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.
"'Programs help us get out of our mind, because you get in, you get stuck,' she said. 'You think, what I could have done, what I couldn't have done. What I should have done, what I didn't' -- and it’ll drive you really anxious and excited, and it brings on other emotions. But this helps. The program helps'."
KTVZ Central Oregon
July 16, 2018
Read More