‘Rebellion’ at Idaho prisons: Here’s why men in maximum security joined a hunger strike

In the moments after correctional officers raided their units, d ozens of men incarcerated at Idaho’s highest-security prison south of Boise were isolated in barren cells, breathing air that not long ago contained fumes from pepper spray and tear gas.

Members of the Idaho Department of Correction’s tactical response team, outfitted in tactical gear and gas masks, had deployed chemical munitions to access the units. Then they stormed cell after cell, removing everything — even the mattresses — and stripped 27 men of their clothing . The men were thrown back into their empty cells without a blanket, leaving them to sleep on the cold concrete floor.

IDOC’s February raid was a response to a broken policy. The 27 men had covered their cell windows, obstructing any view into the space, to protest systemic issues at the prison, Shawn Madewell and Bobby Templin told the Idaho Statesman. The two men witnessed the incident from their cells at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution. The correctional agency confirmed the details of the raid they described.

IDOC’s response to the protest only spurred more dissent. And a few months later, in May, prisoners organized a mass hunger strike to demand better treatment and services.

The six-day strike involved about 90 incarcerated men, according to IDOC, most of them housed in the Idaho Maximum Security Institution. Men housed in the units described it as one of the largest demonstrations they’ve seen in the state’s prison system.

Correctional officers’ constant raids of their cells planted the “seed of the strike,” Madewell said. But complaints detailed to the Statesman, and presented to prison leaders in May, described more alarming living conditions for the prisoners: long bouts of isolation; serious delays in medical care ; an HVAC system that hadn’t been cleaned; and “cages” IDOC used for recreation time, covered in human feces.

“The prison created this strike and rebellion, not us,” Madewell told the Statesman.

Prison officials also confirmed that they halted many services, including access to certain religious practices, in 2020 as they faced an unprecedented staffing crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. They promised a return to normal when the spread of the virus died down and staffing levels rose. Some of those services haven’t returned.

IDOC made a few improvements shortly after the strike, and prisoners attributed those changes directly to their protests. They told the Statesman they expect more changes, that the protests were just the start of a movement to demand better living conditions.

IDOC officials cast blame on the prisoners for the raids. The revoked privileges were results of the prisoners’ violations of the rules, prison officials told the Statesman: In recent months, correctional leaders removed fruit from meals to combat homemade alcohol, increased cell searches to address contraband, and restricted out-of-cell time following an upsurge in violent incidents.

While the department plans to increase programming, religious services and recreational time, spokesperson Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic said in a statement that the residents’ actions have “a significant amount of say in the privileges they’re afforded.”

“As convenient as it can be to try to attribute violence and gang-related activity to some deeper meaning, actions have consequences,” she said. “Their behavior will determine what’s next.”

IDOC responds to complaints

Men housed in solitary confinement at Idaho’s maximum security prison told the Statesman they get one daily reprieve from isolation: a single hour of recreation time. They take off their shoes, sliding them through a slot in the door for a guard to inspect, back up and place their hands through a slot in the cell door, according to accounts by Madewell and Templin that were confirmed by IDOC. The guards then cuff the prisoners’ hands, open their cells, pat them down, and allow them to slide their shoes back on untied before moving them to an outside area.

The prisoners told the Statesman that’s when the smell hits.

The recreational cages, which are large chain link-like metal boxes each man is placed into, are littered with human urine and feces that have soaked into the concrete, Madewell and Templin told the Statesman .

Men placed in a lower security level in the maximum security prison, known as closed custody general population, go outside to a more open recreational area and get more time. Prisoners told the Statesman that area is still covered with trash and bodily fluids, partly because the men said they don’t have access to a bathroom while outside.

Prisoners also complained of an HVAC system they said they believed hadn’t been cleaned in decades. Vents to the HVAC system had been used by prisoners to communicate and were littered with trash, they said. Prisoners also sometimes retaliate against neighboring prisoners by pouring urine and feces through the ventilation holes, leaving the system filthy, Templin and Madewell told the Statesman.

“All we ask is for the right to breathe clean air, to be warm in the winters and cool in the summers,” Madewell said. “Our cells are some of the cleanest places you could ever find, but what’s in our HVAC system could be classified as a biohazard.”

Kuzeta-Cerimagic said the cages are regularly inspected and cleaned by incarcerated workers. The HVAC systems at the maximum prison and the Idaho State Correctional Center were cleaned after the hunger strike, she said.

But men housed in the prison said the strike wasn’t the first time they had communicated these complaints to IDOC.

Templin and Madewell told the Statesman that other men in the prison presented a range of complaints to several prison leaders from their cells on Feb. 22. Hours later, at 3 a.m. the next day, correctional officers woke up several men who had talked to staff about their concerns and forced them out of their cells . The prisoners covered their windows in part as a response to IDOC removing the men, Templin and Madewell said.

Kuzeta-Cerimagic said the men were removed because they were planning “a large-scale incident,” adding that six men, identified as leaders of gangs, were taken to different units within the maximum security prison and the Idaho State Correctional Institution. Kuzeta-Cerimagic said IDOC officials believed the protest would have happened regardless of whether IDOC had removed them.

