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.
"But this past May, in a decision that surely surprised court watchers, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided definitively with Burns, at least for now. The federal appeals court ruled that Burns had a constitutional right under the First Amendment not to be forced to snitch or to provide false testimony at the request of his jailers."
The Marshall Project
August 6, 2018
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