Prisoners in America have embarked on strike demanding better living conditions and voting rights restoration.
The nationwide strike declared on Tuesday also calls for changes to correctional institutions including, pathways to parole.
Low remuneration for prisoners, put to work at jobs like cooking and cleaning tops the list of grievances.
The ongoing strike will continue through to September 9, according to organisers.
In April there was a deadly riot at a maximum-security prison in South Carolina, Lee Correctional Institution. Tuesday’s strike is seen as a response to this incident and calls heighten for better prison conditions.
Incarcerated prison rights advocates are leading the campaign.
The group of advocates said in a statement that “Seven comrades lost their lives during a senseless uprising that could have been avoided had the prison not been so overcrowded from the greed wrought by mass incarceration, and a lack of respect for human life that is embedded in our nation’s penal ideology”.
The group, Jailhouse lawyers speak also said that “These men and women are demanding humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery”.
Inmates across the United States have been told to engage in peaceful sit-ins, hunger strikes and work stoppages.
There was a similar strike action in 2016, when inmates in states including Florida, Alabama, Texas and South Carolina went on strike.
Incarceration rate is in the USA is the world’s highest. About 2.2 million people at the end of 2016 stayed in jail.
Source: Africafeeds.com
