In April of 1993 hundreds of prisoners at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility took control of one of the facility’s wings for 11 days before it was forcibly taken back over. The rebellion was composed of a temporarily united front of prisoners across racial, religious, and gang divisions that produced 21 demands centered around basic human rights. During the uprising several prisoner informants and a guard were killed.
In the aftermath, the state aggressively recruited snitches, coerced their testimony, interfered with access to council, hid or destroyed exculpatory evidence, and presented little or no physical evidence in trials and legal proceedings. Five inmates were given the death penalty, including Siddique Abdullah Hasan and Bomani Shakur, while others were given life sentences such as Greg Curry. All three are listed as Political Prisoners in Denver ABC’s Political Prisoner Database.
At the beginning of 2011 several death row prisoners from the Lucasville uprising, including Shakur and Hasan, staged a hunger strike to assert their human rights and dignity. For more information of the hunger strike, please see these resources:
- Lucasville Prison Uprising Leaders Go On Hunger Strike
- Lucasville Riot Inmates Go On Hunger Strike
- Victory for the Lucasville Prison Hunger Strikers
And for deeper analysis on the Lucasville uprising, these wonderful resources are also available:
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