DEFEND PRISONERS
Payday continues to support many collective and individual campaigns by prisoners. We have joined with Legal Action for Women (LAW) and other organisations (run overwhelmingly by women) to oppose the death penalty, miscarriages of justice (including Joint Enterprise), prison conditions, prisoners' economic exploitation and slavery and above all the cruel and inhumane use of solitary confinement - a policy used to punish rebellious inmates.
Prisoners in the US and UK are disproportionately people of colour coming from poor communities where they have suffered racism and discrimination even before those of us who are not white face the racism of the criminal justice systems.
It is generally recognized that the vast majority of women in prison have committed crimes of poverty often in an effort to feed their children. Mothers in prison face the extra excruciating punishment of separation from their kids who they have spent their lives protecting.
And women – partners, mothers, sisters, daughters of prisoners – have been the most resolute campaigners against prison injustices, always supporting their loved ones inside. Whenever we could, we have campaigned internationally, opposing the prison systems in the US, the UK and elsewhere.
With organisations in Global Women Against Deportations, we have campaigned to close immigration detention centres everywhere.
By Supporters of Kevan Thakrar
On 25 and 26 April 2023, Kevan Thakrar, a young Muslim man, is bringing a legal challenge in the High Court against his prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement in prison segregation.
By Payday & Global Women’s Strike
We send greetings and solidarity to our sisters and brothers in the Alabama prison struggle, (…)
Your demand as workers who get no wages strengthens the struggle against slavery everywhere.
By Payday men’s network
Mumia Abu Jamal, an award-winning journalist was wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in 1982 in a trial ‘drenched with racism’. While pressure got Mumia off death row, he has never stopped fighting injustices inside and outside the prison walls.
By Payday men’s network
Black Panthers member Russell Maroon Shoatz was jailed in 1972 in connection with the death of a police officer and spent 29 years in solitary confinement. Yet he never stopped opposing injustices inside and outside prison.
By Gene Johnson, Seattle Times
A US federal jury has determined that The GEO Group must pay minimum wage — rather than $1 a day — to immigration detainees who perform tasks like cooking and cleaning at its for-profit detention center in Washington state.
By Payday men’s network
On Monday 28 June, Legal Action for Women, Payday men’s network and Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike coordinated a protest against the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) supported by Prisoner Solidarity Network, Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association, Community Action on Prison Expansion and Figh
Payday men’s network
Kevan Thakrar was wrongly convicted of murder and attempted murder in 2008 under “joint enterprise”, the legal rule by which a member of a group can be convicted of a crime even if he/she didn’t commit it. In 2010, he was was put in solitary confinement in Close Supervision Centres (CSC), locked in his cell 23 h/day.
By Legal Action for Women, Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike, Payday men’s network
Watch a wide-ranging panel of speakers from around the world as well as so many justice campaigners making their case against cruel and inhumane solitary confinement.