per hour or sometimes nothing at all. [10]

In 2023, a nation-wide movement had called to close the 'slavery loophole' in the 13th Amendment, allowing an exception for punishment of crime. According to constitutional scholars, the 13th amendment had been violated as most US states forced inmates to work for no or marginal compensation. [11]

Legalities

At the national level, 28 CFR 541.3 declares "encouraging others to refuse to work, or to participate in a work stoppage" to be a "High Severity Level Prohibited Act" and authorizes solitary confinement for periods of up to a year for each violation.

The California Code of Regulations (CCR) states that "[p]articipation in a strike or work stoppage", "[r]efusal to perform work or participate in a program as ordered or assigned", and "[r]ecurring failure to meet work or program expectations within the inmate's abilities when lesser disciplinary methods failed to correct the misconduct" is "serious misconduct" under §3315(a)(3)(L), leading to gang affiliation under CCR §3000. [12]

List of prison strikes

See also

Related Research Articles

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Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act. When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hunger strike</span> Form of protest or political activism

A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not solid food.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pelican Bay State Prison</span> Prison in California operated by the CDCR

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incarceration in the United States</span> Form of punishment in United States law

Incarceration in the United States is one of the primary means of punishment for crime in the United States. In 2023, over five million people are under supervision by the criminal justice system, with nearly two million people incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails. The United States has the largest known prison population in the world. Prison populations grew dramatically beginning in the 1970s, but began a decline around 2009, dropping 25% by year-end 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prisoners' rights</span> Rights of detainees

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penal labour</span> Type of forced labour performed by prisoners

Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour which prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included involuntary servitude, penal servitude, and imprisonment with hard labour. The term may refer to several related scenarios: labour as a form of punishment, the prison system used as a means to secure labour, and labour as providing occupation for convicts. These scenarios can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, or other reasons as well as to criminal convicts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prison farm</span> Correctional facility where convicts work on a farm

A prison farm is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are forced to work—legally or illegally—on a farm, usually for manual labor, largely in the open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, and mining. In the United States, such forced labor is made legal by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution; however, some other parts of the world have made penal labor illegal. The concepts of prison farm and labor camp overlap, with the idea that the prisoners are forced to work. The historical equivalent on a very large scale was called a penal colony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in the 21st century</span> Contemporary slavery, also known as modern slavery or neo-slavery

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prison</span> Institution in which people are legally physically confined

A prison, also known as a jail, gaolpenitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are confined against their will and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state, generally as punishment for various crimes. Authorities most commonly use prisons within a criminal-justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those who have pled or been found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2013 California prisoner hunger strike</span>

The 2013 California prisoner hunger strike started on July 8, 2013, involving over 29,000 inmates in protest of the state's use of solitary confinement practices and ended on September 5, 2013. The hunger strike was organized by inmates in long term solitary in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison in protest of inmates housed there that were in solitary confinement indefinitely for having ties to gangs. Another hunger strike that added to the movement started the week before in High Desert State Prison. The focus of the High Desert State Prison hunger strike was to demand cleaner facilities, better food and better access to the library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penal labor in the United States</span>

Penal labor in the United States is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Unconvicted detainees awaiting trial cannot be forced to participate in labor programs in prison as this would violate the Thirteenth Amendment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contemporary slavery in the United States</span>

Slavery is a system which requires workers to work against their will for little to no compensation. In modern-day terms, this practice is more widely referred to as human trafficking. Human trafficking is defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation”. The practices of slavery and human trafficking are still prevalent in modern America with estimated 17,500 foreign nationals and 400,000 Americans being trafficked into and within the United States every year with 80% of those being women and children. Human trafficking in the United States can be divided into the two major categories of labor and sex trafficking, with sex trafficking accounting for a majority of cases.

<i>13th</i> (film) 2016 American documentary film

13th is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Ava DuVernay. The film explores the prison-industrial complex, and the "intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States"; it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction of a crime. This allowed for a constitutional loophole in which black Americans became criminalized and faced involuntary servitude in the form of penal labor.

