A national prisoner-led groups have called for inmates across the United States to go on strike next month.
Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, and other groups are calling for inmates to go on strike on August 21, 2018. The national strike calls for inmates not to report to assigned jobs and for some prisons to engage in peaceful sit-in protests.
According to the original press release, they are demanding “humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery.”
Missouri has already been faced with some difficulties between a shortage of corrections officers and an incident at the Tipton Correctional Center earlier this month.
Officials called it a “minor disturbance” when some inmates refused to return to their housing units on July 4, 2018. ABC 17 reported that the incident was much more serious than the department communication.
The Department of Corrections is also short roughly 700 corrections officers. They also have a high turnover rate and the officers are the second lowest paid in the nation.
Alisha Shurr was a reporter for The Missouri Times and The Missouri Times Magazine. She joined The Missouri Times in January 2018 after working as a copy editor for her hometown newspaper in Southern Oregon. Alisha is a graduate of Kansas State University.
