Prison Action

The NYT this morning has run a story about a former prison inmate's lawsuit against prison officials. The suit alleges that the officials violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment by refusing to protect him.

I try to keep this site reasonably urbane, so I won't go into more details. If you want grim reading, here's the link. One excerpt:

Mr. Johnson was a "free-world homosexual," the witness said. That meant that the other prisoners considered him a woman in prison, and chattel. They called Mr. Johnson by a nickname, Coco, and referred to him using feminine pronouns.

The story further corroborates the highly-credible assertion that the prison system is completely broken and that our use of prisons needs to be re-considered (link).