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Essay On Cruel And Unusual Punishment

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The complaints that were brought up were that confinement in cells in the isolation unit of the Farm amounts to cruel and unusual punishment as prohibited by the eighth amendment. They were also denied adequate medical attention, and that penitentiary authorities have failed to take adequate steps to protect inmates from assaults by other inmates. They also say that the Farm is depriving them of their fourteenth amendment rights. The court defines cruel and unusual punishment as such: a flexible and expanding one, and that punishment or system of punishment is unconstitutional if it offends concepts of decency and human dignity and precepts of civilization which Americans profess to possess, or if it is disproportionate to the offense, or if it violates fundamental standards of good conscience and fairness. They needed to show that the prison authorities had “abandoned elemental concepts of decency by permitting conditions to prevail of a shocking and debased …show more content…

They also said that as it is seen, the food is not appetizing: it is not intended to be, and the Constitution does not require that prisoners in isolation be served tasty or attractive dishes. Along with all this they also said, respondent and his subordinates are already forbidden by the injunction issued in the Jackson case from inflicting corporal punishment on convicts, and the Court is not persuaded that that injunction has been violated. The Court didn’t find from a preponderance of the evidence that the State has failed and is failing to discharge its constitutional duty with respect to the safety of certain convicts, and that the conditions existing in the isolation cells, including overcrowding, render confinement in those cells under those conditions

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