Over the objections of its three liberal justices, the Supreme Court on Monday denied a petition from a prisoner confined for years without the chance to exercise outside his cell.
Solitary is torture. SCOTUS is saying the Eighth Amendment has no standing.
This country has been revealed to be a joke over the last 2 decades.
I don’t know anything about this guy, but I’m not sure what alternatives there are to solitary in some cases. When an inmate is so violent that they can’t be around other people without hurting them, what do you do? I’ve encountered a handful of inmates like that.
Isolating a prisoner and putting them in solitary are two entirely different things. In solitary, you are given absolutely no stimulation. Often not even a bed to sleep on. The lights never turn off. Prisoners scream through vents at each other just to hear another human voice. It’s absolutely torture.
I’ve been in a lot of prison segregation units around the US and that’s not what I’ve seen. They have beds and they can talk to people in adjacent cells. They have beds unless they’re disassembling them to hurt themselves or others. The only times I’ve seen people truly isolated, it’s because they’re the ones screaming and aggravating the other inmates on the unit, and sometimes throwing shit and piss at them. They absolutely have lights turned off unless they’re on suicide watch and can’t be left in the dark without harming themselves.
I’m not defending it, I just don’t know what the solution is. Whenever I hear people proposing eliminating solitary confinement, I’m like “ok what then?”. The ones who are seriously mentally ill should be in hospitals, but they’d be segregated there too. The ones who aren’t, I have no idea.
Edit: I should add, I haven’t seen people put in those conditions just for punishment, but that probably wouldn’t be a part of a regular tour. If that happens, it definitely needs to stop.
Yeah it’s not part of the tour. It’s what’s reported by prisoners who have been in solitary.
Holy shit you didn’t literally see them abusing prisoners on a tour, I guess they don’t abuse prisoners, case closed lol
I’ve toured prisons in many states and spent years in my state’s prisons genius. I’ve sat in disciplinary hearings in other states too, so I’ve seen the reasons why people were sent to seg. How much time have you spent in prisons?
Leaving someone in solitary for a few months tends to do that to people.
But the answer is as it always was. 100 foot by 100 foot cage to exercise in and talk to other inmates through the fence.
according to the headline this person was refused exercise as well
They were denying him basic living conditions common to large zoo animals. If you are so profoundly mentally ill that you can’t be allowed to spend time in a slightly larger enclosure, it seems highly unlikely that you are mentally competent enough to be convicted in the first place.
The justification for this is also pathetically flimsy and should be easily rejected with just a moments thought.
Exercise has been deemed a necessity which cannot be denied to prisoners. He was kept in solitary without being allowed out for 3 years, but it’s OK because it was many small punishments served back to back without relief, not one big punishment. So, if we can deny necessities for extended periods of time, that means we can also withhold food or water for years at a time, as long we’re doing it by stacking punishments and not just starving someone to death over a single incident.
If you are so profoundly mentally ill that you can’t be allowed to spend time in a slightly larger enclosure, it seems highly unlikely that you are mentally competent enough to be convicted in the first place.
I disagree there, by all accounts his mental health deteriorated in prison, not before. I mean, I’m sure he was a bit fucked up before, but solitary is what had him smearing shit all over himself and his cell.
They are admitting in public to committing crimes of corruption.
They should have no problem serving their time in solitary.
Did we just move the standard to three years? Didn’t we get it down to three months max at one point?Nope apparently it’s not a violation of your constitutional rights if they just string together a bunch of solitary punishments. Because that’s not the world’s biggest fucking loophole.
Nothing cruel and unusual about that…
checks for skulls on uniforms
Good news, not on the uniform.
Lots of skull tattoos on the cops tho
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Over the objections of its three liberal justices, the Supreme Court on Monday denied a petition from a prisoner confined for years without the chance to exercise outside his cell.
It rejected his lawsuit alleging that keeping him in his windowless cell except for an occasional trip for a shower violated the Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
Johnson, convicted for his part in a home invasion, has profound mental illness and was placed in solitary confinement in Pontiac Correctional Center as a result of multiple disciplinary infractions.
… Worse still, Johnson’s dire physical condition led to further yard restrictions, as prison guards faulted him for being disruptive and having an unclean cell.”
“This vicious cycle,” Jackson wrote, continued until Johnson was transferred to a specialized mental health treatment unit, where his condition improved.
But a panel of the 7th Circuit said a prison’s ability to deny the opportunity to exercise for a set period of time for serious infractions does not violate the Constitution, nor does “stacking” such punishments.
The original article contains 591 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
