The hunger strike started May 1 at breakfast when 149 inmates refused their meal. Then 168 refused lunch and a similar number did not eat dinner. The protest has continued since then. There are 273 inmates at the facility.

Tamms was opened in 1998 as a super-maximum-security prison, part of "Illinois' sprawling penal empire," as the regional daily Southern Illinoisan put it in a recent editorial. All the inmates are in solitary confinement. They are locked up in their cells at least 23 hours a day, with a brief period outside for exercise. They have no common activity or meals with each other. They must communicate by shouting from their cells to each other, which is how word of the hunger strike got around.

A major issue that outraged prisoners and sparked the action according to Gene Snyder, an attorney representing some of the inmates in a lawsuit against the state, is a policy requiring prisoners to "renounce their gang affiliation" and then finger fellow inmates as supposed gang members in order to gain release to a lower-security prison. Another issue is the slowness of the hearings for release.

Other demands include that authorities transfer prisoners needing mental health treatment to a proper mental health facility, provide adequate footwear not causing injury, end indiscriminate tear-gasing of inmates, and stop the use of "meal-loaf" as punishment. "Meal-loaf" is a baked mixture of canned spinach, powdered milk, applesauce, hamburger, flour, and ketchup that is served instead of regular food.

On May 4, Nic Howell, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, told the Southern Illinoisan that "36 of the 61 [hunger strikers] refused [to voluntarily see the doctor] so we just used tactical squads to remove them from their cells. [This] is standard operating procedure for anyone who refuses an order. We will assemble a tactical team to go in and do whatever needs to be done." Pepper spray may have been used on the prisoners by the tactical teams.

Howell said the only changes he expects at the prison is "just some guys losing some weight, I guess," and suggested that 10 percent of the prison population is mentally ill at one time or another.

The editors of the Southern Illinoisan don't hid their contempt for the working people behind bars. "When a group of Tamms inmates protests conditions, the public's collective heart is likely to bleed...onion juice," they assert, adding, "Still, there is that troublesome Eighth Amendment to the Constitution--the one that bans cruel and unusual punishment, even against cruel and unusual people."  
 
 
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