Word: prisons
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...disabling condition is bad, but there's a particular terror connected to the kind that destroys the body and leaves an alert mind locked inside. Stephen Hawking has spent much of his life inside just that kind of corporeal prison. The late Jean-Dominique Bauby described his own, similar experiences in the extraordinary memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a book he wrote one painstaking letter at a time by blinking his eye in alphabetic code...
...promptly. California state officials, including the governor, have indicated that they will appeal the mandate, possibly to the Supreme Court, seemingly in contradiction to Governor Schwarzenegger’s 2006 declaration of a state of emergency because of risks found to be associated with severe overcrowding in state prisons. Overburdened prison facilities essentially hand inmates harsher sentences than they deserve, decreasing their likelihood of real rehabilitation and increasing the possibility that these men and women will continue to cycle through the system. While the state may have reason to object to the court order’s imposition...
...This drastic nature of Monday’s ruling underlines the serious practical problems within not only California prisons, but also within our current prison system as a whole. Prisons at around 200 percent capacity—with thousands bunked in hallways and gyms for lack of housing space—cannot possibly provide an acceptable level of medical or mental health care to inmates. In addition to prompting action to reduce overcrowding, we hope that the court order will also be viewed as a call for a more thoughtful, long-term evaluation of our theory of punishment. Strategies such...
...While rising crime rates contribute to a continually growing prison population, the current capacity issue is also a product of problems in our legal system and our conception of punishment. The legal system is designed to penalize those who commit crimes and to decrease the likelihood of persons committing subsequent crimes—for many offenses, the focus should not be on punishment, but on rehabilitation and preventive measures...
...Reforming sentencing policies could go a long way in taking the pressure off crowded prisons. Instead of heading to prison, more inmates could be sent to rehabilitation facilities that would help them prepare to reenter society once their sentences are up, going a long way toward reducing high recidivism rates. It is worthwhile to also consider decriminalizing or at least reducing sentences for many minor crimes, especially nonviolent offenses. Decreasing the number of crimes that apply under three-strike policies—a prominent feature of the California judicial system—could reduce the number of second- and third...