More than three weeks later and after building up great support from activists, academics, celebrities and others in the US and around the world, the leaders of the prison hunger strike in the Pelican Bay supermax prison have brought an end to their strike and have begun to eat again. They emphasize that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has given them a few good-faith token gestures and that the end of this strike is entirely conditioned on achieving the long-term policy changes that they have demanded.

Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Gloria Steinem, Nawal El Saadawi, David Straithairn and Edward Asner speak out on behalf of the Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers.

Even when someone is on a hunger strike medical care should be given. In fact it is critical that there is regular checks as slowly starving can affect other organs and turn south very quickly. This is not happening for the Pelican Bay hunger strikers.

The conditions at Security Housing Units (SHU) at Pelican Bay Prison, and other Supermax prisons, clearly constitute torture and/or cruel, inhumane treatment of prisoners. It relies on the use of severe isolation or solitary confinement, the effects of which I’ve written about before in the context of the Bradley Manning case (see here and here). At Pelican Bay, the prisoners in “administrative segregation” are locked in a gray concrete 8′X10′ foot cell 22-1/2 hours per day. The other time (if that privilege is granted) is spent alone in a tiny concrete yard. There is no human physical contact. No work, no communal activities. If the prisoner has enough money they can purchase a TV or radio. Meals are pushed through a slot in the metal door.

Organizers now say supporters have a challenge to “match the courage of the hunger strikers” and “effectively pressure the CDCR to immediately negotiate on the standards any negotiation should follow: with the prisoners in good faith, addressing all of the demands, and with the prisoner-approved outside mediation team.”

This is almost too easy. The GEO Group, a huge, multi-billion dollar corporation, also has a political action committee so that they can essentially donate twice in every political campaign they want to be a part of (it’s called GEOPAC). But apparently, all those billions of dollars couldn’t buy them lawyers that could understand the difference between state and federal laws.

On July 1, 2011, Pelican Bay prisoners began an indefinite hunger strike to protest the conditions in the prison. Across prison-manufactured racial and geographical lines, prisoners came together behind five core demands to force the prison officials to end the use of “group punishment”; abolish a “debriefing policy and the current criteria for determining who is and who isn’t a gang member; comply with the US Commission 2006 Recommendation Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement and end conditions of isolation.

Well that didn’t take long at all. Ohio, with its anti-union, pro-corporate governor John Kasich, is planning on selling 5 state prisons to private companies who won’t perform to the same standards as the state or save money. But the administration was convinced they offered some sort of cost-savings (despite a plethora of research to the contrary), and initially said the state would earn $200 million from the sale of the prisons. But it turns out they now only expect to earn about $50 million, 1/4 of what the originally thought they’d get.

A recent report by the Arizona Republic, which reviewed audits, correspondence, and interviews from the Department of Corrections reveals that many of the security lapses that led to the escape of 3 murderers from the MTC facility in Kingman last year have not been resolved.

The FBI is currently investigating the circumstances that led Florida to give a multiple hundred-million dollar handout to a company with a long track record of human rights abuses and contract noncompliance.