Alabama Inmates in the U.S. Strike for Better Prison Conditions, 2022

In December 2020, the US Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of Alabama for unconstitutional conditions in the state’s prisons, alleging that the state “fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff.” The lawsuit followed a report filed in 2019 by the DOJ that described “severe” and “systemic” issues in the state. Beyond these inhumane conditions, those incarcerated in Alabama prisons work for a pay in the range of cents per day, staffing prison kitchens, laundries, factories, and other functions like janitorial work. Prison staff also retaliated against inmates for speaking to the media about their conditions.

On 26 September 2022, prisoners went on strike, halting the cheap or unpaid cooking, cleaning, maintenance, and manufacturing labor the prison system mandated. Simultaneously, activists protested at the central office of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC). Families of incarcerated persons, activists, and former inmates alike assembled bearing signs that likened the prisons to death camps, called for justice, and denounced the parole board. Speakers addressed the crowd and ADOC from a megaphone. Among them was Eric Buchanon, a contract painter incarcerated for seven years and released in 2018, who listed the campaign’s demands:

• Establish mandatory criteria that guarantees parole to eligible individuals
• Repeal Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Act, which requires stricter punishment for those with prior felony convictions
• Eliminate life-without-parole sentences
• Reduce the 30-year minimum for juvenile offenders’ parole eligibility to no more than 15
• Create a review board to oversee the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles
• Streamline the review process for medical furlough
• Ensure eligible individuals actually receive sentence reductions for good behavior
• Create a conviction integrity unit to investigate wrongful convictions in the state

The campaign, which activists and prisoners had been planning since June 2022, was also motivated by their understanding that “nothing good” comes from the ADOC, and it facilitates “no rehabilitation.” Diyawn Caldwell, one of the protest’s organizers and founder of the advocacy group Both Sides of the Wall, estimated that about 80 percent of the approximately 25,000 incarcerated individuals in Alabama participated in the strike.

Conditions in the state’s prisons quickly deteriorated even further after the strike began. Facilities began serving only breakfast and dinner, both cold. Officials blamed the drastic reduction in food on the striking workers, many of whom worked to prepare the prisons’ food, but the prisoners called the reduction an act of retaliation against the protests. Trash was left piling up in many prisons, and the ADOC placed the facilities on lockdown, forbidding incarcerated individuals from leaving their dorm or cell. Officials also halted all visitations. According to Caldwell, the administration placed some inmates in solitary confinement in retaliation.

In response to the protest and strike, Governor Kay Ivey roundly refused the inmates’ demands, calling them unreasonable and potentially endangering those living in the state: “No. 1, our goal is for public safety, pure and simple. And the demands that they’re giving are just unreasonable, and would probably require whole other legislation, cannot just be mandated unilaterally.”

Tensions continued to mount within the prisons under strike action. According to an anonymous report from one inmate, violence had risen, and two incarcerated individuals died in stabbings between prisoners.

The strike ended on 15 October, having lasted for 23 days. Most normal operations resumed, except commissary shops, where inmates buy necessities like toothbrushes and toiletries, which remained closed in most of the prisons. While activists threatened to resume the strike if demands were not met, and celebrated the national attention towards prison injustice the campaign created, ultimately, no demands were met and no systemic change arose to change the condition of these prisons as a result of the actions.