California prison officials say 30,000 inmates refuse meals

This protest is by prison gangs because they are subject to disciplinary actions when they get caught committing gang activities in prison.

Gang members should be sent to prisons without any outside contact.
www.ktvu.com...

How are these inmates able to communicate from prison to prison to set up this protest.

reply to post by ANNED


How can you be involved in gang related activity if you've been in lock down for a decade or longer. Let's look at the case of man whose been in confinement for 40 years, at Angola state prison.

Source

On the world stage, Guantanamo may well stand as the epitome of American human rights abuses. But when it comes to torture on US soil, that grim distinction is held by two aging African American men. As of today, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have spent 40 years in near-continuous solitary confinement in the bowels of the Louisiana prison system. Most of those years were spent at the notorious Angola Prison, which is why Wallace and Woodfox are still known as members of the Angola 3. The third man, Robert King, was released in 2001; his conviction was overturned after he'd spent 29 years in solitary.

Alternative source

reply to post by Daedal


No one stays in "solitary" for 40 years straight. Their status is regularly reviewed. People in this type of status are usually troublemakers who consistently stir the pot and create an atmosphere ripe for a riot.

And "solitary" just means they get their own cell.

Best friend retired as #3 of a major institution.

Originally posted by suz62
reply to post by Daedal

 

Fewer convicts, lower taxes. Everybody wins.

Not even remotely true.

It takes 9 missed meals to qualify for a hunger strike? So that's 3 days of no food, and only 2/3rds of inmates are participating? hmm.. I would of expected a bigger percentage considering they all live together. I wonder who would organize such a thing, an inmate?

Originally posted by suz62
reply to post by Daedal

 

And "solitary" just means they get their own cell.

Not exactly.

They are in a box under constant surveillance and cannot communicate with anyone save the guards. They get an hour of exercise in a room. They do not see the sun. Inmates are subject to a rather arbitrarily applied gradient system of privileges (like having access to writing materials, or further up the system television), or revocation of those privileges based upon violations of the rules (such as attempting to communicate with another inmate). This privilege system is designed to break people and little else. It has no significant psychological or rehabilitative benefit. In fact social isolation, and lack of stimulation have the opposite affect. It can, in all actuality drive you stark raving mad--from severe depression to dementia, and increase a potential for violent behavior in an individual. Also, the criteria to determine"a trouble maker" is often highly subjective, and can potentially come down to which authority figure you pissed off on the wrong day.

Prisons are not supposed to be fair. Societally speaking, they are where the social undesirables go, which makes a sort of intuitive sense. Any society needs this. Fine.

However, the current system is morphing into one of veritable slave labor and persecution/exploitation of the poor that cultivate repeat offenders rather than rehabilitating them. This begins from the offenses people can be put into the prison system for, for how long, and how those convictions are obtained. Police training for interrogation is particularly biased, flawed, and based upon junk science that even the psychological community has largely thrown out as B.S. (kinesics for example).

This perspective of using prisoners as a productive resource rather than a social and economic drain is sold to the middle/working class as a more efficient way to put their tax dollars to work. With that spin many people are predisposed to assume that the system is "fair" and works, and those in solitary are violent, repeat offenders who are only trouble makers, and this isn't necessarily the truth.

reply to post by boymonkey74


He also forgets about what legal system he is talking about... One needs only look at the demographic information to have a clue and the multi-billion dollar enterprise behind it all. The fact that death penalty or life sentence is permitted is also a clue that rehabilitation is not the aim...