A prison strike has begun to take hold in custodial institutions across North America, with reports of sporadic protest action from California and Washington state to the eastern seaboard as far south as Florida and up to Nova Scotia in Canada... The 19-day strike is the first such nationwide action in the US in two years and was triggered by April’s rioting in Lee correctional institution in South Carolina in which seven inmates were killed... One of the intentions of the organisers of the current dispute is to bring to public attention the spate of deaths in custody... In Mississippi, 10 inmates have died in their cells in the past three weeks alone, with no firm indication of their causes of death.

In addition to loss of life, the strikers, led by a network of incarcerated activists who call themselves Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, have put out a set of 10 demands to overhaul America’s creaking penal system. High up on the list is an end to forced or underpaid labor that the protesters call a form of modern slavery... Other demands laid down by the strikers include more investment in rehabilitation services and better medical treatment for mentally-ill prisoners... Advocacy groups such as the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee stressed that given the nature of high-security prisons, much of the activity involved in the strike could take days to reach the outside world if it gets out at all.