Prison officials are trying to break a hunger strike involving thousands of California inmates by “blasting cells with cold air, confiscating legal documents and, in one case, banning lawyers, according to legal representatives and relatives,” The Guardian reports.

The action is in retaliation for a strike that entered its 12th day Friday. Lawyers say the striking inmates’ health is being endangered by the prison officials’ actions. Roughly 30,000 prisoners in 33 jails began the hunger strike on July 8. It is the biggest such strike in the state’s history, protesting solitary confinement and other prison conditions, some of which inmates say amounts to torture.

California holds about 12,000 inmates in extreme isolation at any given time. Some have been in windowless cells, known as security housing units or SHUs, for decades. Guards say the tactic is essential for combatting prison gang violence. That claim has been disputed.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.