10 Walpole Prisoners Refuse Meals in Week-Long Strike

Ten solitary-confinement prisoners refused to eat yesterday at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Walpole, continuing a hunger strike which started a week ago.

Most of the striking prisoners in Cellblock 10 had been placed on an "alternate meal plan" of' cold sandwiches and fruit after they had repeatedly flung their hot meals at the guards, Joseph Landolfi, public relations representative at Walpole, said yesterday. He said prisoners were creating safety and sanitation problems for guards by also pelting them with food containers filled with human excrement.

The prisoners have presented no formal demands and have not told guards they are on a hunger strike, Landolfi said. "We don't view as demands" prisoners' requests for better food and more access to facilities, he said, adding that Cellblock 10 inmates have visiting and exercise privileges and access to a law library.

Prisoners are placed in solitary confinement for attacking guards or fellow inmates, Landolfi said. About 60 prisoners live in Cellblock 10.

But Susan Jacoby, assistant director of Family and Friends of Prisoners, a prisoners, rights group, said yesterday prisoners have made demands--which Walpole administrators refuse to acknowledge. The prisoners are asking for "basic human decency" rather than anything concerning the running of the prison, she said.

These demands are constant with or without hunger strikes, she added.

Prisoners, who are shut in cells for 23 1/2 hours a day, are protesting arbitrary and brutal treatment by guards, including rectal searches--often accompanied by assaults--whenever they enter or leave their cells. They are also objecting to strip searches of visiting family members and other "humilitation techniques," and withholding food as punishment, Jacoby said.

She said her organization knows of no food throwing of hot food, though some prisoners have kept their cardboard trays inside their cells.

"These are weak men--taking away their food is beating them into submission," she said.

The prison is not using food as a punishment, Landolfi said. He called the alternate meal plan "substantial," adding that prisoners are offered vitamins and checked for medical problems.