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 for both the city and state, there's a larger moral issue: Upstate jails are essentially becoming the city's "black sites," similar to the federal government's practice after the 2001 terror attacks to send prisoners overseas to get around U.S. laws prohibiting torture in interrogation."
Albany Times Union
August 5, 2018
Read More"While sitting idly in jail, Tuzlic was, like other pregnant prisoners, 'frequently hungry and undernourished' due to the 'nutritionally inadequate”'pregnancy diet. The complaint alleged prisoners often were not provided full portions of food or portions were completely missing. They were not given prenatal vitamins or calcium supplements."
Prison Legal News
August 4, 2018
Read More"The idea that somebody is just going to sit there and think about what they did and magically know how to handle a situation differently in the future is not accurate. So we have to be pro-active in helping people know how to change."
NPR
July 31, 2018
Read More"Given how it affects the brain, solitary is akin to being “buried alive,” according to some accounts. That’s not what Manafort experienced. But Moochie did."
The Marshall Project
July 30, 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"Oprah Winfrey visits Pelican Bay State Prison where she reports on conditions in the "SHU" isolation unit and on a nationwide reform movement that is reducing the use of solitary confinement."
CBS
July 22, 2018
Read More"The unit 'so severely and completely deprives prisoners of meaningful social contact and positive environmental stimulation that it puts them at significant risk of very serious psychological harm,' University of California, Santa Cruz psychology professor Craig Haney wrote. 'That psychological harm may be irreversible and even fatal'."
AP
July 11, 2018
Read More"'I’ve been concerned about their over-using administrative segregation for years,' said state Senator John Whitmire, who chairs the state Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee. 'I’m convinced that, if you’re not emotionally disturbed when you go in there, you will be when you get out'."
Prison Legal News
July 6, 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"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
Read More"The devastating and lasting psychiatric effects of solitary confinement have been extensively documented. Solitary confinement is harmful to the mental health of inmates because it restricts social contact, which is a psychological stimulus that humans require to remain healthy and functioning. Prolonged isolation causes anxiety, panic, hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, aggression, depression, and an increased risk of suicide, especially for people with pre-existing mental health conditions."
The Appeal
February 13, 2018
Read More"Inmates in state prisons can’t be held in solitary confinement for more than 15 days, the Colorado Department of Corrections announced on Thursday in the latest effort to overhaul a practice criticized as “torture” by the agency’s chief. The changes also require that inmates who are held in solitary confinement at the discretion of prison officials get at least four hours per day outside a cell for recreation or group classes."
Denver Post
October 12, 2017
Read More