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Over 35 North Texas Inmates Were On a Hunger Strike at the Allred Unit

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On Tuesday, January 2, NBC DFW reported that 37 inmates at the Allred Unit in Iowa Park near Wichita Falls in North Texas were on a hunger strike. According to Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Robert Hurst, inmates began the hunger strike on Christmas Day due to complaints concerning “…recreational time, food portions and the temperature.”

Some of the inmates ate snack items they could get from the commissary, and officials said they were monitoring those on the strike. Originally, Chron.com writes that 45 inmates were participating in the strike.

Chron.com also reported that on Wednesday, January 3, officials said that the 10-day hunger strike had come to an end. Hurst didn’t give any details about how the strike ended, and he simply said, “It ended because they accepted meals.” But when Jennifer Erschabek of the Texas Inmate Families Association was asked about the end of the strike and whether or not the inmates had accepted meal trays, she said, “I have not heard anything to support that.”

The Allred Unit in Iowa Park has 3,722 inmates, many of which are in “administrative segregation” due to being a security risk. Chron.com writes that in 2017, the Texas Criminal Justice System “…quietly put an end to the use of punitive solitary confinement. Thousands of inmates are still in administrative segregation, but that number has markedly decreased in recent years.”