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.
"The city’s efforts to close Rikers Island are commendable and long overdue. But as the de Blasio administration’s new blueprint to shutter the jail complex reflects, New York is still struggling, as are cities and states across America, to manage the many people with mental illness who are thrown in jails and prisons that, for all intents and purposes, have become psychiatric hospitals without the services."
New York Daily News
August 16, 2018
Read More"Yet the restarting of the death machinery in Nashville runs against a well-documented trend both in Tennessee and the rest of the country. Executions are declining year after year — and new death sentences have become vanishingly rare."
The Intercept
August 15, 2018
Read More"Inmates were confined to their cells for four days after the corrections officer was killed, with the exception of emergency medical needs, she said. Inmates are being allowed to shower every other day, up from one shower every three days earlier in the lockdown."
Minnesota Star Tribune
August 15, 2018
Read More"'I’m not saying jails should be overly comfortable, but they should at the very least be humane,' Franks said. 'These young men that have died are human beings, and for whatever reason we lose sight of that once someone enters the jail. They were sons and daughters, mothers and fathers. They have people who miss them. They were worth something'."
The Appeal
August 15, 2018
Read More"'It is my opinion, within a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that SCDC’s policies and practices regarding hepatitis C testing deviate from the standard of care,' said James Grubbs, an infectious disease physician who has worked for the prisons system since 2016."
The State
August 14, 2018
Read More"The group is encouraging prisoners to participate in work strikes, sit-ins, boycotts and hunger strikes from Aug. 21 until Sept. 9, according to the statement. A series of demands have been issued, including improving conditions in prisons, paying a fair wage for prison labor, providing the possibility of parole to all prisoners, allowing access to rehabilitation programs, increasing funding at state rehabilitation services and restoring voting rights to felons."
The State
August 13, 2018
Read More"In Alabama, the state we examined most closely, it’s a sweet deal for the companies and the state. The plants get highly vulnerable workers who are unlikely to complain about low wages or unsafe working conditions. The state, in turn, reaps millions to help pay for its mass incarceration operations. For prisoners, however, work release can be a double-edged sword."
The Marshall Project
August 13, 2018
Read More"The double shifts — a long-standing problem — have cost the Michigan Department of Corrections $12.4 in overtime in the last two years, plus an ongoing lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department, alleging gender discrimination."
Detroit Free Press
August 10, 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"For the last seven years, inmates have stocked the libraries of their personal MP3 players with $2 downloads. Come January, they’ll be forced to hand it all over because the Florida Department of Corrections signed a new deal with a competing company."
Florida Times-Union
August 8, 2018
Read More“The consequences of these heat waves can be severe. A Columbia Law School climate study estimated that most of those incarcerated did not have air conditioning in their units. Exposure to high heat alone can lead to increases in aggression, suicide, poor cognitive functioning, and overall poor mental health. What’s more, over 20 percent of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons have a mental illness, and an aging prison population means that many individuals are suffering from medical conditions like high blood pressure. Psychotropic drugs and high blood pressure medications can both disrupt the body's ability to regulate heat and cool itself down—meaning that many people in prison face higher risk of overheating.“
Vera Institute
August 10, 2018
Read More"The women described a system of flagrant sexual extortion and other abuses. They said guards illegally smuggled drugs, tobacco and other contraband into the facility, used excessive force against inmates for minor infractions such as talking in the chow hall and forced women to perform degrading acts, such as exposing themselves."
Miami Herald
August 8, 2018
Read More"In a class-action lawsuit, Dodson and other former inmates allege that about 60 diabetic Trousdale prisoners face daily risk because of unhealthy food, unpredictable meal times and spotty access to insulin shots. Diabetics generally inject insulin when they eat, but inmates allege they often wait hours for the drug because of understaffing, which is designed to "maximize profits," and frequent prison lockdowns."
The Tennessean
August 7, 2018
Read More"Some 300 of the nation's roughly 3,200 or jails and 1,900 prisons now offer some form of addiction medication to select inmates, according U.S. Department of Justice data."
ABC 6 Ohio
August 7, 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"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
Read More"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"But those who have lived under this high-tech tether—including the two of us—see it differently. For many, electronic monitoring equals incarceration by another name. It is a shackle, rather than a bracelet. The rules for wearing a monitor are far more restrictive than most people realize. Most devices today have GPS tracking, recording every movement and potentially eroding rights in ways you can’t imagine."
Wired
August 4, 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 role of food is more pronounced for prisoners than for those who are not incarcerated. A primary reason for that difference is the fact that prison and jail schedules revolve around meal times. Another is that prisoners are limited to eating the fare provided in the dining hall (commonly called the chow hall or mess hall), or what they can buy from the commissary; they lack the food choices that most people take for granted."
Prison Legal News
August 4, 2018
Read More