The typical inmate doesn’t want trouble. He has little to gain and too
much to lose: his job, his visits, his recreation time, his phone
privileges, his right to buy tuna, ramen and stale bread at inflated
prices in the commissary. The ways even a bystander to the most peaceful
protest can be punished are limited only by the imagination of the
authorities. Besides, logistics are difficult: men from cellblock X
can’t just stroll down to see the inmates in cellblock Y. Strategizing
must be done furtively, usually through intermediaries, any one of whom
might snitch.
And yet, sometimes things get so bad that prisoners feel compelled to
protest, with work stoppages, riots or hunger strikes. On July 8, some
30,000 inmates in the custody of the California Department of
Corrections went on a hunger strike
to demand improvements in prison conditions. Their biggest complaint
was the runaway use of solitary confinement, the fact that thousands of
prisoners are consigned to this cruelty indefinitely, some for decades.
Read on...
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