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
Read More“Under international law, more than 15 days of isolated confinement can be considered to be torture. Yet in New Jersey, some people are held in isolation for months. For 22-23 hours a day they are left only with a bed and their thoughts in a room that's typically no more than 8-by-10 feet. It causes lifelong trauma, increasing the risk that people become unnerved, irritable, erratic, depressed, irrational.“
New Jersey Star Ledger
April 14, 2019
Read More"New Jersey, however, is trying to solve this issue. It is one of the first states in the country to devote an entire prison to treating inmates with addictions, and offers all three forms of medication-assisted treatment at all state prisons. The state is also working on introducing the treatment into county jails. The Acting Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Corrections, Marcus O. Hicks, talks about the state’s new strategy for handling incarceration and addiction. "
The Takeaway
August 20, 2018
Read More"'This is the population that is the most expensive to incarcerate and the least likely to re-offend,' report author Mary Price told New Jersey 101.5. 'It makes no sense to keep them locked up'."
New Jersey 101.5
July 8, 2018
Read More"Earn Your Way Out will reduce New Jersey's prison population, saving tax dollars and savings lives, by giving inmates meaningful purpose in their lives -- for themselves, their families and their communities. Ending abuse of solitary confinement will make peaceful re-entry to society more likely."
New Jersey Star-Ledger
July 2, 2018
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