Biography
Sundiata Jawanza, born Darvin Allen, has been imprisoned in the South Carolina state prison system since 1995, serving a life sentence for murder and accessory after the fact of armed robbery. He has expressed remorse for the offenses of his youth and during his three decades inside has become one of the most consequential prison-rights organizers in the United States.
He is a founder of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, the prisoner-led network that since 2018 has organized national prison work strikes and the Free Alabama Movement-style campaigns against forced prison labor. He is Co-Chair of the National Lawyers Guild Mass Incarceration Committee and the Mass Defense Committee, and the Jailhouse Lawyer Vice President on the NLGs National Executive Committee. He is also an Imam who serves as the spiritual guide for the Muslim population in his facility, and a certified peer support specialist who teaches substance-use and mental-health classes inside.
South Carolina prison authorities have responded to his organizing by holding him in closed custody. In April 2023 he was transferred to the Turbeville Correctional Institution to complete the Addiction Treatment Unit program in support of his parole eligibility. The Jericho Movement classifies him as a politicized prisoner — a person originally incarcerated for ordinary criminal charges who has become a political prisoner through subsequent organizing inside.