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.
“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"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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