Hunger strikes at three New Jersey prisons
By Sara Flounders posted on January 7, 2021
The filthy conditions, indefinite incarceration and escalating COVID infections have touched off desperate hunger strikes at three New Jersey county jails. Each jail operates as a prison-for-profit, renting space at $120 a day for ICE to jail out-of-state migrant detainees.
The N.J. counties use the contracts to generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually. Immigrant detention has become a moneymaking “cash cow†raising more than $87 million in revenue.
There are four immigration detention facilities in New Jersey — Bergen, Essex, and Hudson County jails, and the Elizabeth Detention Center, run by CoreCivic, the private prison-for-profit company. The COVID-19 infection rate doubled at the Hudson County Jail in Kearny between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. This is the second spike of infections at the jail; the a spike in Spring led to 60 infections.
https://www.workers.org/2021/01/53670/
