14 DAY TRIAL // 30,000 prisoners in the California jail systems are protesting their living conditions and the treatment that some inmates receive by means of a hunger strike.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the strike started by the prisoners refusing to eat breakfast and lunch on Monday, July 8.
However, the California prison system will only acknowledge a hunger strike when nine consecutive meals are missed.
“There is a process in place when an inmate misses his ninth consecutive meal — and it is a process — it doesn’t all happen at once, can take days,” explains Deborah Hoffman, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The strike was put in place in roughly 22 out of a total of 33 prisons in the state of California, and it started at Pelican Bay Prison, near the Oregon border. They have refused to go to work or attend classes.
“We are presently out of alternative options for achieving the long overdue reform to this system and, specifically, an end to state-sanctioned torture.
“Now we have to put our lives on the line via indefinite hunger strike to force CDCR [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] to do what’s right,” the group of protesters said in a statement.
Inmates now claim that the guards are trying to stop the protests by resorting to taking away stashed food, searching jail cells and even transferring them to solitary confinement.
They “stated that if they wanted the world to think they were going hungry, then it would be made so they were hungry,” an inmate claims.
The strike is set to ensure that prisoners with ties to drug dealing gangs cannot be held in solitary confinement indefinitely. They add that they are not provided with warm clothing or proper rehabilitation programs.
“We have taken up this hunger strike and work stoppage, which has included 30,000 prisoners in California so far, not only to improve our own conditions but also an act of solidarity with all prisoners and oppressed people around the world,” they say.