Madison, June 8 (RHC)-- A dozen U.S. inmates at Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin plan to launch a hunger strike to protest that they are being held in indefinite solitary confinement. According to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, prisoners seek to end a practice used by guards to "keep order" inside the institution – an inhumane practice that over 100 inmates have suffering for years.
One of the inmates promoting the strike is LaRon McKinley Bey who has been in solitary confinement for 25 years. He spends 23 hours a day alone in a cell, is escorted to showers and led to a recreational area, only to be caged. He received a 262-year sentence for robbing and tying up two women in 1984, as well as an attempted escape in 1986 in which he shot a sheriff.
Prisoners are demanding a one-year limit for solitary confinement, and oversight during that time. They seek to improve mental health treatment for these inmates and even a federal investigation into what they describe as a “mind control program.”
The prisoners have announced that the strike is set to begin on Friday, June 10th. The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, with offices in Milwaukee, supports the strike and hopes it will spread to other prisons in the United States.