IDOC in February had said the protest was an attempt to force staff members to “segregate” housing by gang and racial affiliation, the Statesman previously reported . Madewell told the Statesman that gang affiliation had nothing to do with it and called prison officials’ previous statement a lie.

Kuzeta-Cerimagic said the pepper spray and tear gas, deployed the next day, were only used on people who didn’t follow orders. Out of the 27 men who covered their windows, guards used tear gas and pepper spray on 26 of them after they “refused to comply with being restrained and escorted without force,” she said.

At a minimum, the hunger strike expedited changes, said Dewey Lewis, who participated in the strike from the Idaho State Correctional Center. On top of addressing some of the unsanitary conditions, IDOC staff also installed exercise equipment into the recreational cages, another one of the men’s demands, shortly after the protest.

“Some of the things that was done was against our rights,” Lewis told the Statesman. “And that was the first time that maybe somebody had to answer for that.”

Hunger strike begins

After officers raided their cells in February, Madewell said, he knew he wanted to do something else to demand better living conditions. He said he grew angrier as he watched the correctional officers handcuff Templin behind his back, despite knowing that it worsened the chronic pain Templin deals with from an untreated fractured thumb.

“We could always refuse to eat,” Madewell recalled he told Templin.

From there, Madewell said, it didn’t take much convincing for men to join. They created a list of demands and planned the strike for May 1.

Collin Young, a deputy warden for the maximum security prison, disputed use of the term “hunger strike.” He pointed to the agency’s policy definitions and said the May demonstration didn’t qualify as a hunger strike, because the men had access to commissary items in their cells. Staff members don’t have to observe that men are eating their commissary, only that they can access the food, he said.

When officers came around with meals for the men, they refused, according to the prisoners. It wasn’t until after the sixth day of the strike that the men agreed to eat a meal, after 18 pull-up bars were installed in the recreational cages for men in solitary confinement, Templin said.

Within a day of the hunger strike, Young and other leaders from the prison met with five incarcerated men, including representatives from prison gangs, to discuss their concerns. Templin, who attended the meeting, said “everyone was united on this,” even members of rival gangs.

“We all sat around the table, and they took our handcuffs off and let us sit as equals,” Templin said. “It wasn’t like one was superior over the other, and we were able to sit and have a conversation.”

Young said the conversation highlighted a need for better communication with the prison’s population, but that the issues “certainly” didn’t require the men to refuse their meals. He added that the incarcerated population wasn’t aware of IDOC’s intentions to bring back some of the services they had demanded during the hunger strike.

Since his arrival at the prison in September, Young said, IDOC officials brought back educational programs that were removed four years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic hit prisons particularly hard given the crowded environment — and Idaho’s correctional facilities were already dealing with a staffing crisis.

One of the biggest needs Young said he saw was the lack of behavioral classes being offered to the men. Since June, he said, IDOC officials have offered a class called “Thinking for Change” to the closed custody general population that’s focused on building social and problem-solving skills. They’re also considering offering alcoholics and narcotics anonymous classes.

Congregate religious services were also taken away at the height of the pandemic and brought back. That includes smudging ceremonies for Native Americans and the ability for people to participate in feasts. Men in solitary confinement can participate in religious services in a confined space, one behavioral intervention class and non-contact visitation.

Lewis said he wasn’t able to participate in smudging, a purification ceremony, for years. As a Native American, 52-year-old Lewis, said the cultural practice gives him and other incarcerated Indigenous men a way to connect.

“It’s something that we can hang onto that makes us feel like we’re human beings,” Lewis said in a phone interview.

Religious services returned to the maximum security prison in February, according to IDOC. But for men housed at the Idaho State Correctional Center’s closed custody unit, or the G Block, the services didn’t return until after the hunger strike, Lewis said. Since being transferred over to the maximum security prison, Lewis said, he’s been able to smudge.

“We are offering so much to our resident population,” Young said. “I can just assure you — and I stand by it all day — that we provide opportunities and off-ramps to residents that are consistent with their level of maturity and responsibility.”

But Young said anytime rules are broken in the prisons, initiatives and projects take a backseat again. He pointed to the prison escape in March, when a prisoner faked self-inflicted injuries and planned an ambush at a hospital to flee custody .

“Two steps forward, one step back,” Young said by phone.

Idaho Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt said implementing services isn’t just dependent on staffing but on how the prison population behaves. He said some of the revoked privileges prisoners raised concerns about were direct responses to an uptick in violence and homemade alcohol.

“We can only tell them to knock it off so many times,” Tewalt told the Statesman in an interview.

Tewalt echoed Young’s comments that the strike highlighted a need for better communication, given that many of the men’s concerns were being addressed behind the scenes. But he stressed the importance of IDOC officials being cautious with what they say.

