Nowadays a highly emphasized is equality, for all. Equality for all races, equality for all genders, equality for all religions. But something widely disregarded among these acts of impartiality is fair and equal treatment at "correctional facilities". The eighth banned the use or cruel or unusual punishment toward convicts yet it happens every single day. Each and every day Americans are discounting the host of terrible mistreatment that they prisoners are contempt to. Not only is this nefarious and constitutionally unacceptable, it's bad practice for when these same exact people cycle back into the community after serving their sentences. Imagine the retribution they would seek in order to combat the injustice they were traumatized with. Contempt for the government, contempt for any security guards or police offers, good or bad, and even contempt towards everyone else for not standing up and helping them.
Now I am not saying that this over cedes whichever crime they enacted, but it is incomparable to have a larcenist having his food thrown and splattered all over him each and every day. There are cases of a man being chained to his bed in his underwear for months, a man having his cell right next to broken pipes for toilets which often made it reek of urine and feces, and even four people being stuffed in a cell meant for two with only one bunk bed subjecting the other (usually weaker) two have to sleep and the cold, hard ground. Cells are sometimes exceedingly hot or cold, the water is also either blazing hot or freezing cold, and when toilets break or overflow there is no hurry to fix them.
This may also be in use to demonstrate what happens to criminals and to act as a way to keep people in check in an indirect way. Sound familiar? It's just like the Salem Witch trials. Most people think that the trials were due to the superstitious nature of the people in that time who used quips like this to feel more safe themselves, but the actuality was very different, people were very aware that these people probably weren't even part of the supernatural but just used this as a medium to keep communities in Massachusetts to instill fear. Similarly the prisons seem to be rehabilitation centers when really they are just inflicting greater pain onto the people who fall under there facilities.
Maybe this vile practice was useful in harming enemy soldiers taken in as prisoners but there is no reason to continue those practices now, especially to your own citizens. Think of it like this, the qwerty keyboard was first put in place in order to space out the most used words apart in order to keep the jamming of keys in a type writer. But it's different now, keyboards work differently so things like that won't happen anymore but we still use the exact system. There are many benefits towards other designs, most obviously one that goes in alphabetical in order to aid kids learning their abc's to gain a better understanding of them. There are also models that increase speed that we don't use, which is just incredulous. If there are no visible benefits to this system why should we still use it? After all isn't this the object of the various revolutions and tyranny's through history?
There is one last subject I want to touch one, capital punishment. In October 16, 2002 a black man beat his neighbors daughter with a bat. Now he is serving a life sentence for an injustice he committed when he was 13 years old! He has nothing to look forward to in his life and he will never get out unless on the off chance the evidence in his case was obtained illegally or there was some other factor abhorring a mistrial. Now I know this is an unpopular view but I believe that he should get the choice to die or serve out his sentence. It's his life, it should be his choice as each decision would consequentially result in people like him rid of the world one by the means of being forgotten and shunned and the other by peacefully succumbing to an eternal darkness. The latter would also result in less depleted resources and missed agony he would receive from his fellow prisoners.
But regardless of my personal opinions there is one thing that should be considered. America is a land built on law order and justice. If the Constitution is held is held as the highest law in the land what does that tell you about us when we directly contradict what it states?
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