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 Anti-Carceral Solidarity
Kevan Thakrar has been placed in solitary confinement. He has no property, his cell doesnt even a toilet seat. Take action against the Islamophobic violence Kevan is being subjected to now!!!
By Kim Kelly, In These Times
Ten plaintiffs in a landmark class-action lawsuit are challenging what they and their supporters describe as an unconstitutional forced labor scheme in Alabama’s state prisons. Incarcerated workers save prisons $9+ billion a year in operational costs and earn them $2+ billion in sales of goods and services, while the prisoners make pennies per hour.
By Hamzah Jihad Furqaani as told to Aala Abdullahi, The Marshall Project
It’s a common misconception that once someone enters jail or prison, they lose their interest in the outside world… For me, at age 56, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
By Carlos Soledad, El Salto
229 immigrants detained inside the Northwest Detention Centre in Tacoma, Washington, continue their hunger strike in response to the death of Trinidadian Charles Leo Daniel for unknown reasons.
By Global Women Against Deportations & Payday
Please support the hunger strike inside and outside the detention centre, protesting the death of Mr Charles Leo Daniel, in solitary for almost 4 years, and against detention conditions.
By Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee
Imprisoned Indigenous elder Leonard Peltier is in urgent need of medical care. Peltier was falsely convicted and imprisoned and has been kept there as revenge for his community daring to resist. He has withstood decades of torture in US prisons, taking a terrible toll on him physically.
By Oakland Abolition & Solidarity
Since December 26, 2023, up to 30 prisoners in solitary confinement at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison have been on hunger strike to protest the continued use of torturous long-term solitary confinement.
By Keith Lamar on death row
The governor has issued a reprieve, meaning that the projected execution date has been moved to January 13th, 2027. Let’s keep moving forward everybody. Let’s keep demanding justice.