“You want to be particularly careful that you don’t over-promise and under-deliver,” Tewalt told the Statesman. “As a rule of thumb, we don’t go out to the population and say, ‘Look, it’s going to be Christmas. You’re going to get all these things,’ if we aren’t prepared to do that immediately.”

’We want them to change their culture’

For maximum security prisoners, visiting family in person without a glass panel dividing them hasn’t been an option for years. IDOC restricted the visitation right in 2018, according to IDOC.

In early June, prison officials brought the option back.

Young said administrators had been discussing the return of contact visitation since December and told all prisoners in closed custody that they’d remove the option if a fight broke out. Within two weeks, two men assaulted someone who was being taken out of his cell for a visit, Young said.

“And that was it,” Young said, adding that they’ve now paused physical visitation for all of the men in closed custody.

There are 186 men living in that housing classification, according to IDOC. Those in solitary confinement, or what the prison refers to as restrictive housing, aren’t allowed to have contact visitation at all. About 140 men live in varying classifications of the prison’s solitary confinement.

“They just did it to punish all of us for the actions of a couple people,” Madewell said, referring to the removal of contact visitation.

About solitary confinement

In the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, 142 incarcerated men are housed in solitary confinement. (IDOC refers to it as “restrictive housing,” because inmates have “frequent contact with staff,” the agency told the Statesman.) An expert said plenty of research supports concerns that the prolonged isolation causes long-term harm.

Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, an associate professor at Duke University who researches the health impact of incarceration, told the Statesman in a phone interview that incarcerated people feel their well-being decline even without staying in isolation long term. She also pointed out that the United Nations considers solitary confinement a form of torture.

“There is a giant body of literature that shows any amount of time spent in solitary confinement can have a deeply negative effect on people’s mental and physical health,” Brinkley-Rubinstein said.

Brinkley-Rubinstein said the U.S. still sees an “overuse of solitary confinement,” but some prison systems like New Jersey and Colorado have placed restrictions on how long an individual can be isolated. Though the United Nations opposes the overall use of solitary confinement, if prisons and jails do plan to use it, the UN said solitary confinement shouldn’t exceed 15 days.

None of the 255 men in the Idaho State Correctional Center’s G Block, which has a higher security level, have had any type of in-person visitation since October 2018. Instead, they have to visit family through paid video calls. Kuzeta-Cerimagic said contact visitation was suspended there because of “significant disturbances and altercations” that took place in the visiting rooms.

Over at the maximum security prison, officials said members of opposing gangs tend to fight each other when they come out of their cells, and the problem was exacerbated when IDOC brought back in-person visitation because so many more men wanted those visits.

“If I could just put it simply, we want them to change their culture,” Young said.

Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform, said restricting incarcerated people’s access to services can make prisons more unsafe.

Bertram pointed to a study in Tennessee by Face To Face Knox, an advocacy group for incarcerated people, which documented the effects of restricting visitation. In 2014, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office banned in-person visits at its jails, instead only offering visits through a paid video system, over safety and contraband concerns.

The report , which pulled data from several years before and after the ban, found that violent interactions went up and contraband was still making its way into the jails. Bertram added that in and out of prison, people are “ more safe, more stable ” when they have contact with family.

Often prison officials aim for a “zero incident rate” for contraband or fights, Bertram told the Statesman.

“But that’s not realistic, right?” Bertram said. “It’s very counterproductive for department of corrections to be instituting rules that make life so much harsher.”

Restrictive policies cause ‘unrest,’ prisoner says

Many services, especially within the maximum security prison, can only be offered if there’s enough staff to make them happen. In 2021, Idaho’s prisons were plagued with understaffing issues, and the low number of correctional officers led to the assault of a female staffer, the Statesman previously reported . The department saw “record-low staffing,” with 26% of its positions being vacant in August 2022, according to an IDOC strategic plan.

Tewalt said the department has made “significant progress” on the hiring front, and that while prisons nationwide were affected by the pandemic, IDOC has come out of it quicker than just about “every other correctional system in the country.” In June 2023, only 12% of positions in the prison system were vacant. The department called it a “significant gain” that was a part of IDOC’s efforts to “examine internal recruiting, hiring and retention practices,” according to the agency’s 2024-2027 Strategic Plan .

Idaho is one of the leading states in rates of incarceration and supervision per capita, with roughly 9,000 people in custody and thousands more on probation or parole, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

“Nobody felt the brunt of staffing shortages” in the same way that the maximum security prison did, Tewalt said.

But incarcerated people have a “pretty sizable say” in the opportunities they’re offered, he said. The correction department’s goal is to manage everybody in the “least-restrictive environment possible,” Tewalt added, but the men have a role to play in that. Whether they punish a few versus the many depends on how “widespread” the issue is, he told the Statesman.

Templin and Madewell said punishing many for the actions of the few is a common occurrence.

Templin told the Statesman that he understands people have to be punished for breaking the rules but that the recent decision to take away visitation from everyone, because of a fight between a couple of people, only causes “unrest” and “disparity.”

“When people don’t have hope or something to look forward to in here, then they have nothing to lose,” he said, “and it becomes a dangerous place.”