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.
“Consider how likely you were to make reckless decisions in your 20’s, and compare that to your 50s: The difference, science tells us, is about impulse control and brain development. A study last year from the Justice Policy Institute found that only 3 percent of elderly prisoners are arrested again after their release. Most people age out of crime. Yet we pay as much as $60,000 annually – twice the cost of the average prisoner – to keep older felons behind bars.“
NJ.com
July 28, 2019
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