It horrifies me that we allow prisoners to be treated so poorly. If someone is foundg uilty of committing a crime then we as a society have given ourselves the right to punish them by locking them up. But we alos acknowledge that even someone convicted of a committing a crime retains some basic civil rights. Unfortunately our prisons(especially here in the U.S.) are palces where people's basic rights are trampled on pretty much as a matter of course. Prisoners shouldn't have to fear rape, abuse and murder while they're incarcerated. A civilized nation should concern itself with proctecting and maintaning the rights of all its citizens, be they prisoners or not. A prisoner should be able to pay their debt to society with ample, consitutionally guaranteed, protection from harm. And while I'm getting worked up about the rights or prisoners, let me take a minute to point out the utter absurdity of consensual crimes in a supposedly free society. How can we justify locking people up for committing actions that have no demonstrable repercussions to anyone else? If someone's actions comprimise the rights or will of another individual, then fine, punish them. But if someone's actions don't affect anyone other than the person committing the actions, then what buisness is it of the state's then? I"m specifically referring to drug use. I don't use drugs, and I think that drugs can be terribly destructive and dangerous, but I don't see how the state can arrest an adult for doing something to their own body. An enlightened state should warn its citizens about dangerous activities, but it shouldn't be allowed to lock people up for doing things to themselves. I do not want any government making decisions regarding what I can put into or do to my body. An individual's own body is not the jurisdiction of the state. Although we may find suicide, drug use, abortion, self-mutilation, etc, abhorrent, we cannot as an enlightened society make crimansl of people that want to do these things to themselves, so long as their actions don't compromise our rights. Because we find something distasteful is not justification enough for us to deem it criminal.