The Benefits Of Supermax Prisons

Many people, including high ranking political leaders, sometimes argue that prisoners don’t have or should not be allowed to enjoy their human rights. Such arguments are wrong and have no basis in law. Prisoners are human being and as such they retain their rights even when in prison. This is so because human rights are universal. This means that every person, including a prisoner, has human rights, no matter who he is, where she/he lives or his/her class, race, sex, age, social status, etc. Also, human rights are said to be inalienable. This means that they cannot be taken away from a person, including a prisoner.
The united states prison system can be both fair and unfair in some certain situations. In America, our criminal justice system…show more content…
This principle applies regardless of whether the medical care is provided by governmental employees or by private medical staff under contract with the government. Restrictions on prisoners’ access to publications cannot be arbitrary; they must be “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” That said, in practice, courts often will accept the judgment of prison authorities in deciding whether censoring a publication is reasonable. Over the last two decades corrections systems have increasingly relied on solitary confinement as a prison management tool – even building entire institutions called “supermax prisons” where prisoners are held in conditions of extreme isolation, sometimes for years or decades. But solitary confinement jeopardizes our public safety, is fundamentally inhumane and wastes taxpayer dollars. We must insist on humane and more cost-effective methods of punishment and prison management. Prisoners and detainees in many local, state and federal facilities, including those run by private contractors, confront conditions that are abusive, degrading and dangerous. Soaring prison populations due to harsh sentencing laws—which legislators have been reluctant to change—and immigrant detention policies coupled with tight budgets have left governments unwilling to make the investments in staff and resources necessary to ensure safe and humane…show more content…
Less serious offenders, such as those convicted of misdemeanor offenses, may receive a short term sentence to be served in a local city or county jail, or to alternative forms of sanctions such as community corrections (halfway house) or house arrest. Different U.S. prisons operate at different levels of security, ranging from minimum-security prisons—that mainly house non-violent offenders—to super-maximum security prison facilities (supermax) that house the most dangerous criminals. The federal government, states, counties, and many individual cities have facilities to confine people. Generally, "prison" refers to facilities for holding convicted felons (offenders who commit crimes where the sentence is at least one year). Individuals awaiting trial, being held pending citations for non-custodial offenses, and those convicted of misdemeanors (crimes which carry a sentence of less than one year), are generally held in county jails. In most states, cities operate small jail facilities, sometimes simply referred to as "lock-ups", used for very short-term incarceration—can be held for up to 72 business hours or up to five days—until the prisoner comes before a judge for the first time or receives a citation or summons before being released or transferred to a larger jail. Some states have "unified" systems, in which all the jails and prisons are operated by the state. The federal