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.
"Still, the jail is ill-prepared to be the state’s largest mental health care provider. A quarter of county inmates are on psychiatric medication, according to Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jason Spencer. There have been 15 suicides at the county lock-up since 2009, and staff intervene in an average of about 10 suicide attempts per month, according to jail data."
Houston Chronicle
August 17, 2018
Read More"Inmates with mental health issues have psychiatrists around during the day, but how many inmates are they really going to get into it with? Nobody wants extra paperwork. I had a lot of time to sit and listen on the 24-hour suicide watch."
The Marshall Project
August 9, 2018
Read More"Nationally, about five of every 100,000 prisoners are murdered and another 16 commit suicide. In Alabama the number of prison homicides is over 30 per 100,000 – six times the national average and twice that of the next-highest state – while the number of suicides has risen to 37 per 100,000, more than twice the national rate."
Prison Legal News
August 6, 2018
Read More"That death came even as the jail was working to drive down its suicide numbers, which were already below the national average. At the same time, the jail has worked to lower its solitary confinement population, slashing the number in half over a five-year period."
Houston Chronicle
July 25, 2018
Read More"More than 40 inmates in jails and prisons in the Washington, D.C. area have died by suicide in custody since 2014, according to an investigation by the News4 I-Team. Records obtained from correctional agencies in D.C., Virginia and Maryland under the Freedom of Information Act show 400 other inmates attempted suicide since 2014, many of whom were saved by correctional officers and jail staff."
NBC Washington
July 24, 2018
Read More"If the deaths are confirmed as suicides, they will bring the tally over the last 12 months to to 21. By comparison, there were just eight inmate suicides in the state during the previous 12-month period. Sarah Geraghty, managing attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights, attributes the rising number of inmate suicides to Georgia’s increased use of strict isolation."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 27, 2018
Read More"Four suicides may sound like a small number for a prison system that houses about 21,000 inmates. But if the trend continues for the remainder of 2018, the inmate suicide rate in Alabama’s prisons will be about 40 suicides per 100,000 inmates this year, ten times higher than the rate the DOC reported four years ago."
The Crime Report
June 22, 2018
Read More