Even if an inmate's sentence is not oppressively long, their treatment while incarcerated can still constitute subhuman treatment. Prisons are not medical facilities, but they regularly are forced to deal with mental health problems and care for elderly and terminally ill inmates. Food, if it's even edible, usually lacks enough nutrition for inmates' health to not deteriorate. Plus, with a lack of opportunities to see family, read, or gain skill sets, inmates are placed in buildings which lack any resemblance of the civilized world.
“Such hope is in short supply at Georgia prisons. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of electronic book catalogues in 12 state prisons found wide disparities in the number and availability of reading material. Baldwin State Prison Library, for example, offers fewer than 2,000 books for about 1,000 prisoners, about one tenth the offering of comparably sized Central State Prison in Macon.“
Atlanta Journal Constitution
May 11, 2019
Read More“The plan — utilizing inmates as informants inside Georgia’s most dangerous prisons, supplying them with cell phones to provide intelligence — was ‘the most dangerous thing you could do,’ said a former Valdosta State Prison warden. Within four months of its implementation at Valdosta State, one informant nearly lost his life while the prison captain who supplied him with cell phones, despite objecting to the policy, would eventually lose his job because of it.“
Atlanta Journal Constitution
October 31, 2018
Read More"Many of the women, held in chaotic and unsanitary conditions, are not receiving proper medical treatment and are deteriorating into states of psychosis, Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer with the Southern Center for Human Rights, wrote. Most of them face low-level misdemeanor charges and cannot post the $200 to $500 required for bail."
Atlanta Journal Constitution
August 30, 2018
Read More"If the deaths are confirmed as suicides, they will bring the tally over the last 12 months to to 21. By comparison, there were just eight inmate suicides in the state during the previous 12-month period. Sarah Geraghty, managing attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights, attributes the rising number of inmate suicides to Georgia’s increased use of strict isolation."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 27, 2018
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