Beatings, stabbing, 'fentanyl sandwiches': Alabama's response to prison strike.

It’s day nine of a strike in Alabama prisons. Inmates are refusing to work until the state engages with their demands. They include the repeal of the state’s draconian habitual offender law; a more transparent parole process; pay for their work; earlier parole eligibility for prisoners convicted as juveniles; and better conditions overall.

Gov. Kay Ivey called these demands “unwelcome and unreasonable.” So what is the “reasonable” and “welcome” alternative? So far, the state has responded by threatening and starving the prisoners. They’re also overworking the guards. The guards, in turn, are being abusive or neglectful: there’s been at least one fatal stabbing so far, with guards nowhere near in sight. The Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed that 30-year-old Denarieya Letrex Smith was stabbed to death October 1st.

When the guards do show up they’re not exactly helpful. “The guards have been beating on the inmates,” the mother of an inmate in Fountain Correctional facility tells me.

“He just called and said that a guard threatens to put fentanyl in their sandwiches,” she added. Presumably this is in place of the cheese they were treated to until yesterday as part of paltry two cold meals per day. “They taking the cheese now,” another striker in the facility told me today.