The Free Alabama Movement (FAM) is an inmates rights group based in the United States. With the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, the Free Alabama Movement has organized the 2016 U.S. prison strike that involved an estimated 24,000 prisoners in 24 states, the largest prison strike in U.S. history. The strike began on September 9, 2016, the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison uprising.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee</span>

TheIncarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) is a prison-led section of the Industrial Workers of the World. Its purpose is 'a union for the incarcerated,' with the goal of abolishing prison slavery, as well as fighting to end the exploitation of working-class people around the world.

The 2016 U.S. prison strike was a prison work stoppage that began on September 9, 2016, the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising. The strike occurred in 24 states, and over 24,000 prisoners took part in the strike. The involvement of 24,000 prisoners made this strike the largest ever recorded in the U.S. Within a week, inmates from approximately 20 prisons participated. Organizations involved in coordinating the strike included the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee and the Free Alabama Movement.

The 2018 U.S. prison strike was a series of work stoppages and hunger strikes in prisons across the United States that began on August 21 and ended on September 9. The strike was conducted at least in part in response to the April 2018 prison riot at Lee Correctional Institution, which killed seven inmates and was the deadliest prison riot in the U.S. in the past 25 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Rashid Johnson</span> American prisoner and social activist

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson is a revolutionary, writer, artist, social activist, founding member of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, founding member of the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party, member of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, and prisoner in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Paid prison labour is the participation of convicted prisoners in either voluntary or mandatory paid work programs.

The 2010 Georgia prison strike was a prison strike involving prisoners at 7 prisons in the U.S. state of Georgia. The strike, organized by the prisoners using contraband cell phones, began on December 9 and ended on December 15. It was reported at the time to be the largest prison strike in United States history and was followed by similar strikes in several other states, as well as nationwide strikes several years later, in 2016 and 2018.

References

  1. 1 2 Inmates strike in prisons nationwide over 'slave labor' working conditions. The Guardian September 9, 2016.
  2. The Largest Prison Strike in U.S. History Enters Its Second Week. The Intercept September 16, 2016.
  3. Work Stoppage Prison Strike Continues in 11 US States Archived September 22, 2016, at the Wayback Machine . The Real News. September 20, 2016.
  4. Kamala Kelkar (December 18, 2016). "From media cutoffs to lockdown, tracing the fallout from the U.S. prison strike". PBS Newshour .
  5. Tarr, Duncan; Onderchanin, Stephanie (August 21, 2018). "How the National Prisoner Strike Is Working to Help Incarcerated People in the United States". Teen Vogue. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  6. Neufeld, Jennie (August 22, 2018). "A mass incarceration expert says the 2018 prison strike could be "one of the largest the country has ever seen"". Vox. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  7. Pilkington, Ed (August 23, 2018). "Major prison strike spreads across US and Canada as inmates refuse food". The Guardian. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  8. Corley, Cheryl (August 21, 2018). "U.S. Inmates Plan Nationwide Prison Strike To Protest Labor Conditions". NPR . Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  9. Bozelko, Chandra; Lo, Ryan (August 25, 2018). "As prison strikes heat up, former inmates talk about horrible state of labor and incarceration". USA Today . Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  10. Anguiano, Dani (June 15, 2022). "US prison workers produce $11bn worth of goods and services a year for pittance". The Guardian. Retrieved June 20, 2022.
  11. ‘Slavery by any name is wrong’: the push to end forced labor in prisons The Guardian. Accessed 26 March 2023.
  12. California Code of Regulations §3000 , Gang means any … formal or informal organization, association or group of three or more persons which has a common name or identifying sign or symbol whose members and/or associates, individually or collectively, engage or have engaged, on behalf of that organization, association or group, in two or more acts which include, … acts of misconduct classified as serious pursuant to section 3315.