Forty-two inmates of the Utah State Prison are on their fourth day of a hunger strike that started Friday morning by refusing to have breakfast. They began their protest against their living conditions that are too restrictive, Huffington Post reported.
Brooke Adams, Utah Department of Corrections spokeswoman, said that these prisoners are all members of a gang in Uinta Facility, a maximum-security housing. The prisoners have several demands which include freeing the gang leaders situated in maximum-security facilities.
American Civil Liberties Union of Utah declared that they were not associated with planning and organizing this protest but they express their support towards the prisoners' cause for this peaceful protest, according the ACLU Utah's legal director John Mejia, reported by Fox News.
Letters sent to the organization stated their conditions and explained they don't have access to rehabilitation and insufficient meals. One letter from an unnamed prisoner says that, "We have had enough of these squalid living conditions and would like to be treated with respect and dignity, with the opportunity to better ourselves."
"If you are sending someone back into the community after years of isolation and no programming and a lot of difficult conditions, it feels in a lot of ways that you're not setting up that person for success," Mejia added, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The officials of the facility already had a discussion with ACLU together with the Disability Law Center and the network of prisoner advocates of Utah.
The prison officials, on the other hand, disagree with how the inmates describe their situation.
The Department of Corrections stated that, "While we respect the right of these inmates to refuse to eat, we believe there are more positive ways to raise concerns and bring about change."
"We do not negotiate or respond to demands, threats or intimidation from inmates," they added.
