Boasting the largest incarceration rate in the world, the United States’ treatment of its nearly two million prisoners has been the basis for legal scrutiny since the country’s inception. The vagueness of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has allowed for constant redefinition of how “cruel and unusual punishment” towards prisoners is understood throughout America. For instance, in the Supreme Court case Estelle v. Gamble (1976), a prisoner’s work-related injury caused him to be punished and denied adequate medical attention. As a result, the court ruled that the prisoner’s constitutional rights had been violated, creating the  precedent that the deprivation of necessary services or items to prisoners also qualified as cruel and unusual. More famously, the highly contentious issue of capital punishment has been either permitted or prohibited in prisons across state lines due to rulings regarding the Eighth Amendment; the absence of widespread legal consistency allowing for the injection of moral beliefs in decisions. For far too long, the ambiguity of the phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” has wrongfully protected many American prison systems from legal accountability for a multitude of mistreatments against prisoners–-including, but not limited to–a lack of basic worker’s rights and subjugation to solitary confinement.

Read More