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.
“Reform rarely happens without accountability, yet accountability for jail deaths is rare. When it does happen, it’s the result of a lawsuit, local government investigation or — rarest of all — a federal investigation. Two jails are going through that process now.“
The Virginian-Pilot
December 13, 2018
Read More“However, the state’s apparent progress is marred by a lack of transparency and by troubling signs suggesting the reforms may not be all they are cracked up to be. In September, a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of an inmate at Red Onion said he had been held for more than 12 years in solitary confinement, suffers from severe and deepening mental illness, which has gone untreated, and has been unable to access less restrictive housing owing to his inability to speak English and illiteracy in Spanish, his native language.“
Washington Post
December 11, 2018
Read More“Joseph Crumpler is one of 330 inmates being moved by the Delaware Department of Correction into Pennsylvania prisons in an attempt to reduce the millions of dollars spent on correctional officer overtime each year. The transfer process has left Delaware families distraught about how far away their loved ones are headed and largely in the dark about what is to come.“
Delaware Online
December 10, 2018
Read More“Felicity Rose, director of criminal justice research and policy for FWD.us, said overcapacity prisons can result in a myriad of problems. ‘That can mean that people are housed in very inhumane conditions. It can be dangerous for the people who work in those prisons, that can lead to less programming, so less opportunities for recidivism reduction,’ she said.“
Illinois Public Media
December 7, 2018
Read More“I reviewed news stories of arrests made in 2018 of individuals caught bringing contraband into jails and prisons. What I found wouldn’t surprise any person in jail, but it’s a truth that sheriffs prefer to avoid: Almost all contraband introduced to any local jail comes through staff. This year alone, 20 jail staff members in 12 separate county jails were arrested, indicted, or convicted on charges of bringing in or planning to bring in contraband. “
Prison Policy Initiative
December 6, 2018
Read More“Several state prison systems are facing a dilemma: too many prisoners and not enough beds. An increasingly popular solution to this problem is to transfer prisoners to facilities in other states, sometimes thousands of miles away, where there is surplus bed space available. That extra space is typically found in private, for-profit prisons.“
Prison Legal News
December 5, 2018
Read More“The problem of rising temperatures amplifies the most pressing issues facing U.S. prisons and jails: chronically tight budgets, aging infrastructure, and the relative invisibility of incarcerated people, a disproportionate number of whom (in Texas, about two-thirds) are black or Latino. In a country that imprisons more of its people—especially racial minorities—than any country on Earth, this will not be an easy problem to untangle. “
PBS
December 5, 2019
Read More“The suit claims the U.S. Bureau of Prisons violated the law by failing to place documents concerning the prison construction in the libraries of federal prisons around the county so prisoners could read them and comment on them. It also claims the prison site is “toxic” and would endanger prisoners, while at the same time saying construction “would permanently degrade the already vulnerable environment.“
Lexington Herald Leader
December 5, 2018
Read More“Instead he worries about cell doors that aren't wide enough for wheel chairs and hospital beds, what it would look like to build something resembling a nursing home at Guantanamo, and one detention camp that is on the verge of falling into disrepair. Addressing those issues is not possible without $69 million the military has requested from Congress for the last five years to build a new detention camp at Guantanamo and make needed repairs to medical facilities.“
NBC News
November 30, 2018
Read More‘‘The Appalachian Prison Book Project (APBP) is a nonprofit organization based in Morgantown, West Virginia, that sends free books to incarcerated people across six states in Appalachia: Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Founded in 2004 by Ryan and fellow professor (and recently elected Morgantown deputy mayor) Mark Brazaitis, APBP was born out of a class Ryan taught on the literature of incarceration.“
Buzzfeed News
November 12, 2018
Read More“All told, the board concluded that the deaths of approximately 50 prisoners statewide over the past five years could have been prevented with simple medical treatment. Officials with the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision say that even one such case is unacceptable, but that only around 0.02% of the total prison population of nearly 50,000 are referenced in the reports.“
NY Daily News
November 12, 2018
Read More“Even in less extreme cases than that of the Angola Three, prolonged social isolation—feeling lonely, not just being alone—can exact severe physical, emotional and cognitive consequences. It is associated with a 26 percent increased risk of premature death, largely stemming from an out of control stress response that results in higher cortisol levels, increased blood pressure and inflammation.“
The Scientific American
November 9, 2018
Read More“The importance of getting on is a take away message. This is far harder to achieve in large busy prisons where new prisoners arrive and leave every day. But just like community policing works best if most public interactions are friendly, a prison is a more positive place if most interactions are friendly and benign too. Where prisoners and staff share space, stories and a sense of community the chances of prisoners changing for the better are much improved.“
The Conversation
November 6, 2018
Read More“About three years after the effort began, the prison has replaced the white bread with wheat and gives out less. It has added items such as fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as cottage cheese and yogurt full of the calcium the aging female population needs. It serves drinks with less sugar.“
Corrections One
November 5, 2018
Read More“Since late summer, Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections has been rolling out enhanced security measures designed to stop the flow of drugs into prisons. One of those changes included restrictions on book gifts and donations. But after pushback from several inmates’ rights groups and book donors, the department is making changes once again.“
WHYY Pennsylvania
November 4, 2018
Read More“Hempstead is far from unique in complaining about the brutalities and indignities of the Florida prison system from an inmate’s perspective. But he is one of the few to have the focus and dedication to write a more than 400-page book cataloging everything he saw and experienced. He calls it: ‘Department of Corruption: Darren Rainey, the Untold Story’.“
Miami Herald
November 1, 2018
Read More“The plan — utilizing inmates as informants inside Georgia’s most dangerous prisons, supplying them with cell phones to provide intelligence — was ‘the most dangerous thing you could do,’ said a former Valdosta State Prison warden. Within four months of its implementation at Valdosta State, one informant nearly lost his life while the prison captain who supplied him with cell phones, despite objecting to the policy, would eventually lose his job because of it.“
Atlanta Journal Constitution
October 31, 2018
Read More“The original settlement had 25 provisions the corrections department needed to follow to provide proper care for the mentally ill. It included allowing eight hours of out-of-cell time each week to those in solitary confinement and enhanced treatment for the actively suicidal. A June report by an independent court-appointed monitor, Dr. Pablo Stewart, found the department was noncompliant with 18 of those terms. Stewart testified that mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement were ‘suffering immensely’.“
NPR Illinois
October 31, 2018
Read More“In Santa Clara County, incarcerated people, and a former undersheriff challenging six-term sheriff Laurie Smith, have turned conditions of confinement into a potent electoral issue.“
The Appeal
October 29, 2018
Read More“Video visitation services like the ones used in Orleans Parish have been steadily spreading through the criminal justice system, leading some to suggest that this might be a cheaper, easier way to encourage people in prison to keep connected to loved ones. But cautionary tales from as far back as the 1970s show that it could instead make prison a much more difficult experience for those inside by limiting their emotional connections with people on the outside, exposing them to serious privacy risks, and costing them a great deal of money.“
Slate
October 29, 2018
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