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.
“In a statement Thursday, the ACLU says the new policy allows incarcerated people to order books and publications directly from publishers and vendors. The ACLU says it's pleased with the change, but remains concerned that incarcerated people are deprived of reading opportunities.“
Corrections One
June 8, 2019
Read More“Such hope is in short supply at Georgia prisons. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of electronic book catalogues in 12 state prisons found wide disparities in the number and availability of reading material. Baldwin State Prison Library, for example, offers fewer than 2,000 books for about 1,000 prisoners, about one tenth the offering of comparably sized Central State Prison in Macon.“
Atlanta Journal Constitution
May 11, 2019
Read More“The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that a Georgia sheriff is violating the rights of jail inmates by prohibiting them from receiving outside books and magazines. The ACLU sent a letter to Chatham County Sheriff John Wilcher urging him to rescind a new policy that says inmates at the county jail in Savannah can no longer receive books or magazines by mail or from visitors. The policy restricts inmates to selecting reading materials from book carts managed by jail staff.“
Minnesota Star Tribune
April 10, 2019
Read More“The plan — utilizing inmates as informants inside Georgia’s most dangerous prisons, supplying them with cell phones to provide intelligence — was ‘the most dangerous thing you could do,’ said a former Valdosta State Prison warden. Within four months of its implementation at Valdosta State, one informant nearly lost his life while the prison captain who supplied him with cell phones, despite objecting to the policy, would eventually lose his job because of it.“
Atlanta Journal Constitution
October 31, 2018
Read More"Many of the women, held in chaotic and unsanitary conditions, are not receiving proper medical treatment and are deteriorating into states of psychosis, Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer with the Southern Center for Human Rights, wrote. Most of them face low-level misdemeanor charges and cannot post the $200 to $500 required for bail."
Atlanta Journal Constitution
August 30, 2018
Read More"Records reviewed by the SPLC show dozens of poultry companies employed more than 600 prisoners in at least seven states in 2016. The SPLC investigation also turned up documents from Georgia and North Carolina showing at least two dozen prisoners have been injured at their poultry jobs since 2015."
Southern Poverty Law Center
July 26, 2018
Read More"The unit 'so severely and completely deprives prisoners of meaningful social contact and positive environmental stimulation that it puts them at significant risk of very serious psychological harm,' University of California, Santa Cruz psychology professor Craig Haney wrote. 'That psychological harm may be irreversible and even fatal'."
AP
July 11, 2018
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