Kinetic Justice

Limestone Correctional Facility prisoner Robert Earl Council - known by many as Kinetic Justice - has launched a hunger strike less than two months after he gained a level of fame as a public face of the national movement to institute a coordinated series of work stoppages at prisons. (Photo via Free Alabama Movement)

An Alabama prisoner has launched a hunger strike less than two months after he gained a level of fame as a public face of the national movement to institute a coordinated series of work stoppages at prisons.

On Thursday, Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) spokesman Bob Horton told AL.com that Limestone Correctional Facility inmate Robert Earl Council - known to many by the nickname "Kinetic Justice" - was indeed on a hunger strike.

"Prison officials confirm the inmate has declared a hunger strike ... Medical staff has conducted an initial assessment of the inmate's condition. The inmate will be weighed daily, his food intake monitored, and proper medical care will be provided as needed," Horton said via email. He added later that "[t]he inmate states his reason for the hunger strike is over concern for his safety."

Rumors began spreading earlier this week among prisoners' rights advocates and others in contact with people incarcerated in Alabama that Council was refusing to eat as a nonviolent protest against what he describes as his mistreatment by the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC.)

Council was held in solitary confinement for years at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, but he is now incarcerated at Limestone after DOC removed him from Holman last week in a move advocates see as an act of retaliation against him.

"Kinetic Justice has been on a hunger strike since last Friday," Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, spokesman for the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) prisoners' rights organization, said Thursday. "Kinetic Justice [is] in fear of his life [and] will not eat any of the food they have tried to give him."

Horton confirmed that Council - who was born in 1974 and was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1995 - is currently being held at Limestone but declined to provide further details about why he was moved there.

"The Alabama Department of Corrections does not publicly disclose the reasons for moving inmates for security concerns," he said.

Council's goal for the hunger strike is to raise awareness of the way he and advocates say he has been treated by the DOC in recent months, according to Glasgow and an Alabama prison system inmate who goes by the name Swift Justice, founded the grassroots reform group Unheard Voices and serves as a FAM board member.

"Not only is he trying to retaliate against them for retaliating against him by moving him to Limestone, but he is also trying to keep the momentum of the Free Alabama Movement going," Justice said.

Glasgow added that he knows of other inmates engaging in hunger strikes at Holman and Limestone.

"Other inmates have joined in the hunger strike and have vowed not to eat also until they move Kinetic Justice back to Holman or St Clair," he said.

Asked whether he had received reports about any other inmates engaging in hunger strikes at this time, Horton responded "[n]ot to the department's knowledge."

Glasgow said that the water supply to Council's cell has been cut off in an attempt to get him to end his strike, describing the tactic as "human torture" being deployed against Council by DOC employees at Limestone.

Horton said that "Limestone Correctional Facility reports the inmate's cell has water."

Maria Morris, senior supervising staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center said that though she had never heard of a prisoner's water being cut off "specifically as a result of a hunger strike," the DOC sometimes deploys the tactic to punish inmates.

"They do have what they call dry cells, which are segregation cells in which the water's cut off, that are sometimes used for disciplinary purposes," she said. "They are also sometimes used, for example, if someone has swallowed something and they need to know when it gets passed."

Council was a major player in a national coordinated strike effort launched by inmates and prisoners' rights advocacy group like FAM last month. Advocates say that some correctional officers also participated in the strikes and that they crippled multiple facilities for a number of days last month, but the DOC said only Holman was impacted for a period of just 24 hours.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had launched an investigation into violence, rape, overcrowding and other problems within the men's prisons in Alabama.