Slopping out is the manual emptying of human waste when prison cells are unlocked in the morning.
During the late 1970s, Provisional IRA volunteers protested against conditions of internment at HM Prison Maze by refusing to slop out and instead smearing their faeces on the cell walls.
This was later referred to as the dirty protest, part of several acts of disobedience within the "H-Blocks" culminating in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike.
Slopping out was allegedly abolished in England and Wales by 1996, although Private Eye in 2011 reported that Prisons Inspector Nick Hardwick stated that it still persisted at HMP Gloucester.
[7] Speaking at the launch of the Irish Human Rights Commission's Annual Report for 2009, the Green Party Junior Minister for Integration Mary White said it was time to move on from the Victorian practice.