The Nationwide Prison Strike: Why It’s Happening and What It Means for Ending Mass Incarceration

"Earlier this spring, violence broke out in the Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina, resulting in seven deaths and many injuries. Incarcerated leaders in the South Carolina prison system decided they had had enough. Brutal treatment from corrections officers, deteriorating prison conditions, and incredibly long, punitive sentences had led to a condition of hopelessness in South Carolina’s prisons.

Leaders within the South Carolina prison system began reaching out to incarcerated allies across the country, including the Free Alabama Movement, who had led a prison strike in 2016. A decision was made: It was time to launch a national prison strike to raise awareness around the brutality of mass incarceration.

On Tuesday, these incarcerated leaders and their partners are launching a “Nationwide Prison Strike” to raise awareness of not only the horrific conditions throughout the American prison system but the broader injustices that have led to our current system of mass incarceration — from racist police practices to unjust sentencing laws to the lack of support people experience when they come home from prison.

The Nationwide Prison Strike, scheduled to last from Aug. 21 to Sept. 9, is centered around 10 specific policy demands. These demands include significantly reducing the number of people in jail and prison, improving prison conditions, properly funding rehabilitation, and addressing racism throughout the criminal justice system."

Inmates on Strike

'You can’t just treat people like animals': U.S. prison strike prompts solidarity rallies

A nationwide prison strike is in its third day, and while there’s no official count of the number of inmates who have acted thus far, solidarity rallies have popped up across the USin an attempt to pressure the nation’s criminal justice system.

Created in response to a brutal prison brawl that left at least seven inmates dead earlier this year in South Carolina, the 19-day protest involves prisoners conducting labor and hunger strikes, sit-ins and commissary boycotts in at least 17 states, giving it the potential to become one of the largest such rallies in US history.

The goal of protesters is to put an end to what organizers refer to as “modern-day slavery,” a practice where inmates are paid slave wages for labor. Such is the case in California, where prisoners are assisting in efforts to fight wildfires and being paid as little as $2 per day.

"I think the outcome is likely to be greater public awareness about the difficult and inhumane conditions that many prisoners face across the country — an elevated public attention to the broad issues as well as some of the more specific concerns that prisoners themselves have raised," said Toussaint Losier, assistant professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts and author of "Rethinking the American Prison Movement."

Inmates on Strike - Different Article