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.
"While many promising changes have long been underway in New York City—even with its largest jail still years away from its promised closure—could replacing Rikers Island be the catalyst for a more root-and-branch reform of the system, and the opportunity to meaningfully address the harms caused by decades of an over-reliance on incarceration, especially to communities of color?"
Center for Court Innovation
July 31, 2018
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