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.
“Global Tel-Link Corp. is one of two corrections phone companies that dominate the national $1.2 billion per year industry. It paid the Hampden County department $725,000 for phone calls to and from all its facilities between July 2016 and June 2017, according to records supplied by the department. Phone calls to and from the women's jail during that same period netted the department $110,000. “
San Francisco Chronicle
February 4, 2019
Read More"Last week, the City Council passed a law that will make all calls in and out of city jails free. Once signed into law by the mayor, the legislation will be the first of its kind in the country. The prison phone industry has grown to a $1.2 billion a year business, mostly run by private companies that can charge as much as $1.22 a minute."
The Appeal
July 26, 2018
Read More"In the two months following an April 15, 2018 riot at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina that left seven prisoners dead and at least 22 injured, the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) has renewed its push to get the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve jamming contraband cell phones in prisons and jails. Additionally, several prisoners who were wounded during the riot have filed lawsuits alleging that staff at the facility failed to protect them from foreseeable violence."
Prison Legal News
July 1, 2018
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