US Corrections Officials Must Not Retaliate Against Prison Inmate Demonstrators - ACLU

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd August, 2018) US prison officials must not retaliate against inmates participating in a nationwide strike to improve conditions in the prison system in the United States, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Director of the Campaign for Smart Justice Udi Ofer said in a press release.

"We urge corrections officials not to respond with retaliation," Ofer said in the release on Tuesday. "Peaceful demonstrations challenging unjust conditions and practices do not merit placing participants into solitary confinement or adding time to their sentences."

Inmates in prisons across the United States are taking part in the Nationwide Prison Strike from August 21 to September 9.

Organizers are demanding improved living conditions in the US prison system, restoration of voting rights for inmates and appropriate pay for their labor, among other issues.

Inmates facilitated the strike after seven died in a riot at the Lee Correctional Institution in the US state of South Carolina. The organizers say the riot could have been avoided if the prison had not been overcrowded from the greed wrought by mass incarceration and lack of respect for human life that is embedded in the nation's penal ideology.

The ACLU shares the Nationwide Prison Strikes vision of dismantling mass incarceration and is working everyday to end it, Ofer said.