Think Progress — Jail and Prison Conditions — Galsworthy Criminal Justice Reform Program

Jail and Prison Conditions

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.

‘This isn’t rehabilitation’: Alabama inmates speak out against state’s soaring prison homicide rate

“Prisoners like Derrick, who has served 20 years of a 22-year sentence at Holman and wishes to withhold his last name for safety reasons, claim that corrections officers knowingly ‘put certain people close to each other that have a history of violence toward one another, which leads to more blood spilled. If they wanted the violence to stop, they wouldn’t keep doing this.’ The reason, according to Derrick and prison justice groups, is that the state, pointing to overcrowding and minimal staffing, wants to justify building more maximum security prisons, a move that would only exacerbate the current crisis.“

Think Progress

January 15, 2019

Death in PrisonPhillip ReevesJanuary 15, 2019Think Progress, AlabamaComment

Jail and Prison Conditions

Galsworthy CJR Program

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