Over the past weeks, the prisons in the US state of California have been the scene of widespread protests and hunger strikes by angry inmates who are immensely dissatisfied with the extreme and uncomfortable prison conditions.
According to the United Press International (UPI), "inmates at three California prisons remained on hunger strike after a group at Pelican Bay [Prison] agreed to end their protest."
The prisoners of the maximum-security wing of Pelican Bay State Prison, known as the Security Housing Unit (SHU), were the first group of inmates who went on hunger strike in protest at the inappropriate jail conditions.
The UPI report added that the largest protest took place at the state prison in Corcoran, with about 400 inmates going on hunger strike, while more than 100 detainees staged similar strikes at the California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi, and 29 at Calipatria State Prison.
According to the official statistics, at its peak, the strike spread to 6,600 inmates in at least 13 California prisons.
California Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate issued a written statement on Thursday saying that officials had struck an agreement with the leaders of the strike to provide the prisoners with wall calendars, educational opportunities and "cold-weather caps."
It is said that the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. As reported by the New York Times, the US has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 7,225,800 people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at the end of 2009. Out of the 7 million people, 2,292,133 were incarcerated in US prisons by 2009.
However, the United States, which permanently boasts of commitment to human rights and presents itself as a pioneer and harbinger of freedom and democracy, has one of the most terrible records of prisoner mistreatment in the world.
In a survey conducted by two American independent researchers who published their report in the "Prison Journal", of 1,788 male inmates in Midwestern prisons, about 21% claimed that they had been coerced or pressured into sexual activity during their incarceration.
In August 2003, an article by Wil S. Hylton published in the Harper estimated that "somewhere between 20 and 40% of American prisoners are, at this very moment, infected with hepatitis C".
Prisons may outsource medical care to private companies such as Correctional Medical Services, which, according to Hylton's research, try to minimize the amount of care given to prisoners in order to maximize profits.
Independent studies indicate that the conditions of prisons in the United States are even worse than detention facilities which Washington has established in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan (such as Bagram and Abu Ghraib) to hold terror suspects. A March 2011 report by Russia Today claimed that the inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison, which is run by the US government, have free access to a state-of-the-art gym, a number of movies they can watch in the on-site media room, newspapers and books, and even video games. This is while the inmates of American prisons with supermax facilities "are typically left in isolation for long periods of time - no prolonged daylight, no conversations, [and] no tropical breezes," according to the Russia Today report.
Reports show that the rate of suicide is dramatically high in US prisons, indicating the squalid and inappropriate conditions of the detention facilities and correctional centers in America. The majority of the suicides take place in solitary confinement where the prisoners have no access to medical care, recreational facilities or proper food.
Sexual assault is also highly pervasive in US prisons. In a 2001 report, Reuters' correspondent Alan Elsner unveiled that “Robert”, an American man who was arrested in 1997 for possessing marijuana and taken to Clark County detention center in Las Vegas, was raped by three men in the shower. "Robert” is still suffering from his horrendous prison trauma.
"The whole thing was over in five minutes but I've been carrying it around ever since. Those five minutes are still hanging over my life," he said. He has been unable to resume a normal sex life with his wife, is plagued by flashbacks and nightmares, and is in group therapy to deal with his problems.
According to Reuters, American police may also pressure suspects to plead guilty by threatening to put them in a cell with a rapist. Prison guards use rape as extra punishment for the so-called "jailhouse lawyers" or complainers. They may use it to racially divide and rule the prison population.
Now, the hunger strike of inmates in California prisons has brought to spotlight the horrible and dreadful conditions of prisons in the United States. It is clear and unquestionable that the United States is a major violator of human rights and does not have the authority to prescribe solutions for human rights conditions in other nations.
Actually, the United States should first of all investigate its black record of human rights violations, especially in its prisons.
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