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.
"'I’m not saying jails should be overly comfortable, but they should at the very least be humane,' Franks said. 'These young men that have died are human beings, and for whatever reason we lose sight of that once someone enters the jail. They were sons and daughters, mothers and fathers. They have people who miss them. They were worth something'."
The Appeal
August 15, 2018
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