A US judge in California ruled on Monday that the state’s prison doctors can force-feed inmates, who are on hunger strike

A US judge in California ruled on Monday that the state’s prison doctors can force-feed inmates, who are on hunger strike.

The hunger strike campaign by inmates in California prisons was intended to protest against the state’s solitary confinement policies.

State authorities won court approval after claiming that the inmates may have been coerced into refusing food.

US District Court Judge Thelton E. Henderson declared that dying inmates can be force-fed even if they had signed orders asking not to be resuscitated.

Prior to the judge’s decision, California policy prohibited force-feeding of inmates on a hunger strike if they have signed medical orders refusing to be revived if they lost consciousness or experience heart failure.

The move came as hundreds of inmates have fallen ill and been hospitalized after refusing food for over forty days.

Some 30,000 prisoners in two-thirds of the California’s prisons officially launched the campaign on July 8th by refusing to eat their ninth consecutive meal.

Prisoners say the move is aimed at demanding an end to what they call their inhumane conditions including keeping them in solitary confinement for 10 to 40 years.

The United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other so-called democratic nation in the world, according to Reuters.

According to a report by NPR in March, an estimated 80,000 American prisoners spend 23 hours a day in closed isolation units for 10, 20 or even more than 30 years.

Solitary confinement exploded in the US in the 1980s when almost every state built what is called a “supermax” prison facility for the so-called “worst of the worst.”