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.
“The report details how U.S. prisons arbitrarily apply book bans in the name of institutional security. Texas, for example, bans The Color Purple but not Mein Kampf. Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow was banned in prisons in North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, and New Jersey, although those bans were reversed after they received media attention. A New York prison tried to ban a book of maps of the moon, claiming it presented an escape risk.“
Reason Magazine
September 27, 2019
Read More“There is no relationship between these two things. The dinners for prisoners were planned months in advance and the spending happened before the shutdown. While the holiday meals sound nice, the food prisoners receive every other day of the year is generally awful and frequently doesn't contain enough nutrients to meet inmates' dietary needs. But in order to make themselves look like the victims in this government shutdown, union officials shopped around a story to multiple media outlets about criminals being treated like kings while prison guards have to freelance as Uber drivers.“
Reason
January 7, 2019
Read More“In that petition, Prison Legal News calls the 11th Circuit decision ‘an outlier ruling upholding an outlier policy.’ As it notes, Florida is alone in its position. Although the publication has battled censorship in 29 states, making it perhaps the most frequently banned magazine in the country, neither the federal prison system or any other state prison systems bans the magazine in its entirety.“
Reason Magazine
September 17, 2018
Read More“Today, members of Congress introduced a bill that aims to make sure what happened to Winn never happens to anyone else. Cosponsored by a majority of Democratic and Republican women in the House, the bill would ban the shackling and solitary confinement of pregnant inmates in the federal prison system. The Pregnant Women in Custody Act, introduced by Reps. Karen Bass (D–Calif.), Mia Love (R–Utah) and Catherine Clark (D–Mass.), would ban the use of restraints and restrictive housing on female inmates during pregnancy, during labor, and post-partum. It would also set standards of care for pregnant female inmates.“
Reason Magazine
September 13, 2018
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