From MacArthur Justice Center:
The MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois Office receives about 10 letters per week from prisoners across the country, writing from federal penitentiaries, state prisons, county jails, and treatment centers. These letters shed light into the myriad crises that besiege the criminal legal system, including racial disparities within jails and prisons, wrongful convictions, prison conditions, solitary confinement and inadequate mental and physical health treatment behind bars. Here are three major takeaways from the over 400 letters the Illinois office has received over the past 10 months:
1. Health care behind bars is incredibly fraught and often out of reach for many incarcerated people – to dangerous and sometimes deadly outcomes. One disturbing example of this reality concerns the lack of appropriate dental care. One letter writer described how, after having four teeth pulled and being fitted for a partial that a prison dentist assured him he could receive, another prison official informed him he could not get the partial – despite the partial being sent to the prison and sitting in the dentist’s drawer. The man has since had to have more teeth pulled, leaving him with only three remaining. He is unable to afford implants, so he now has a lisp, slurred speech, and depression as a result of the lack of treatment.
2. Retaliation is a real and terrifying consequence for many prisoners who attempt to defend their rights behind bars. For a prisoner attempting to bring a lawsuit against prison officials to hold them accountable for abuse and neglect, they have to exhaust the grievance process, which can sometimes result in physical assaults by correctional officers or other incarcerated people, being placed in solitary confinement, and other humiliations and abuses. For example, one letter writer from an incarcerated person said that he was given dentures that were too small in retaliation for having filed a lawsuit. The threat of retaliation forces prisoners to calculate the risks with the potential of never having their rights protected and enduring continued abuse and neglect.
3. The sentences the criminal legal system imposes are terrifyingly long – and often unjustifiably so. For example, a letter writer from a prison described the 50-year mandatory minimum sentence he received for a non-violent drug offense. Another incarcerated person writes that he is serving 23 years for a robbery and shooting his gun in the air to scare the owner away. Another is serving a sentence of 36-72 years for armed robbery and car-jacking when he was 18 years old. Continue reading >>>
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