California Prisoners Stage Hunger Strike Over Conditions

By BananaFamine on July 17, 2011 in News 25

David Edwards writes on The Raw Story:

Between 50 and 100 inmates in solitary confinement at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison have pledged to refuse to eat until officials agree to better conditions.

Isaac Ontiveros of the anti-prison group Critical Resistance explained the prisoners’ demands to DemocracyNow.

“End the use of group punishment and administrative abuse; abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria; comply with the commission on safety and abuse in America’s prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement; provide adequate and nutritious food; and expand and provide constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU status inmates.”

Read More on The Raw Story

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http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

The Homeland of the Free imprisons more of its citizens than any country in the world, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the population. It also imprisons more of other countries citizens than any country in the world.
http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

The Homeland of the Free imprisons more of its citizens than any country in the world, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the population. It also imprisons more of other countries citizens than any country in the world.
http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

The Homeland of the Free imprisons more of its citizens than any country in the world, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the population. It also imprisons more of other countries citizens than any country in the world.
Monkey See Monkey Do

America’s prison industrial complex is just a modern form of slavery. A way to keep black americans and mexicans oppressed and marganalized using the ‘the war on some drugs’. And remember, prison labor is practically free, a good way to cover up slave wages.
Anonymous

Give em a week in a prison in China or Saudi Arabia, then bring em back and see if they still have a problem with California prisons.
Anonymous

There’s a grand total of 2.3 million people in prison, i.e. less than 1 percent, 0.76% to be exact. So instead of using scary sounding phrases like the US imprisons more people than anyone else (if that’s even true, I can’t find any data on China), stop and think how small that number really is. If we didn’t have so many people in jail due to the pointless “war on drugs” we’d be much further down that list.
http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_prison_population
Country
Prison population

per 100,000 inhabitants

United States

of America
756

Russian

Federation
611

New

Zealand
186

United

Kingdom
148

Netherlands
128

Australia
124.5

Canada
107

Italy
104

South Korea
104

Ireland
101

Germany
95

Turkey
91

France
85

Sweden
82

Denmark
77

Japan
62

Iceland
40

India
22
Hadrian999

so being not as bad as those guys is good enough? the same logic could be used to erode civil liberties, political freedoms and due process, because hey, it’s slightly better than china right.
Anonymous

It’s quite a bit better than China but prison isn’t a vacation hotel. Pelican bay holds literally the worst of the worst, not people in there on minor crimes (the kinds of people some countries would probably straight up just execute and be done with it). The kinds of things people have to do to get placed there are the kinds of people who don’t deserve civil liberties.
Anonymous

It’s quite a bit better than China but prison isn’t a vacation hotel. Pelican bay holds literally the worst of the worst, not people in there on minor crimes (the kinds of people some countries would probably straight up just execute and be done with it). The kinds of things people have to do to get placed there are the kinds of people who don’t deserve civil liberties.
Anonymous

Yes and as you’ll notice, China isn’t on that list, and in case the math is difficult 756 per 100,000 is 0.756% or 0.76 rounded up, about half of which are drug offenders. Another reason for ending the war on drugs.
Anonymous

Yes and as you’ll notice, China isn’t on that list, and in case the math is difficult 756 per 100,000 is 0.756% or 0.76 rounded up, about half of which are drug offenders. Another reason for ending the war on drugs.
Hadrian999

they deserve better than the “debriefing” process that sets them up to be murdered by other inmates and extended solitary, prison will never be fun but there are certain baseline requirements that our government should be forced to abide by. with the increasing private prison for profit business there need to be hard and fast rules for American correctional facilities.
Curumim

How do you know tha China’s prisons are better? Have you ever been there? Or did you just listen to the american propaganda that they made about rival countries?
Andrew

Yeah, if you steal $20 form a liquor store you deserve to get raped!
E.B. Wolf

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Anonymous

You get executed for sneezing wrong in China.
Andrew

“According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s
College London, the U.S. currently has the largest documented prison
population in the world, both in absolute and proportional terms. We’ve
got roughly 2.03 million people behind bars, or 701 per 100,000
population. China has the second-largest number of prisoners (1.51
million, for a rate of 117 per 100,000), and Russia has the
second-highest rate (606 per 100,000, for a total of 865,000).”

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2494/does-the-united-states-lead-the-world-in-prison-population
Anonymous

Seriously? It seems like people are happy to repeat statistics mindlessly while ignoring how small those numbers really are and without bothering to analyze the meaning behind it.
Markov Cheney

Hey, fuck it bro’. Those people are nothing but statistics anyway, amirite?
Andrew

With all due respect, your reply seems like a weak rhetorical defense of the status quo. What’s not serious about the statistics I quoted? What’s mindless about them? What’s the supposed meaning being ignored? Why was it important to you that China wasn’t mentioned until I mentioned China?
Anon

ironic as america invented the get out of jail free card from monopoly
Anonymous

There is no defense to the fact that people are ignoring the questions I posed by quoting statistics I already quoted in the very first post. My point is that the percentage is incredibly small in reality, even if it’s the largest by comparison. China (which I also mentioned in the first post) is a question because people often disappear there.
Anonymous

With the exception of the people in prison due to nonsense like the war on drugs, yes I believe robbers, murderers and rapists belong in prison and fuck’em. Those are the kinds of people in the prison of the article: Incredibly violent people who did some nasty stuff to get there in the first place.
Anonymous

The prison of the article is a prison that only houses the worst incredibly violent and dangerous offenders. They deserve whatever they get and probably deserve more.