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.
"In 2016, 242 inmates were still in isolation at Red Onion and another facility, Wallens Ridge State Prison. And the ACLU’s research suggests that the spirit of reform has not permeated the state’s Department of Corrections. The advocacy group collected harrowing prisoner accounts of their time in solitary."
Washington Post
June 3, 2018
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